Peter Beinert, writing in the Daily Beast, has very measured praise for the President’s handling of Afghanistan: “On no other major issue has Obama been so cynical. And on no other issue has his cynicism proved so politically shrewd.”
Beinert points out that Obama is essentially declaring a victory and bringing the troops home, in the summer of 2013. By waiting until after the election to bring the troops home, he avoids the charge of political pandering, thus winning the Republicans’ approval, who, like Obama, want to lose the war too, without being seen to do so. And I strongly suspect that the military is happy to get out of Afghanistan as well. The simple fact is that we don’t have nearly enough troops to fight a real war, because real wars have the unfortunately tendency to last about ten times longer than the U.S. military wants them to. And the cost of a “real” army would be insupportable, probably triple the cost of the one we currently have. And the attempt to recruit such an army would be a disastrous failure, since Americans are much more in the mood to honor a hero than be one. As for the more than 1,500 American soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since Obama took office, and as for those who will die in the next year, and as for the thousands of Afghans who have died, to save the careers and pensions of well-mannered and well-manicured American generals, bureaucrats, and politicians, well, it’s impossible to think of everything all at once. It would make your head ache!
But while Americans are walking away from invasions, they are embracing the joys of long-range killing as never before. We’ve always been a bombing nation, and those smart bombs just keep getting smarter. As Glenn Greenwald points out, Obama simply revels in his new role as killer in chief, as illustrated by the recent New York Times article on the Administration’s ultra high level death sessions, during which the President plays God, determining which high level al Qaeda leader (as if there were any left) will be next to be blown to smithereens, along with his family and his neighbors.
This ritual, both ghoulish and pathetic, has been elaborately publicized by the Administration, as evidenced by the usual testimony from the usual suspects, the “high level” advisors and officials who are, of course, not authorized to talk about what they so eagerly talk about. I’m reminded, very much, of President Johnson’s well-publicized agonies when he personally selected bombing targets in Vietnam, a way for a doomed man to pretend that he was in charge of his destiny. Obama may be losing control of the country, but in the Situation Room, or whatever it is grandly called, he’s the big man, dealing out life and death like so many playing cards.
But while Johnson trapped himself, I fear that Obama is trapping us. If Romney becomes President—and I think the odds are increasingly in his favor—he will come under enormous pressure to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. If he actually refuses to do so, well, I would probably have to admire him, unless he got absolutely everything else wrong. But he does attack, it probably won’t be a “conclusive” attack. And so pressure will build for a second attack, a nuclear one. And no one will wonder why we are using nuclear weapons to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.
