(HOST) President Barack Obama’s latest Afghanistan strategy has certainly provoked much reaction. But, as commentator and veteran ABC News diplomatic correspondent Barrie Dunsmore tells us this morning, not much of it has been positive.
(DUNSMORE) There’s an old saying that if you try to please everybody you end up pleasing no one. That seems to be the case with President Obama’s newly announced Afghanistan strategy. Most liberals and others in his own party strongly oppose sending in another 30,000 troops. At this time of high unemployment and a still struggling economy, they are equally against spending another $30 billion a year to pay for them. Republicans generally support the escalation, but they sharply criticize setting July 2011 as a specific date for the start of drawing down US forces, because they say it sends the wrong signal to the enemy.
NATO governments have agreed to provide another 5000 troops, although public opinion in NATO countries runs from lukewarm to firmly against getting more deeply involved. Official reaction in Afghanistan and Pakistan was cautious but, it was easy to find skeptics and critics in both places. For its part, the Taliban claims more American troops will simply provide it with a new recruiting tool.
I did not favor a major withdrawal because I’m worried that giving up on the region would have highly negative consequences for Pakistan. It, too, is facing a Taliban insurgency and a growing al-Qaeda presence on its lawless frontier with Afghanistan. This is deeply troubling given that Pakistan is the only Muslim country to have its own nuclear arsenal.
As it stands, the plan to allow eighteen months before the beginning of an American withdrawal – to coincide with a gradual process of transferring responsibility for security to a newly trained Afghan military – certainly doesn’t mean the war will be over by then. But I see this aspect of the plan as an exit strategy because it demonstrates a firm intention not to be sucked into an endless war as typified by Vietnam.
The new strategy may very well not develop exactly as planned. In time of war, things rarely do. It’s good that Obama seems prepared to adjust his tactics according to the military situation on the ground – and that nothing is set in stone. Yet in showing flexibility the president inevitably invites many "What happens if…" questions – those hypotheticals that inquiring reporters want to know but which are always best left unanswered.
I do take exception to those critics on both the left and the right who argue that Obama’s new strategy is no different than George W. Bush’s. In fact, Bush’s grandiose scheme of nation-building and turning Afghanistan into a market-based democracy has been dramatically scaled back. After eight years of war that cost two hundred billion dollars and the lives of nearly 900 American soldiers, Obama’s objectives are to contain the Taliban and to stabilize the large population areas so that transfer of control to the Afghans themselves can be accelerated. Still, it will take a year or more to determine if even these modest goals are actually achievable.