As Afghanistan votes, our own President, like George W. Bush before him, has become the proprietor of a conflict most Americans don't understand and don't want.
A new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News shows: "A majority of Americans now see the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting, and just a quarter say more US troops should be sent to the country...
"The new poll comes amid widespread speculation that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, will request more troops for his stepped-up effort to remove the Taliban from Afghan towns and villages. That position gets the backing of 24 percent of those polled, while nearly twice as many, 45 percent, want to decrease the number of military forces...
"In January, before President Obama authorized sending an additional 17,000 troops to the country, public sentiment tilted more strongly toward a troop increase."
Last week Richard Holbrooke, our special Ambassador, told foreign policy experts, “The military struggle with US troops is not an open-ended event, but our civilian assistance will continue,” that we have to be "clear about what our national interests are” and that ultimately, success in Afghanistan would be like what a Supreme Court justice once said about pornography, “We’ll know it when we see it.”
This vague formulation is underscored by the sobering facts that, beyond Afghanistan, murders in Iraq are mounting again, and Pakistan with its nuclear weapons is as unstable as ever. Congress added to the uncertainty by leaving Washington without taking action on a long-pending bill to triple economic and development assistance there.
During the presidential campaign last year, John McCain took flak for suggesting the US might be in Iraq for a hundred years. It's time for the Obama White House to start answering the nagging questions about our continuing role in the Middle East:
Is there any way to extricate ourselves from what looks like a permanent occupation and find better ways to protect American interests in that unforgiving part of the world?
Showing posts with label Richard Holbrooke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Holbrooke. Show all posts
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Pakistan Gets Worse
Pervez Musharraf and George W. Bush are gone, but the game goes on as, in the wake of $7.5 billion in new aid by the Obama Administration, the Pakistani prime minister complains of a "trust deficit" by US benefactors.
The shell game over Islamist extremists that began after 9/11 is looking even worse. In proposing increased aid, President Obama said he expected Pakistan security forces to crack down on terrorists in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
What he got was an agreement by the Islamabad regime to turn over control of the Swat Valley less than a hundred miles from the capital to a pro-Taliban group whose militants have burned schools, banned education for girls and beheaded government officials.
Sen. John Kerry, in Pakistan this week as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is greeted by a statement from the Prime Minister: "The U.S. should not attach conditionalities to the assistance package being presented to the U.S. Congress, as aid with strings attached would fail to generate the desired goodwill and results in Pakistan."
In Washington, Islamabad's ambassador complains that the new aid package is too "intrusive," while back home the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court condemns the flogging of a 17-year-old girl for refusing to marry a Taliban fighter and 200 comrades-in-arms storm terminals storing NATO supplies in Peshawar, killing a guard and torching vehicles.
With the infusion of more troops into Afghanistan, the shakiness of the government across the border is looking worse as it takes US billions and keeps telling us, as Musharraf did, to trust it and mind our own business about the extremist threat to its existence.
Obama's envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, faces a tough job in trying to break that cycle.
The shell game over Islamist extremists that began after 9/11 is looking even worse. In proposing increased aid, President Obama said he expected Pakistan security forces to crack down on terrorists in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
What he got was an agreement by the Islamabad regime to turn over control of the Swat Valley less than a hundred miles from the capital to a pro-Taliban group whose militants have burned schools, banned education for girls and beheaded government officials.
Sen. John Kerry, in Pakistan this week as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is greeted by a statement from the Prime Minister: "The U.S. should not attach conditionalities to the assistance package being presented to the U.S. Congress, as aid with strings attached would fail to generate the desired goodwill and results in Pakistan."
In Washington, Islamabad's ambassador complains that the new aid package is too "intrusive," while back home the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court condemns the flogging of a 17-year-old girl for refusing to marry a Taliban fighter and 200 comrades-in-arms storm terminals storing NATO supplies in Peshawar, killing a guard and torching vehicles.
With the infusion of more troops into Afghanistan, the shakiness of the government across the border is looking worse as it takes US billions and keeps telling us, as Musharraf did, to trust it and mind our own business about the extremist threat to its existence.
Obama's envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, faces a tough job in trying to break that cycle.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Obama's Defining Time
This week Barack Obama became who he is going to be for the next four years. Amid a flurry of crucial decisions on the economy and foreign policy, his presidency is showing what may be its ultimate shape--out of necessity daring on domestic issues, more conventional and cautious on foreign policy.
Liberals who criticized his response to the financial crisis as too careful, like Paul Krugman, were finally impressed: "If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course...(F)ears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished."
Conservatives also noted a difference. "A mysterious thing happened in that speech Tuesday night," Peggy Noonan writes. "By the end of it Barack Obama had become president," pointing to a moment "about four-fifths of the way through the speech. He was looking from the prompters to the congressmen and senators, and suddenly he was engaging on what seemed a deeper level. His voice took on inflection. He wasn't detached, as if he was wondering how he was doing. He seemed equal to the moment and then, in some new way, in command of it."
There is also a new edge to his determination to confront "the special interests and lobbyists...gearing up for a fight," and the days of wooing Republicans rather than defeating them in Congress, at least on domestic issues, seem to be winding down.
But foreign policy is something else. The pace of withdrawal from Iraq is slow enough to satisfy John McCain, and the decision to send more troops into Afghanistan while announcing a "soup to nuts" rethinking of our mission there has a cart-before-the-horse Bushlike feel to it. Shouldn’t the strategy precede the deployment?
Special envoy Richard Holbrooke is barely back from a whirlwind visit to the region, and the nature of Pakistan's role in fighting the Taliban is still unclear. For Obama, who puts so much emphasis on diplomacy, the military commitment seems premature.
As an incoming President with more on his plate than any in half a century, Barack Obama is shaping up fast and well enough to maintain good poll ratings from a jittery public, but the road looks long and uphill for the months ahead.
Liberals who criticized his response to the financial crisis as too careful, like Paul Krugman, were finally impressed: "If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course...(F)ears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished."
Conservatives also noted a difference. "A mysterious thing happened in that speech Tuesday night," Peggy Noonan writes. "By the end of it Barack Obama had become president," pointing to a moment "about four-fifths of the way through the speech. He was looking from the prompters to the congressmen and senators, and suddenly he was engaging on what seemed a deeper level. His voice took on inflection. He wasn't detached, as if he was wondering how he was doing. He seemed equal to the moment and then, in some new way, in command of it."
There is also a new edge to his determination to confront "the special interests and lobbyists...gearing up for a fight," and the days of wooing Republicans rather than defeating them in Congress, at least on domestic issues, seem to be winding down.
But foreign policy is something else. The pace of withdrawal from Iraq is slow enough to satisfy John McCain, and the decision to send more troops into Afghanistan while announcing a "soup to nuts" rethinking of our mission there has a cart-before-the-horse Bushlike feel to it. Shouldn’t the strategy precede the deployment?
Special envoy Richard Holbrooke is barely back from a whirlwind visit to the region, and the nature of Pakistan's role in fighting the Taliban is still unclear. For Obama, who puts so much emphasis on diplomacy, the military commitment seems premature.
As an incoming President with more on his plate than any in half a century, Barack Obama is shaping up fast and well enough to maintain good poll ratings from a jittery public, but the road looks long and uphill for the months ahead.
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