Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Obama's West Point Afghan Speech -- Very Disappointing

So bad was his speech, that I turned on the Knick game instead -- the Knicks !!

A few quick comments from the VRWC all sharing the disappointment in Obama's me myself and I oratory.

Conflicting Message [Bill Roggio]
President Obama has released his long-awaited and long-deliberated path forward on Afghanistan. There were few if any surprises, as the bulk of the strategy points were leaked to the media over the past several days. Obama approved 30,000 troops to deploy vice General McChrystal's request of 40,000, but it wasn’t expected that the full 40,000 would be sent. The two major concerns from Obama’s path forward are the proposed timeline for withdrawal and the replacements for the U.S. surge troops, while the message to the Afghan people is muddled at best.
The surge in U.S. forces will be completed by the summer of 2010, and President Obama said that the military will begin to withdraw beginning in July 2011, just one year after the increase in forces, security conditions permitting. First, the setting of a timeline gives the Taliban and allied Islamist groups all of the evidence they need that the U.S. and the West seeks to leave the country sooner rather than later. Expect Obama timeline to be used in al-Qaeda and Taliban propaganda. Second, the timeline reaffirms Pakistan’s belief that the U.S. stay in Afghanistan is short lived. The incentive for Pakistan to take on the “good Taliban” groups in their tribal areas that attack U.S. and NATO forces has eroded. And third, Obama has not explained from where the Afghan troops to take over from withdrawing U.S. forces will come. Afghanistan has an 80,000 man army and its police forces are in disarray. Unlike Iraq, there is no glut of troops to turn over security to.
Finally, Obama’s message to the Afghan people was poorly crafted and delivered. First he told them their security and development is important. Later he said the overriding U.S. objective is to defeat al-Qaeda and nation building is not a requirement. He can’t have it both ways, and the fence-sitters in Afghanistan won’t be encouraged by the conflicting message. — Bill Roggio is the managing editor of The Long War Journal.


Obama Hard and Soft, Right and Left [Fred Thompson]
I was wondering how he was going to pull off the famous Obama split tonight.
He did it chronologically, and in two ways.

First, in the speech itself:
In the first part of his speech he sounded like Winston Churchill.
In the second part of his speech, he sounded like Lady Churchill.

Secondly, with regard to his course of action:
Commit troops for the Right, and then
Announce their withdrawal prematurely, in time for the 2012 election — for the Left.

It was clear for the world to see that we are without the most important ingredient for a chance of success: a determined president whose heart is in the effort.



A Commander-in-Chief & His Lieutenant [Kori Schake]
The president was underwhelming at West Point. On one of the gravest strategic issues of our time, the golden orator of our political scene labored through his compulsories to make the case for why we should win a war that if we lose will invigorate the jihadist cause, put untenable pressure on the governments of Pakistan and India (to say nothing of the tragedy for Afghanistan), potentially put al-Qaeda in possession of nuclear weapons, and increase the risk of future attacks on our homeland. It was not a performance that will give heart to Afghans, countries in the region whose security depends on our success, or allies with forces committed to this fight. Or, I suspect, persuade many Americans who do not already support his policy.
Most striking was the dramatic mismatch between the dire consequences of failure and the very limited means the president intends to bring to bear. The goals he has established for Afghanistan cannot be achieved in the time frame he committed to begin withdrawing troops in. Afghanistan fell 2,000 recruits short last month alone in meeting its current goal of 134,000 soldiers and 83,000 police. The president’s new approach envisions producing additional Afghan forces superior in quantity and quality to the present. That is wildly unrealistic.
To emphasize in the same breath the importance of increased forces and the necessity of removing them in eighteen months will badly diminish the positive effect those troops are intended to have. The point of counterinsurgency approach is to protect the population so that they participate in security efforts and change the political dynamic of the war. The president was silent on what he will do if his objectives are not achieved.
As in Iraq, the president doesn’t have an exit strategy, he has an exit timeline. He did not outline the positive conditions that must be met for our withdrawal to proceed. He did not provide a vision of an Afghanistan that is capable of achieving what we need for our country to be secure. He provided an absolute withdrawal date that will encourage our enemies to game the timeline, and discourage our friends from helping.
He brushed lightly over election fraud in Afghanistan, saying that despite it, a government was formed “consistent with the country’s laws and constitution.” I’m not sure what that even means, but I am sure it will give encouragement to despots that the president of the United States is legitimating fraudulent elections by such contorted logic.
Toward the end of his speech, the president spoke of “might and moral suasion,” which turn out to be the only tools of American power three months of additional review. We still don’t have a strategy for Afghanistan. We only have a military strategy for Afghanistan. Where was the “dramatic increase in our civilian effort” the president promised in March? There were literally no political, economic, agricultural, judicial, drug enforcement, or educational programs included in the president’s speech. When he spoke briefly of non-military matters, it was only to press for reforms of the Karzai government.
And the president asked for no effort from the 99 percent of Americans who are not in our military. We are still not a country at war, we are a military at war.
On a personal note, it made ring hollow the president’s claims to virtue in the extended duration of his second Afghanistan review in ten months to see a former student of mine at West Point, Lt. Dan Berschinski in the audience. He is now a double amputee, having suffered his wounds on patrol in Afghanistan during the months the president was methodically considering his options.
The president kept 68,000 soldiers and Marines in harm’s way while he pondered whether it merited his political capital to pay the ticket price of his grand rhetoric about this good war, this war of necessity, that had been scandalously under-resourced. Afghanistan remains all of those things, even after the president’s “new” new Afghan strategy

. — Kori Schake is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and an Associate Professor at West Point. She was director for defense strategy on the NSC and deputy director of policy Planning at State.


What Could Have Been [Jamie M. Fly]
There are many on the Right who will criticize the president's speech tonight — particularly his statement of a specific date for a U.S. drawdown to begin. However, it is worth reflecting on what could have been in the speech that was not — off ramps, assessments of progress before the bulk of the additional troops were deployed — all opportunities for a hesitant president of a war-weary party to reverse course and rethink his Afghanistan strategy once again.There is none of that in tonight's speech. President Obama has clearly rejected the advice of Vice President Biden and many of his political advisers who wanted to hedge our bets in Afghanistan. By sending 21,000 troops earlier this year and announcing plans to send 30,000 more this evening, this president has made it clear that he intends to give his commanders a chance to win in Afghanistan and those of us on the right should support him in that endeavor.There will be time to criticize various inflection points and question details, but the fact of the matter is that Barack Obama has accepted the mantle of wartime president and even overcome his aversion to American exceptionalism to employ some rhetoric that is worthy of George W. Bush. General McChrystal will get most of the troops he requested and the time required to implement a counterinsurgency strategy that offers the best chance of success. Now the president must speak regularly and frankly to the American people about the difficult road ahead, something he has been unwilling to do thus far. If he does that, fewer conservatives will question his commitment to a war that we all agree needs to be won.

— Jamie M. Fly is executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.
12/01 11:04 PM


The Test [Rich Lowry]
I didn’t like the speech for many of the reasons that have been outlined already in this space. Here's the real test, though: Is Gen. McChrystal in Kabul regretting that Obama didn't strike a more Churchillian tone, or is he very glad to have the troops and the time—at least 18 months before the start of any draw down—to try to turn around the war? Surely, it's the latter. I went back and looked at Bush's speech announcing the surge. It holds up very well. It's prescient even. But at the time, as a piece of rhetoric, it didn't matter too much because basically no one was listening to Bush any more. It wasn't the words that saved the war, it was the incredibly courageous troops who went—finally, in sufficient numbers and with the proper strategic goal—into Baghdad neighborhoods and cleared out al Qaeda and the Shia militias. Those troops changed the dynamic of the war on the ground, and nothing else was as important. Yes, the Petraeus testimony made a difference, but it was only persuasive to the extent he had the actual progress to talk about and he was perhaps even more restrained than Obama tonight when he made the case for the war. Likewise, the Afghan war will be won or lost on the ground and Obama has given McChrystal the basic tools he needs. About that we should be very glad.


Hardware vs. Software [John Hannah]
A frustrating speech. There's much to applaud in the nuts and bolts. Assuming the president's confidence is borne out and U.S. allies actually dispatch several thousand more troops, he will have gone most of the way in meeting his on-the-ground commander's request for additional forces. That's an enormous leap in capability and firepower that Generals McChrystal and Petraeus will no doubt put to good use in reversing the war's tide — especially if the president can also deliver on his promise to have the bulk of the surge in place in time for the 2010 fighting season. In making this historic commitment of additional blood and treasure in defense of America's vital interests, the president has openly rejected the defeatist counsel of his own party's powerful left wing — no easy task and one for which he deserves real credit and support.
But if the president largely got the policy hardware right, the software left something to be desired. The speech in places was uncomfortably defensive. The continued trashing of his predecessor unfortunate. But most distressing was the unmistakable subtext of withdrawal, rather than victory, that ran through the heart of the president's remarks. The security of America and the world is at stake in Afghanistan — yet we need to begin drawing down our forces within a year after their arrival and leave the job in the hands of the (allegedly corrupt and incompetent) locals because the effort has already taken too long and cost too much. Hardly Churchillian. Not the sort of stuff likely to rally a war-weary public at home, get fearful Afghans off the fence, or begin breaking the fighting spirit of the Taliban. Of course, at the end of the day, all those things can most convincingly be accomplished by the progress that our newly reinforced troops achieve on the field of battle in 2010 and 2011. But their effort will be immeasurably enhanced by President Obama's rapid emergence as a wartime leader who exudes the conviction that there simply is no substitute for victory, and that nothing could be more harmful to our country than defeat in a conflict deemed vital to our national interests.
The president could best advance that critical task by adding an Afghan stop to next week's trip to Copenhagen for the climate conference and Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize. He badly needs to go see the troops, tell them in person that help is on the way, and make clear his certitude in the justness of their cause and the unequivocal nature of his commitment to defeating our enemies. He should also make sure to reiterate to them what in many ways was the most bracing part of tonight's speech: His inspiring recitation of America's unparalleled contributions and sacrifices on behalf of the security and wellbeing of the human race over the last century. And while he's at it, he'd do well to remind his audiences in Copenhagen and Oslo of the very same thing.

— John P. Hannah, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2005 to 2009.


Where's the Beef? [James S. Robbins]
President Obama spent a long time in the kitchen to serve up a plate of leftovers. The president stated that there were “three core elements” to his strategy: “a military effort to create the conditions for a transition, a civilian surge that reinforces positive action and an effective partnership with Pakistan.” These core elements were part of the Obama strategy announced in March 2009, and were also pillars of the successive Bush administration policies. They would be no-brainer aspects of any Afghan strategy. How they are implemented will prove whether the president can successfully be a war leader, but Mr.Obama could have begun this process last March when he announced basically the same thing, though in much greater detail.
The only new element in the strategy is the 18-month timeline for beginning the process of withdrawal. The timeline is arbitrary, and at least implicitly conditional on making progress in Afghanistan, but the president did not offer much in the way of details as to how progress will be made, and has dropped his previous insistence on well-defined metrics. He briefly noted the challenges facing the Afghan government, but simply said they would be held accountable, whatever that means. And did not offer any details about how the Taliban who threaten the regime will be defeated. He said the 30,000 troops are the “resources that we need to seize the initiative,” but did not explain how the initiative will be seized, how the troops will be used, or what constitutes victory.

The speech was twice as long as it needed to be and contained a lot of extraneous material. Perhaps it was meant to inspire, but the delivery was flat. Judging by the footage of sleeping Cadets and weak applause I don’t think he reached his audience. It is hard to understand why this speech took weeks, even months to be written. And one is left wondering how long it will be until he decides to revise his war strategy yet again.


Napping Cadets [Jonah Goldberg]
Some readers think I was criticizing the West Point cadets for nodding off last night. Sure, I think it'd be better for everyone if they toothpicked-open their eyes like in the Loony Tunes, but criticism really wasn't my intent. Lord knows that after the kind of day they put up with, I'd be out like a light in a big warm auditorium.

Here's my Airpower guy:

Jonah,I wouldn't make too much of the dozing off. You probably did see one or two (or three) nodding. That's because they're in their natural state: exhaustion. Add to that preparing for mid-term finals, all that extra-curricular sports and military stuff, and listening to The One talk about something other than, you know, hammering the enemy and it's a deadly mix.Your Airpower Guy (Class of '76, similar school, higher elevation, further West)

I will say that if this had happened under Bush, Dana Milbank, Jacob Weisberg and Maureen Dowd would go into full-blown snark mode about it.

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