Obama Bombed On Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd

Whether they be pro-occupation neoliberals, anti-occupation realist conservatives, or any of the other various permutations, the overall opinion of pundits seems to be that Obama's speech stank on ice. It wasn't one of his best performances by a long chalk. He seemed at times visibly angry at the apathy of his military audience, and they in turn seemed to be visibly hostile to his lack of detail and his reliance on Bush-era rhetoric for the bulk of his time at the podium. Or maybe Obama was angry that those supposed to lead the applause didn't do so until late on, and then sparsly.Whatever the reason, it was lackluster stuff. The President stumbled and seemed uncomfortable with what he was saying most of the time.  Maybe he'd have been better making it from the Oval Office and staying engaged with the camera, the viewer. Maybe there was just no way to put a decent coat of lipstick on this particular pig.

By the time Obama took the stage, that was really all he had to do. Plentiful "officially unofficial" leaks to the media and an "on-background" briefing by two anonymous senior administration members providedfar more detail about Obama's new strategy than he himself did. And the details do not impress. A fast surge that even so will come at the end of what McChrystal said was the crucial 12 months, no real metrics, no actual end date, no real addressing of the failed legitimacy of the Karzai government, pinning their hopes on Petraeus-esque tribal militias in a nation where militias always end up being a problem - it's a clusterf**k of Bushian proportions.

Our friend Gareth Porter passed along an email to me today, from a combat arms Army Lt. Col. with two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. The Lt. Colonel wrote:

My view is that the President has committed a large troop increase for a mission that has been only partially defined, and the the absence of the aforementioned definitions could well set the stage for failure: if I don't know what you want me to accomplish, if I don't know what success looks like to you, how can I ever report that we have accomplished the mission you gave us? Absent that, what responsible military leaders will do is conduct a basket of tactical tasks so that the deployed troops will be active and engaged. over the coming year we will announce a number of "offensives" and other operations. Many of them will accomplish the tactical task they set out to achieve. but absent a legitimately focused military strategic objective, the tactical successes will be no more than noise on the battlefield.

And there doesn't seem to be any Plan B.

Obama's tactic of trying to please all of the people all of the time isn't working this time and he stands in great danger of being revealed to even his most ardent cheerleaders as a Blair-like figure who will say pretty much anything to cultivate votes and popularity but who in his actions is clearly entirely in hock to the corporocrats and military-industrial, revolving-door, hawks within his administration. Very few people believe that the 2011 date he has set for beginning a drawdown of U.S. troops is anything other than a cynical election ploy for 2012, and even fewer believe that that 2011 date for beginning a withdrawal will mean an end to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan inside another decade or so.

Perhaps most importantly for future domestic opposition to the ongoing occupation, Obama said nothing about paying for the surge and the war. Many Democrats on the Hill are very leary of a war plan that is funded by deficit spending - the argument, simply, is "how can we say its a neccessary war if we don't want to find a way to pay for it?" Travis Sharp puts the massively increasing costs into perspective:

The United States will spend 92 percent more on military operations in Afghanistan during 2010 than it did during 2009.

In 2010, the troop increase in Afghanistan will cost each individual American taxpayer $195 dollars. (IRS)

In 2010, the troop increase in Afghanistan will cost $2.5 billion per month, $82 million per day, $3.4 million per hour, $57,000 per minute, and $951 per second.

In the time it takes you to read this post, the troop increase in Afghanistan will have cost $85,500.

In 2010, the United States will spend more on Afghanistan than every other country in the world spends on defense individually, with the exception of China. Of course, total U.S. defense spending in 2010, at over $700 billion, will be roughly five times greater than China�s total military budget.

With the additional $30 billion to be spent in Afghanistan during 2010, the United States could:

�    Double the amount spent on nuclear nonproliferation, anti-terrorism, and demining ($1.6 billion)
�    Double U.S. support of migrants and refugees throughout the world ($3 billion)
�    Quadruple the Civilian Stabilization fund for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq ($1.5 billion)
�    Triple federal funding for renewable energy research and development ($7.4 billion)
�    Double overall contributions to international institutions like the WHO and IAEA ($2.1 billion)
�    Double federal funding for DHS First Responder and CDC Disease Prevention programs ($4.2 billion)
�    Strengthen capacity of Coast Guard to close off the far-more-likely route of nuclear weapons coming into the United States � through ports ($6 billion) (USB 2010 report)

The costs of what is now clearly Obama's quagmire will be huge. Expect many progressives and Democratic lawmakers to push back against a blank check for this military adventure.