What was Obama doing for three months?
If you don’t read Shadow Government, you should. It’s a blog written by a lot of very smart people who held significant positions in the Bush administration. (No, that isn’t a contradiction, wiseguy.) Shadow Gov’s recent posts focus (naturally) on Afghanistan. One very interesting question comes from Peter Feaver — Did Obama’s speech give us any sense of why it took him three months to come up with any Afghanistan policy that was barely different from the one he announced back in March ? What Obama really announced was a very simple compromise: Hawks get 30,000 more troops, doves get a (very flexible) deadline for withdrawal. Peter notes:
It did not take [Obama] 3 months of painstaking review to find that compromise. It was available to him all along.
The speed of deployment was accelerated a bit, but it’s hard to imagine the White House was debating for three months about deployment schedules.
Peter’s somewhat cynical answer to his own question is that Obama wanted time to pass healthcare reform before he antagonized his base by escalating the war. I can see that as one factor, but my instincts are telling me something else (which is also somewhat cynical):
Obama was hunting for a reason not to send the troops. Part of that hunt was political. He didn’t want to antagonize his base. He didn’t want to break the momentum of his reform agenda. But Obama needed a very strong argument to make if he was going to turn around 180 degrees and ignore two years of his own rhetoric about the “necessary war” in Afghanistan.
For moral and intellectual reasons, Obama also wanted a reason not to send more troops. Things are looking grim in Afghanistan. Why go deeper into the quicksand? Why sacrifice anymore lives? Wasn’t Iraq enough? Those questions seem to reflect Obama’s instincts. They were suppressed when politics made it necessary and convenient to attack Bush as weak on Afghanistan. But that was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Anyhow, there’s plenty more worth reading at Shadow Gov, including posts by Dan Twining, Kori Schake, and Will Inboden.
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4 Responses to “What was Obama doing for three months?”
Obama was hunting for a reason not to send the troops. Part of that hunt was political. He didn’t want to antagonize his base. He didn’t want to break the momentum of his reform agenda. But Obama needed a very strong argument to make if he was going to turn around 180 degrees and ignore two years of his own rhetoric about the “necessary war” in Afghanistan.
We'll never know for sure of course, but I suspect as well that Obama was searching for a way out of having to escalate the war, having backed himself into a corner by his previous strong statements on Afghanistan. His eventual decision was consistent but his previous stance on Afghanistan, but the time it took to actually make the decision implies ambivalence.
Obama is definitely off to a rough start. Does anyone actually wear these Conservative shirts ?
His speech and campaign appearance were lackluster stunts.
Others will disagree, but I actually don't believe Obama took too long. That he deserves criticism along with his administration has long been established facts — they're often winging it or in over their heads, as well as often out of touch with the mainstream. The delay was no doubt due to every choice being unpleasant, but critics could note that then it's explained as yet another example of the kiddies playing at their government roles — trying to defer not gratification (which they, as kids, avoid) but to defer or to avoid as long as possible making any unpleasant decision (not only for putting the troops at risk but for angering many farther lefties). In this light, the delay could also have been made (as with the camapaign appearance to give the speech) to manipulate public opinion — waiting until it might have been less of a controversy, or combined with other issues also attracting (and diluting) people's attention and criticism.
I'm not as concerned about the length of the time he took deciding as in the number of troops he has actually announced (plus those other few thousand that hes willing to commit under the table but didn't want attention drawn to). To me looks kinds Rumsfeldian as opposed to Shinsekian.