A year ago President Obama announced his so called “surge and exit” plan for the “war of necessity” in Afghanistan. At the time, I opined in this space that, faced with a bunch of bad options, Obama had picked the wrong one. (This post is here.) Obama’s plan was to surge 30,000 troops into Afghanistan for 18 months and then begin a drawdown. I expressed that, faced with the deteriorating situation on the ground, the 18 month timeframe was unrealistic and the most likely outcome was that the military commanders would show enough progress to persuade Obama to deploy more resources and extend the timetable. Unfortunately this prediction has become the reality. This week in Lisbon, Obama will propose extending the NATO combat role until 2014 and, since our NATO allies are reducing their troop commitments, more of the burden will fall on the US.
Now, two years into the Obama presidency, it remains unclear what the strategic objectives in Afghanistan are and what the face of victory looks like. The stated objective is to deny al Qaeda a base of operations in Afghanistan from which to attack US interests. The problem with this plan is that al Qaeda has not been in Afghanistan for nine years. They have moved their base of operations to Pakistan and have opened franchises in Yemen, Somalia and Algeria. Faced with this reality, the US is escalating its attacks and deployments in Pakistan and Yemen (Can Algeria be far behind?) creating a fertile recruiting environment for al Qaeda. (This story is here.)
As if this were not enough, in this month’s midterm elections, the angry American electorate, exhibiting great cognitive dissonance, returned to power the same people who created the problems that made them angry in the first place. Already asserting their newly found power, Republican hawks have begun to propose a package of carrots and sticks to pressure Obama to attack Iran. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has recently said, “If he (Obama) decides to be tough on Iran, beyond sanctions, I think you’re going to see a lot of Republican support for the idea…”. (This story is here.)
All of this has happened far from the view of the American voter. Only 7% of the voters said Afghanistan was important to them in the election. Over the past few decades several phenomenon have contributed to insulating the general public and their political representatives from the consequences of the most important decision that they must make, whether or not to take the country to war. The advent of the professional military means that only a small portion of the population is directly affected by the wars. Increasingly we are seeing the development of a professional military class where son follows father and daughter follows mother. They are isolated from the rest of the population who go about their business unaffected. We have effectively created a fourth branch of government that, backed by their supporters in the military-industrial complex, has enormous influence and is politically unaccountable. This trend is troubling to me.
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