Obama looks escalation in the eye By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - In a remarkable parallel with a turning point in the Vietnam War
44 years ago, United States President Barack Obama will preside over a series
of meetings in the coming weeks that will determine whether the US will proceed
with an escalation of the Afghanistan war or adjust its strategy and reduce the
US military commitment there.
The meetings will take place in the context of a request from General Stanley A
McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, for 40,000 additional troops,
which reached Washington over the weekend. That would bring the total US troop
strength to 108,000 - nearly a 60% increase.
Obama has hinted at serious doubts about being drawn more deeply into the war
in Afghanistan, and administration officials
have signaled that a key issue is whether the proposed counter-insurgency war
can be won.
A plan backed by Vice President Joe Biden to scale back US forces in
Afghanistan and to focus more narrowly on al-Qaeda was one of the options
discussed at a September 13 meeting of top administration officials, according
to a report in the Australian newspaper The Age last Friday. That plan would
reportedly depend on US Special Forces to track down al-Qaeda and ratchet down
the counter-insurgency war.
But the decisions that emerge from the coming meetings are more likely to be
shaped primarily by the concerns of the military and of the White House about
being blamed for a defeat in Afghanistan that now seems far more likely than it
did just six months ago.
In that regard, the approaching White House meetings recall similar
consultations in June 1965, when president Lyndon B Johnson and his civilian
advisers responded to a request from General William Westmoreland and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff for a major troop increase in South Vietnam by discussing ways
to limit the US military commitment in South Vietnam.
Johnson, secretary of defense Robert S McNamara and national security adviser
McGeorge Bundy were all doubtful that the war could be won, even with a much
larger troop commitment.
Johnson, like Obama today, also had an alternative to further escalation of the
war - a proposal for a negotiated settlement from under secretary of state
George Ball, which was strongly opposed by others in Johnson's national
security team, including McNamara.
But a few weeks later, Johnson went along with an open-ended troop commitment
in Vietnam because he was unwilling to face the likelihood of charges by the
military that he was responsible for the loss of South Vietnam.
In a series of appearances on Sunday talk shows on September 20, Obama signaled
that he wanted to avoid getting more deeply involved in Afghanistan, although
he left the door open to approving more troops. "Until I'm satisfied that we've
got the right strategy," he said on NBC's Meet the Press, "I'm not going
to be sending some young man or woman over there - beyond what we already
have."
In a news conference on Friday, Obama raised the issue of whether there is "a
sense of legitimacy ... among the Afghan people - for their government",
without which, he said, the US task would be "much more difficult", obviously
referring to the contested Afghan elections which currently have President
Hamid Karzai as the victor pending investigations into vote-rigging.
Obama is questioning whether a counter-insurgency war is feasible under the
existing conditions in Afghanistan. In a September 21 interview with Josh Rogin
of The Cable that was obviously cleared with the White House, Assistant
Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy referred to "an uncertain outcome" in
Afghanistan.
In an initial round of debate on Afghanistan during Obama's first weeks in
January and February, Biden argued that the war plan would be far too costly
and might not succeed, as Michael Crowley reported in the September 24 New
Republic.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and
Afghanistan coordinator Richard Holbrooke supported the military's proposal,
however. In the end, Obama compromised with the military, approving 17,000 of
the 30,000 troops requested, even in the absence of a clear strategy.
But the White House let it be known that it was not committed to a full-fledged
counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan. Obama's insistence in his March 27
speech that the US objective in Afghanistan was to defeat al-Qaeda now appears
to have been a sign that he is determined to keep his options open.
McChrystal's "initial assessment" declaring that "failure to provide adequate
resources" would probably result in "mission failure", was sent to Washington
on August 31, but weeks passed without any signal from the White House that it
was ready to entertain a troop request.
That provoked complaints from McChrystal's staff expressing unhappiness with
the delay, according to a report by McClatchy Newspapers' Pentagon
correspondent Nancy Youssef on September 18.
Then McChrystal's assessment was leaked to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward,
generating a big headline in the September 21 Washington Post about
McChrystal's warning of "mission failure". That leak was obviously aimed at
making it more difficult for Obama to turn down his eventual troop deployment
request.
But McChrystal's "initial assessment" presents such a formidable array of
obstacles to the success of a counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan that it
could be seen as an invitation to the president to reject the strategy.
Both leaking such a relatively bleak assessment and requesting 40,000 more
troops may have been aimed primarily at ensuring that McChrystal and his boss,
General David Petraeus, could not be blamed for defeat. Petraeus and Admiral
Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have closed ranks behind
McChrystal's strategy and can be expected to endorse his troop request.
"Military commanders are always going to ask for more troops," says Larry Korb,
senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former assistant
secretary of defense. "They figure if they don't ask for more, and it doesn't
go well, they could be blamed."
For the White House, fears of being blamed for having failed to provide
sufficient troops are exacerbated if key national security officials support
the military position rather than the president. In June 1965, Johnson
initially leaned toward holding the line against open-ended escalation, because
he thought he had the support of his defense secretary, McNamara, which he felt
gave him the needed political cover.
But when McNamara shifted his position to one of support for the troop level
requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Johnson gave in to the military.
Gates, who was chosen by Obama to provide "political cover" on national
security policy, may play the same spoiler role as McNamara did in 1965 in
regard to Obama's desire to avoid escalation.
Gates has remained publicly undecided on the troop increase issue. But on ABC's This
Week on Sunday, he declared that being defeated by the Taliban in
Afghanistan would have "catastrophic effects", by "energizing" al-Qaeda
recruitment, operations and fundraising.
Gates, Clinton and Holbrooke are likely to press Obama to go along with at
least a large part of the McChrystal troop request, arguing that the war cannot
be abandoned. They will argue that Obama's presidency cannot survive an open
breach with the military, and that Republican senators are already poised to
attack Obama as weak if he fails to provide whatever McChrystal requests.
Obama could still argue that conditions in Afghanistan have changed, and that
US objectives there must now be adjusted. But he would have to do battle with
his military leadership, the Republicans and his own national security
advisers.
The high political price that the forces arrayed behind the war in Afghanistan
are prepared to exact on Obama for reining in the present war may compel him to
compromise with them once again.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
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