Obama’s war

Afghanistan just became Obama’s war.

He owns it now.

The same way Johnson came to own Vietnam and Bush will always own Iraq.

Obama put his presidential signature on the war in Afghanistan Friday with his announcement of a fundamental shift in strategy, a surge of more than 21,000 troops and a widening of the theater to include Pakistan.

President Obama said he was taking the bold initiative in recognition of the fact that an “increasingly perilous” situation needed to be addressed.

He said point blank that the Al Qaeda leadership was hiding out in Pakistan and “actively planning attacks on the United States.”

He said an extra 4,000 US troops and advisers would train the Afghan army and police and augment the 17,000 additional troops he had already committed over the summer.

The increased military presence will be accompanied by billions of dollars in aid. Obama said that would be delivered based on benchmarks and tough scrutiny by a new Inspector General who will attempt to weed out corruption in a region overgrown with it.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari both publicly welcomed the new strategy.

Some policy wonks had a few reservations. Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations applauded the initiative for addressing a dangerous “lack of focus” on Afghanistan by the Bush administration. But he also pointed out that counterinsurgency is “resource intensive and very expensive.”

“I’m afraid this will be a down payment” on a much larger and more expensive engagement, he said.

Just after Obama’s speech, Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) told GlobalPost’s Jack Farrell that he supported the initiative.

The Afghan people "do not want the Taliban" and so we "have to give them something to hold on to," said Kerry, who will be coauthoring legislation to approve aid for Pakistan as part of the initiative.

When asked about escalation concerns, Kerry said he believes that "this is a low enough footprint” and “not a whole new military commitment.”

But Kerry did express some reservations about expanding the military operations into Pakistan. “They (Obama’s advisers) are not there yet,” he said, referring to a policy shift on Pakistan that he said was still taking shape and being debated.   

Obama stressed that part of the initiative would be to build stronger international support for the war and to work together with NATO and the United Nations and other international bodies in accomplishing a shared goal.

But NATO is hardly interested in going into Pakistan, and most military analysts believe there will be an inevitable clash with NATO on this new expansion of the war in Afghanistan.

“This is not simply an American problem. Far from it,” Obama said. “It is instead an international security challenge of the highest order.”

This may be true, but the fact is Al Qaeda and the militant stream of the Taliban which has regrouped inside Pakistan clearly see America as the enemy. No international diplomatic offensive will change that.

Afghanistan poses extraordinary challenges for the Obama administration, ones that have not been seen since the worst days of Vietnam.

The policy review came out of intensive work by his policy advisers and particularly by two men who understand the lessons of Vietnam all too well.

One was a young foreign officer who in 1963 landed in Vietnam in the middle of the failed policies of the “strategic hamlet” campaign — the doomed and tragic attempt by America to “win hearts and minds.”

That was Richard Holbrooke, who is now Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The other was an eager military officer who just missed serving in Vietnam in the early 1970s but went on to  pursue a PhD at Princeton. He wrote his dissertation on the lessons of Vietnam. He has been a scholar and a warrior who has studied counter insurgency in libraries at West Point as well as the frontlines of Iraq.

That  was General David H. Petraeus, who is now the chief of Central Command.

These two men — steeped in the lessons of Vietnam — will be responsible for the diplomatic and military initiative that Obama has undertaken.

The country does not have two men more well-equipped for the task. But then again in Greek tragedy the greatest and most doomed heroes were always the ones with the keenest understanding of the forces they could not control.

Other recent GlobalPost stories on Afghanistan:

From Vietnam to Afghanistan

Exclusive: Former Taliban see opening for talks

Afghanistan: an accordian journey