Flashback From the Afpak Migraine

If Barack Obama had been president in 2002, he says he would have stayed out of Iraq and pursued al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But that simple "war of necessity" is now morphing into the biggest foreign policy headache of our time, a Hydra of impossible choices in Pakistan, the whole Middle East and beyond.

Even as Hamid Karzai agrees to an election runoff with who-knows-what prospects of national unity in Kabul, the perception of a growing gulf between the American military and the White House stirs echoes of the 1964 movie, "Seven Days in May," a what-if about a conspiracy to unseat a President led by the head of the Joint Chiefs who considers him too soft on America's enemies.

In today's 24/7 media world, politicking against a President can be done openly, not so much by active-duty generals, as in the movie, but by retired military talking heads like Gen. Anthony Zinni on cable news networks abetted by scare headlines online and elsewhere.

("Pentagon Chief: Obama Afghan Decision Can't Wait" screams Drudge yesterday linking to a Reuters report quoting Defense Secretary Gates as saying something quite different--that the President's strategy won't depend simply on the election: "I see this as a process, not something that's going to happen all of the sudden...the president will have to make his decisions in the context of that evolutionary process.")

Ever since the leak a month ago of Gen. McChrystal's report recommending 40,000 more troops, the media narrative has been a vacillating President, egged on by Joe Biden vs. hard-headed Pentagon honchos who are gung-ho to root out terrorists in Afghanistan, a parody of the complicated debate now going on in the White House.

Such oversimplification of what we face in the Middle East is a slow-motion "Seven Days in May," an undermining of the elected Commander-in-Chief that was dramatized as unthinkable in the last century. It shouldn't be thinkable now.

Obama's Language Problem

As George W. Bush goes off to write his "authoritarian" version of the past eight years, we are getting the first glimpse of what could be a drawback in having an articulate president.

Barack Obama made a ringing statement yesterday about the US mission in Afghanistan, but we now learn how divided his Administration was over the decision, including the opposition of Joe Biden, who knows more about the region than anyone else involved.

“The United States of America," the President intoned, "did not choose to fight a war in Afghanistan. Nearly 3,000 of our people were killed on September 11, 2001, for doing nothing more than going about their daily lives.

“So let me be clear: Al Qaeda and its allies--the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks--are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. We have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”

As well-said and true as this is, it papers over a host, to use one of the president's favorite words, of difficulties. (See the post below.)

The Vice President, White House officials tell the New York Times, "was heavily influenced by the trip he took to Afghanistan and Pakistan just before the inauguration in January. He observed to Mr. Obama that if you asked 10 people on the ground what American objectives were, he would get 10 different answers."

In the end, the President overrode Biden's qualms and chose to broaden and intensify US involvement in the area. Americans can only hope that his decision accomplishes the goal he so eloquently expressed and that it does not turn out to be a triumph of rhetoric over reality.