My Dog Ate My Strategy
Today, I am announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This marks the conclusion of a careful policy review that I ordered as soon as I took office. My Administration has heard from our military commanders and diplomats. We have consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments; with our partners and NATO allies; and with other donors and international organizations. And we have also worked closely with members of Congress here at home. Now, I’d like to speak clearly and candidly to the American people.
Nota bene: “a comprehensive, new strategy” that resulted from a “careful policy review.”
But that was so March, which was so long ago. Today, when confronted with a recommendation from the theater commander General McChrystal for more troops, Obama says: “Strategy, what strategy? Ohhhh. THAT Strategy. My dog ate it: I have to redo it.” Think that’s too harsh? Read this and decide:
“Let’s do a soup-to-nuts re-evaluation, focusing on what our original goal was, which was to get al Qaeda, the people who killed 3,000 Americans,” Obama said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Or this:
Obama is equivocating, saying: “One of the things I’m absolutely clear about is that you have to get the strategy right, and then make a determination about resources.” He has ordered yet another review of strategy, a review which the chairman of the joint chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, said was going back to “the first principles, if you will.”
So, a few questions. The “comprehensive” analysis completed all of six months ago didn’t start from first principles? What was missing, the soups, or the nuts? (Probably the soup, knowing this crowd.) It didn’t get it right the first time? Why not? What changed?
And the biggie: how can you make a decision on strategy independent of an analysis of resources? Obama’s assertion of strategy first, resources later in the previous quote implies a disjunction between the two issues.
This is nonsense. Strategy is all about meshing objectives and resources; goals and capabilities. No minimally competent strategist says: “OK, here’s my strategy. Let me figure out what I need to carry it out.” Strategy is all about how to apply resources to achieve objectives. If the objectives appear to demand an excessively costly commitment of resources, you choose different ones.
The new spin is that the administration is shocked! shocked! to learn in the aftermath of the recent election that Afghanistan is corrupt. What changed in Afghanistan over the last 6 months to warrant such a U-turn. Hell, what has changed in Afghanistan in the last couple of thousand years? If you read histories of Alexander the Great’s adventures in what is now Afghanistan in about 325 BC you’d still probably recognize the place. It is a tribal society (read Arrian) with an overlay of the most primitive variety of Islam that has changed little in recorded history, let alone the last six months.
And even if you ignore that history, presumably a “comprehensive” strategic review should have included a detailed analysis of the capacity of the Afghan government. If the recent election result completely overturns the results of that analysis, it must have been shockingly inept. A failure of intelligence–in many senses of the word–on all levels.
This whole fiasco is yet another episode of “What’s Worse: If he’s lying or telling the truth?” If he’s lying, well, that speaks for itself. If he’s not he’s a blundering incompetent.
Robert Gibbs should be replaced as press secretary by Maxwell Smart: “Would you believe. . . ?”
Truth be told, Obama used the Afghan “war of necessity” rhetoric to pose as someone tough on defense and cover his flank against charges that he was a coward because he wanted to cut and run in Iraq. I guess “necessity” ain’t all that it used to be. His equivocation proves that his rhetoric was just another pose meant to secure his election, to be replaced by another pose when the old one proved inconvenient. Like now.
Bill Clinton was a man who posed to conceal his lack of a center. Barack Obama is a man who poses to conceal his very real center. But sometimes we can see behind the pose, as at yesterday’s speech before the UN General Assembly. There, speaking in transnational internationalist code, Obama revealed that at his core he is deeply hostile to the United States and its history. It is something to be apologized for and changed fundamentally, rather than something to be praised and improved upon.
The criticism of the speech from conservative circles has been understandably hostile. But some commentators, even some usually sensible ones, missed the basic points because they didn’t interpret Obama’s code. One example is Charles Krauthammer, who criticized Obama’s statement that “no nation should try to dominate” others. Krauthammer concluded that this revealed Obama’s naivete:
I will buy the “should try to” as kind of adolescent wishful thinking. But “no [one] nation can dominate another”? What planet is he living on? It is the story of man. What does he think Russia is doing to Georgia?
But that’s not the point at all. Especially read in the context of the rest of the speech, and understanding the leftist, transnational mindset and the code in which it is communicated, what Obama was saying was that he believes that the US has tried to dominate others, and that it wouldn’t do so anymore.
For we are in Year One, AO (Anno Obama). We have left the benighted years, BO (or, if you prefer, BOE–Before the Obama Era). According to Obama, all that went before is disgraceful and must be changed, root and branch. Before him, America was wrong; he is here to redeem our sins: Just look at the miracles he’s worked in 9 months! America must be subsumed in the mass of nations, bound by the ties of the UN, to prevent it from wrongfully dominating others.
A combination of strategic ineptitude, messianic delusions of grandeur, and a fundamental disdain for the American experiment. We are in for a helluva ride–in one direction, and it ain’t up.