The last ten days have seen the saturation of news stories focusing on Acorn, Health Care Reform, the UN ceremonies, Iran, Israel, and European Missle Defense. Lost in this miasma was a Washington Post memo leaked allegedly by General McChrystal. The White House has been silent on the memo, and with the exception of a few blogs and media stories, very little has been made of it. Yet, in any other time this memo would have been earth shattering. After almost 8 months in office, the President doesn't have a Afghan war strategy.

 

Let's face it; the President has been given an easy ride vis-a-vis Afghanistan. President Obama used the Afghan conflict as a campaign device to show his hawkish bonofides. Afghanistan, he argued, was the correct and necessary war. Iraq was a strategic disaster, which caused the US to take its eyes off the prize -namely the hunt for Bin Laden, and the destruction of Al Qaida. Even after the election, the President assured us that Afghanistan would remain the focus of his efforts, and if neccessary, he would allow incursions into Pakistan to destroy Taliban and Al Qaida strongholds. For a few weeks, the US conducted joint operations with Pakistan that witnessed the defeat of Taliban forces advancing towards the Pakistani capital. The President fired the commander of the CENTCOM forces in Afghanistan and appointed General McChrystal as CINC. He also promised that he would unveil his own strategy for Afghanistan.

 

That was March. It is now almost October. According to some sources, the Taliban now occupy about 80% of the Afghanistan, and raids on NATO forces there occur almost daily. The recent Afghan elections were a bust, and General McChrystal's staff complain of rampant corruption inside the Karazai regime. General McChrystal wrote a high level memo to the President dated 30 August (the same one that was leaked by the Washington Post last weekend). According to the Post, the President had exactly one short meeting with his NSA, retired General Jones. Also in the Post article, many Pentagon staff officers complain that none of them can get access to the President to discuss long term strategy. In early August, General Jones told General McChrystal that if he asked for additional troops for Afghanistan (this is in addition to the 16000 troops President Obama sent last summer), the President would have a WTF Moment. That is, the President was certainly not prepared to authorize more soldiers. The only public comments the President made concerning Afghan strategy was that he was not prepared to make any rapid decisions.

 

What to make of this? First, the President promised his own strategy would be forth coming as far back as March. He has at his disposal an abundance of experts, intelligence officers, as well as the entire bureaucracy of the DOD and State Department. It is for this reason that  Truman authorized the post of National Security Advisor (and his own staff the National Security Agency). With a war raging in Afghanistan, it is difficult to believe that the President was not aware of the situation there. Besides the ideas he developed on the stump during the campaign, the President had ample time during the interregnum period (November through January) to solidify his political strategy for this part of the world. His press remarks leave the strong impression that it is the DOD's fault that we are losing this war, and not his. But that's not the way the system works. The Generals come up with a combat strategy only after the civilian leadership (ie the President) outlines the political end game. This is what General McChrystal was complaining about. He has not been given the political goals.

 

The President appears to not have a clue on how to proceed. As late as today, Vice President Biden suggested that we might just withdraw from Afghanistan and redeploy special forces to Pakistan instead. It is this kind of confusion that will lose us the campaign. The President owes it to the soldiers to provide the leadership he is obligated to supply. This is his war now. He ran a campaign that said he could do it better than President Bush; he knew what he was getting himself into. Perhaps the President should schedule less time with Letterman, student bodies, and photo-ops, and spend a little more time being Comander-in-Chief.