Further Adventures in Central Asia, contd.

So the decision has finally been made, the die cast. We’re going into Afghanistan with both feet. Well, with an additional 60,000 feet. And at a cost of $1 million per soldier per year. There is a lot of commentary afloat right now, falling about where you would expect it to fall.

The liberal side of Congress is opposed to our further involvement, and would like us to withdraw as soon as is seemly. The Right is saying that they applaud the commitment, but are upset that Obama has set a timetable to our escalation. So what are we to make of the President’s decision?

He continues to operate in a predictable pattern. Desperate not to outrage anyone, he attempts to hold to a middle course. The escalation seeks to appease the hawks, by increasing our effort. It wants to assure the doves, by stating that we have a plan to get out, and relatively soon. As with most hedged bets however, it accomplishes little and pleases no one. If you’re going to go in, go all in. If you’re going to leave, do so now and avoid further bloodshed and needless cost. He has satisfied no one with the possible exception Karzai, and even he must be pissed at being spoken to like a truant schoolboy. And did he refer to the recent Afghan election as flawed or a fraud?

Our President has major intellectual chops and despite his tendency to prevaricate, I have to say that I love the guy. I want him to be the leader we expected him to be. I want him to be a man of convictions, not a poster boy for pragmatism. Sometimes you have to hold to a position because it is the principled thing to do, regardless of the political fallout.

Because, let’s face it. The Republicans are going to cream him no matter what course he adopts, or what the outcome. They need to praise him faintly right now, in order to appear to be supportive of the troops, but will continue to condemn a scheduled pull out, and anything that goes awry (anything) will be blamed on him. There is no winning with a group who thinks that the surge as practiced in Iraq can be transplanted into Afghanistan. In the former country the surge met with success solely because we paid Sunni leaders who ran towns not to fight against us. There is no anomalous situation among a polyglot of hilltop, illiterate warlords scattered across numerous mountain ranges.

The fact is, Afghanistan no longer represents a haven for Al Qaeda. That would be in Pakistan. And if the Pakistani leadership gets real serous about evicting them, they’ll somewhere else. Like maybe to Saudi Arabia, where most of them are from. Why do we continue to pursue the insane policy of going after these people with a conventional army?

This is one of those times when a truly brave leader will do the very thing that is unpopular because it is the right thing to do. Contemporaries may criticize, but history would laud him for it. I’m afraid that instead, he will do the apparently expedient thing for which no one will thank him, leaving those of us who support him to wait that much longer for him to grow into greatness.