Jed Babbin: Lyndon Baines Obama
[Mr. Babbin is the editor of Human Events and HumanEvents.com. He served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration.]
Deciding the right strategy begins with asking the right question. When the White House was waltzing McChrystal around trying to find a way to talk him out of his request for more troops, I questioned the wisdom of applying the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy which worked in Iraq -- temporarily -- to Afghanistan. Where, because the nation is 50% bigger, and in there is no significant Afghan uprising against the Taliban as there was in Iraq against al-Quaida, the strategy couldn’t work.
Since then, it’s become clear that the White House will try to compromise McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops in favor of a smaller buildup or no buildup at all.
There is no course more dangerous to the lives of our troops -- and our future security -- than to do what President Obama clearly wants to do: apply Lyndon Johnson’s failed brand of indecisive warfare to Afghanistan.
In the opening pages of We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, Joe Galloway and retired General Hal Moore tell the story of Gen. Harold K. Johnson, then army chief of staff, who drove to the White House to resign in protest of President Johnson’s order that the Airmobile Division go to Vietnam, making it an American war.
General Johnson believed that the deployment -- without a declaration of emergency that meant a full-scale national effort to win -- was, according to the book, “an act of madness.” But at the White House gate, the general’s resolve failed him. He pinned his stars back on his shoulders and drove back to the Pentagon. As Galloway and Moore wrote, the change of mind haunted him for the rest of his days.
If President Obama decides to pare back McChrystal’s request for reinforcements and a new strategy -- focused on the Afghan population in the classic counterinsurgency mold -- both General McChrystal and his boss, General David H. Petraeus, will face the same moment that Harold Johnson did on July 28, 1965.
I never knew Harold Johnson and do not know Stanley McChrystal. I have met David Petraeus many times and -- though I don’t know him as one would know a friend -- I believe him to be a man of principle who would not participate in a strategy he knows is doomed to fail, wasting many young American lives in the process.
President Obama apparently knows this, and for that reason has been avoiding a decision on Afghanistan. He sees the stories about the climbing number of casualties in Afghanistan, one in the Washington Post proclaiming Afghanistan “Almost a Lost Cause.” His administration has blocked Republican efforts to obtain congressional testimony by McChrystal and Petraeus on the Afghanistan situation.
Petraeus hasn’t openly endorsed McChrystal’s request for more troops, but McChrystal wouldn’t have gone forward without his private endorsement.
Obama will craft some sort of compromise designed to buy the generals’ support. They apparently anticipate that he’ll offer something such as the full number of troops McChrystal requests but only for a short time, probably one year. That’s the time in which McChrystal’s 30 August report says we may lose Afghanistan to the Taliban if we don’t revise our strategy and provide the resources to implement it.
But seeing this moment coming, Petraeus and McChrystal have been preparing the media battlefield. Failing to gain the president’s attention, McChrystal took his argument to CBS’ “Sixty Minutes” and to a think tank speech in London. Answering whether he’d compromise for a smaller troop increase, McChrystal said, “The short answer is: no. You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy."
Petraeus, too, made a very unusual statement. Last week, America’s most highly-respected general said that our goals in Afghanistan will have to be changed -- meaning adjusted downward - if the president rejects the strategy revisions and increased resources he and McChrystal say are needed.
The prospect of either McChrystal or Petraeus (or both) resigning poses an enormous problem for Obama. His spending spree, the continued rise in unemployment and the Obamacare mess in congress is reflected in slipping poll numbers and rising public doubts about his ability to govern. If McChrystal resigns, it will be devastating. If Petraeus joins McChrystal in resignation, Obama may have created an opponent who could defeat him in 2012.
Obama and his team should study carefully the last incident in which an American general resigned on principle...
Read entire article at HumanEvents.com
Deciding the right strategy begins with asking the right question. When the White House was waltzing McChrystal around trying to find a way to talk him out of his request for more troops, I questioned the wisdom of applying the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy which worked in Iraq -- temporarily -- to Afghanistan. Where, because the nation is 50% bigger, and in there is no significant Afghan uprising against the Taliban as there was in Iraq against al-Quaida, the strategy couldn’t work.
Since then, it’s become clear that the White House will try to compromise McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops in favor of a smaller buildup or no buildup at all.
There is no course more dangerous to the lives of our troops -- and our future security -- than to do what President Obama clearly wants to do: apply Lyndon Johnson’s failed brand of indecisive warfare to Afghanistan.
In the opening pages of We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, Joe Galloway and retired General Hal Moore tell the story of Gen. Harold K. Johnson, then army chief of staff, who drove to the White House to resign in protest of President Johnson’s order that the Airmobile Division go to Vietnam, making it an American war.
General Johnson believed that the deployment -- without a declaration of emergency that meant a full-scale national effort to win -- was, according to the book, “an act of madness.” But at the White House gate, the general’s resolve failed him. He pinned his stars back on his shoulders and drove back to the Pentagon. As Galloway and Moore wrote, the change of mind haunted him for the rest of his days.
If President Obama decides to pare back McChrystal’s request for reinforcements and a new strategy -- focused on the Afghan population in the classic counterinsurgency mold -- both General McChrystal and his boss, General David H. Petraeus, will face the same moment that Harold Johnson did on July 28, 1965.
I never knew Harold Johnson and do not know Stanley McChrystal. I have met David Petraeus many times and -- though I don’t know him as one would know a friend -- I believe him to be a man of principle who would not participate in a strategy he knows is doomed to fail, wasting many young American lives in the process.
President Obama apparently knows this, and for that reason has been avoiding a decision on Afghanistan. He sees the stories about the climbing number of casualties in Afghanistan, one in the Washington Post proclaiming Afghanistan “Almost a Lost Cause.” His administration has blocked Republican efforts to obtain congressional testimony by McChrystal and Petraeus on the Afghanistan situation.
Petraeus hasn’t openly endorsed McChrystal’s request for more troops, but McChrystal wouldn’t have gone forward without his private endorsement.
Obama will craft some sort of compromise designed to buy the generals’ support. They apparently anticipate that he’ll offer something such as the full number of troops McChrystal requests but only for a short time, probably one year. That’s the time in which McChrystal’s 30 August report says we may lose Afghanistan to the Taliban if we don’t revise our strategy and provide the resources to implement it.
But seeing this moment coming, Petraeus and McChrystal have been preparing the media battlefield. Failing to gain the president’s attention, McChrystal took his argument to CBS’ “Sixty Minutes” and to a think tank speech in London. Answering whether he’d compromise for a smaller troop increase, McChrystal said, “The short answer is: no. You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy."
Petraeus, too, made a very unusual statement. Last week, America’s most highly-respected general said that our goals in Afghanistan will have to be changed -- meaning adjusted downward - if the president rejects the strategy revisions and increased resources he and McChrystal say are needed.
The prospect of either McChrystal or Petraeus (or both) resigning poses an enormous problem for Obama. His spending spree, the continued rise in unemployment and the Obamacare mess in congress is reflected in slipping poll numbers and rising public doubts about his ability to govern. If McChrystal resigns, it will be devastating. If Petraeus joins McChrystal in resignation, Obama may have created an opponent who could defeat him in 2012.
Obama and his team should study carefully the last incident in which an American general resigned on principle...