Obama's War Strategy: Deal or No Deal?

As reactions to President Obama's Afghanistan strategy continue to pour in, we've compiled a few thoughts from Politics Daily writers to help break things down.

Read their analysis below, let us know what you think in the comments, choose a response and click 'Vote' to participate in our poll here:



Melinda Henneberger: Obama's heart wasn't in it, it didn't seem to me. And as his plan doesn't seem likely to work, who could blame him? (Well, except for every commentator on Fox News, where you'd have thought he had just run across the stage at West Point waving a white flag and shrieking, "Run for your lives!" instead of announcing a massive troop increase. It's official, as of last night: There is nothing our current president could do, ever, to earn even the grudging respect of these critics.

Oh, and does it also annoy me that every time I switched to MSNBC, the guests couldn't finish a sentence without doubling back to take another whack at Bush? (Yes, since you asked; he isn't president any more!) Even the cadets seemed less riveted than I would have expected -- one was snoozing, another yawning -- and these are people who might yet have to fight in Afghanistan, since, as our military writer David Wood notes, Obama has said when we'll start pulling out troops, but not when we'll finish. As David has also reported, there is no one who thinks this war can be ended quickly or easily, so I'm skeptical that this is one of those times when a moderate, let's-split-the-diff approach was the way to go. But oh, do I hope to be wrong.

Walter Shapiro: For historians, the lasting importance of Barack Obama's West Point speech may have nothing to do with Afghanistan itself. Instead, the significant passage was the president's candid admission that America is tapped out after spending (squandering?) $1 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Obama put it, "We can't simply afford to ignore the price of these wars." This all seems sadly reminiscent of post-war Britain abandoning its commitments east of Suez. Harry Truman's America was there to step in to defend Greece and Turkey against the communists. But who is left to take over for us?

David Corn: Obama did pound the basics: The Taliban must be countered so Afghanistan is never again protected territory for the mass-murderers of al-Qaeda, who, the president said, seek nuclear weapons. Prior to the speech, polls showed that about half of the American public was skeptical of the Afghanistan war. Presumably, these Americans already know al-Qaeda's plotters are evildoers. So this speech is not likely to sway millions. But what's been said a few thousand times in the past few days is definitely true: Obama has now made the Afghanistan war his own. This speech was just the opening shot in what will be a never-ending campaign to explain and justify a war that itself may be never-ending.

Obama even created what appeared to be a deadline: that transfer will begin by July 2011. Yet it's not really a deadline. As administration officials explained during a conference call a few hours before the speech, Obama is not setting a hard target date for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. They said there is no timetable for completing this transfer process and that this transition will take as long as it takes, depending on what's happening on the ground. Consequently, Obama's Afghanistan message continues to be mixed. He declared that "a sense of urgency" is propelling this new deployment. He stated that "our cause is just, our resolve unwavering." He said that this expansion of the war "is in our vital national interest." But apparently only for 18 months. Yet it may actually be for longer, if the conditions don't permit a handover at that point.

It's a bit of a muddle. Moreover, the transfer that is at the core of Obama's policy depends on the government of President Hamid Karzai. Obama is betting a lot on an entity that has so far proved to be inept and corrupt. In his speech, he acknowledged that the Kabul government has "been hampered by corruption" and that Karzai's recent reelection was "marred by fraud." (That was putting it politely.) Obama also observed that Kabul has been unable to stand up sufficient security forces -- and that Afghanistan, under Karzai, "has moved backwards."

Matt Lewis: President Obama needed to use his tremendous rhetorical skills to inspire Americans to rally around this cause. Great presidents summon their rhetorical skills on such occasions, and that's why Obama was quite correct when he said during the campaign that words do matter. He should be using his teaching ability to explain why this mission is worth pursuing. Sadly, at West Point, he failed on both fronts. When I think of inspiring wartime speeches from great leaders such as Lincoln and FDR, Reagan and Churchill, it becomes obvious to me that Obama is not in their league.

I think this has more to do with his having a different worldview than with his public speaking ability. I'm especially thinking of Churchill's great call to "fight them on the beaches" or Reagan's succinct, powerful – and prescient – vision of the outcome of the Cold War: "We win, they lose." Absent from Obama's speech is any stirring call for victory -- however one defines it. My reluctant conclusion is that Obama does not believe in clear-cut victory.

Jill Lawrence: Obama is more eloquent than many previous American presidents, and more given to revealing his thought process. His speech may or may not earn him some breathing room on Afghanistan, but it was effective in its way. He came across as a thoughtful commander in chief committed to protecting the country and doing his best by his troops. He explained and defended his decisions and countered much of the criticism coming at him, including some arguments he said he takes very seriously. . . . As I mentioned in my fuller analysis, he was handed two wars that he didn't start. The way he resolves the one in Afghanistan could lead to a debacle for his party at the polls, but he does not intend to pass it on to the next president.

Carl M. Cannon: This president and his youthful speechwriting team always seem on perilous ground when they justify their actions with history lessons. With World War II in mind, President Obama told the cadets that America was not as young a nation "and perhaps not as innocent" as when Franklin Roosevelt was president. That's an uninformed notion. Americans in the 1930s were a rough and realistic people, hardened by economic Depression and left cynical about U.S. involvement in foreign wars -- precisely because a consensus had formed among working-class Americans that the U.S. effort in World War I was a colossal waste of lives, money and effort.

Obama also spoke -- nostalgically, it seemed -- of the "great power conflicts and clear lines of division that defined the 20th century." Contrasting today's fights with the epic struggles against Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, he said that "our effort will involve disorderly regions, failed states, diffuse enemies." He's mistaken in that implication, too: It's always been this way. The 20^th century dawned with U.S. troops fighting -- or trying to prevent fighting -- in murky conflicts in Cuba, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, the Philippines, and even China, where U.S. troops helped suppress the Boxer Rebellion. And that was just the McKinley-Theodore Roosevelt administration. Philosopher George Santayana is remembered for his admonition that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But Santayana also wrote, in the same passage in "The Life of Reason," that "progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness."

Obama also said he did not reach his conclusion on Afghanistan "lightly." This was a jarring comment -- he said it twice -- because no one ever asserted he was taking it lightly. He stood accused, and not just by Republicans, of being paralyzed by the enormity of the decision before him. "Dithering" was the word hurled at him so often it became a cliche. This was as unwise a label as any of Obama's dubious historical analogies. With the stakes as high as they are, taking months to make this decision was prudent, and should have been reassuring to the nation. I believe the reason it wasn't is that most Americans now fear there is no good option in Afghanistan, only bad ones with bad results. It is now up to the men and women Obama spoke to last night to make those fears go away, and to make things right in that far-off nation. Whether this is possible -- whether Obama's plan can or will work -- no one knows. But every American, from Rush Limbaugh to Al Franken, ought to hope that it does, for our own sakes more than the president's, and mostly for the sakes of those young faces in the Long Gray Line, and the families that hold them so dear.

Bruce Drake: Obama delivered a concise and clear speech, and made a targeted effort to address the criticisms that others have made about the direction they thought he was going. But I believe there is a dynamic after eight years of Iraq and Afghanistan where the public believes it is hearing the same story over and over again. So, beneath the broad strokes of what the president laid out, questions remain: Are ground-level strategies being put in place that will actually achieve Obama's goals? What really will win over the civilian population? What really will get President Karzai to do something about corruption, when push comes to shove? What really is going to make a difference in the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands that Obama correctly singled out as the epicenter of the threat? These concerns have been on the table for years, but beyond identifying them, little has been convincingly said about how they will be -- or can be -- addressed.