FOREIGN POLICY JULY 7, 2010
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As a candidate for president, George W. Bush famously promised to pursue a “humble” foreign policy. The events of 9/11—for Bush akin to a conversion experience—swept humility by the board. The 43rd president found his true calling: Providence was summoning him to purge the world of evil.
When it came to fulfilling this mission, Bush’s subsequent efforts yielded precious little. Recklessness compounded by profound incompetence became the hallmark of his administration. Yet of this there can be no doubt: Until the day he left office, Bush himself remained certain that his intentions were pure and the nation’s cause righteous. In particular, he believed, and believed deeply, in the Iraq war.
Bush’s Freedom Agenda ended in abject failure—no liberalizing tide has swept the Islamic world. The promised Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda never materialized. Implementing the heinous Bush Doctrine of preventive war in Iraq yielded an insurgency that sent millions fleeing to squalid refugee camps. As a direct result, thousands of American soldiers were killed and many thousands more maimed or otherwise deeply scarred.
Despite all of this and more, George W. Bush never wavered. He remained resolute, his conscience clear. He knew he was doing God’s work. He was—and no doubt remains today—a true believer. The 43d president was a well-intentioned fool, who inflicted grievous harm on his country. Yet when Bush stands before his Maker (or the bar of History), he will say without fear of contradiction: “I did what I thought was right.”
Barack Obama is anything but a fool. Yet when called upon to account for his presidency, honesty will prevent him from making a comparable claim. “The problems I inherited were difficult ones,” he will say. “None of the choices were good ones. Things were complicated.”
The Afghanistan war forms part of that complicated inheritance where good choices are hard to come by. Much as Iraq was Bush’s war, Afghanistan has become Obama’s war. Yet the president clearly wants nothing more than to rid himself of his war. Obama has prolonged and escalated a conflict in which he himself manifestly does not believe. When after months of deliberation (or delay) he unveiled his Afghan “surge” in December 2009, the presidential trumpet blew charge and recall simultaneously. Even as Obama ordered more troops into combat, he announced their planned withdrawal “because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own.”
The Americans who elected Obama president share that view. Yet the expectations of change that vaulted him to the presidency went well beyond the issue of priorities. Obama’s supporters were counting on him to bring to the White House an enlightened moral sensibility: He would govern differently not only because he was smarter than his predecessor but because he responded to a different—and truer—inner compass.
Events have demolished such expectations. Today, when they look at Washington, Americans see a cool, dispassionate, calculating president whose administration lacks a moral core. For prosecution exhibit number one, we need look no further than the meandering course of Obama’s war, its casualties and costs mounting without discernible purpose.
Obama doesn’t want to be in Afghanistan any more than Benjamin Netanyahu wants to be in the West Bank. Yet like the Israeli prime minister, the president lacks the guts to get out. It’s all so complicated. There are risks involved. Things might go wrong. There’s an election to think about.
So the war continues. Sustaining some artfully updated version of the status quo becomes the easier (or more expedient) course. Thus does a would-be messiah promising salvation and renewal succumb to the imperatives of “politics”—with young soldiers and their families left to bear the consequences.
The question demands to be asked: Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of, most recently, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.
18 comments
Mr Bacevich contrasts Bush's sincere foolishness with what he imagines is Obama's politically-motivated cynicism. There are other more likely possibilities. Reluctantly persevering with a difficult war when the consequences of withdrawal would probably be worse than the cost of continuing - this is neither cynicism nor political calculation, it's behaving like a responsible adult. "Belief" is irrelevant. What matters is the probable result of various courses of action And please, please, spare us the "would-be messiah promising salvation and renewal" codswallop. Mr. Obama was elected president, not savior.
- K_Wilson
July 7, 2010 at 2:41pm
Perhaps President Bush was motivated by the same bellicose faith in the utility of armed conflict as espoused by inveterate warmongers like John J. Mearsheimer. Here's Mearsheimer predicting easy victory in the first Iraq War, in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/08/opinion/dialogue-ground-war-kuwait-will-iraq-fight-fold-its-tent-liberation-less-than.html?scp=9&sq=+&st=nyt Of course, Mearsheimer pays obligatory lip service to the "tragedy" of war, but is undeterred nonetheless, entranced no doubt by the prospects of a quick march to Baghdad. Of course, he later disavows his previous stance, without mentioning his ardent support the first time around. How convenient for him: "Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 arose from a serious dispute over oil prices and war debts and occurred only after efforts to court Mr. Hussein led the first Bush administration unwittingly to signal that Washington would not oppose an attack. Containment did not fail the first time around -- it was never tried." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/02/opinion/keeping-saddam-hussein-in-a-box.html?scp=1&sq=+&st=nyt
- roqabs
July 7, 2010 at 3:37pm
We are in Afghanistan because we were attacked on 9/11. 3,000 Americans, mostly civilians, were slaughtered on that day. Remember? (Some here have pushed it to the back of their minds. I saw the smoke of Ground Zero from my office window.) Where we got into trouble in Afghanistan was in fighting "a limited war for limited objectives," same as Vietnam, instead of demanding that the enemy unconditionally surrender. Unconditional surrender as a war objective has the virtue of concentrating our minds on defeating the enemy, in this case destroying Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and leaving the Afghans themselves to rebuild their nation without our intrusive meddling.
- NR114746
July 7, 2010 at 4:38pm
"Unconditional surrender as a war objective has the virtue of concentrating our minds on defeating the enemy, in this case destroying Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and leaving the Afghans themselves to rebuild their nation without our intrusive meddling." Let's see, how did the we get the Taliban in charge in Afghanistan in the first place? Oh yeah, the Russians bailed out, and the world left the country more or less alone to "rebuild their nation," and the Afghans went about this in their traditional way - through the vigorous rise of Warlords and quasi-feudal fiefdoms to exploit the countries people through their traditional rivalries. That worked so well last time, I can easily see why you think it would be good to have tried it again. Nations don't rise from the ashes unconditional surrender by spontaneous generation, particularly ones as badly damaged as Afghanistan was by 2001 after 2 decades of war and civil war. You need native leadership, and long term support. Even in a country as coherent and homogeneous as Japan, the process required massive US investment.
- IowaBeauty
July 7, 2010 at 9:50pm
NR114746 and Iowa Beauty raise interesting questions for me. What would the last 9 years have been like if the 9/11 attack had not succeeded (like the first attempt on the world trade center)? Was our foreign policy prompted by an isolated event and we just attacked back caveman style; or did that event reveal something that should have been attended to even if 9/11 had not occurred?
- Nusholtz
July 8, 2010 at 10:57am
What is it about President Obama which leads so many writers to posit that they know his thoughts and beliefs? This article is the latest cheap shot I've read, along such lines. What evidence is there that President Obama doesn't "believe" in our Afghanistan effort? What would constitute evidence of such "belief"? The (initially leaked) document prepared by and for General McChrystal detailing our objectives in Afghanistan spelled out a time-line. Is that time-line - which seems to be essential to garnering support for the war - adduced as evidence of insincerity?
- pauldcole
July 8, 2010 at 12:29pm
The President’s two-horned Afghanistan trumpet (advance and retreat) has a simple explanation, he’s smart enough to have come to the same conclusions that Carl Von Clausewitz; Casper W. Weinberger and General Colin Powell came to about wars in general; and any war in particular, beginning almost two centuries ago. And that is that all wars are to be bounded by their limitations. And further, there are in theory no unlimited, unconstrained, objectives in the pursuit of anything, especially objectives that are to be achieved by military means. It has always been the case that any military conflict that is pursued by anyone, be they a crazed zealot living in a cave reading the Koran; or a megalomaniac living in a “Wolf’s Lair”, devolves upon the finiteness of his resources and the compromises and choices that must be made in the objectives that are to be pursued. The current crazed zealot and avid Koran reader living in Pakistan/Afghanistan border region has rationalized his efforts by abandoning any and or all attempts to proselyze on his home turf. There is no real anti-infidel fundamentalist movement in place in any of our erstwhile friendly Muslim states such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt. And in any real sense there is also none in Iran, at least not being directed from the caves of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. There was and are simply no resources in either manpower or materials for such an effort. And so this, the initial primary goal to clean their own stables, has been indefinitely put on hold. President Obama has known from the start that he could never threaten to pursue the open-ended objective of engaging in a conflict in Afghanistan, for two simple reasons. First, he has known from the start that neither he nor his country has the unlimited resources to do so; in neither men nor material. Second, since any such claim to unlimited commitment can as well be recognized by the enemy as being phony; it would serve no purpose to make it, since whatever would be the alleged psychological warfare impact of doing so, is mitigated by the enemy’s own reasoning; he would already know we’re lying to ourselves. And contrary to what the neocons think, it doesn’t help when the enemy knows from the start how disconnected from reality his opposition already is. Simply put the President did conclude that there was a need for some commitment. He was and is just less stupid than his predecessor and will not claim that this threat is the same as the December 8, 1941 call to arms; or the George Kennan call to resist to Soviet expansionism. What the President does not believe in is not this or that war; it is that the Taliban movement is Soviet style communism, or that any of the men and women blowing themselves up, or their leaders, rise to the level of threat of Hitler, Stalin, Khrushchev or any of the other real world leaders of the past or present. The President of Iran is not Mao. Iran is not, and is not on the way to being China, or India.
- 12alainu
July 8, 2010 at 12:39pm
-- Obama doesn’t want to be in Afghanistan any more than Benjamin Netanyahu wants to be in the West Bank. Yet like the Israeli prime minister, the president lacks the guts to get out. This is a false parallel because there is absolutely no evidence that Netanyahu wants out of the West Bank while there is ample cause for believing Obama doesn't want to be in Afghanistan. It is not guts but morality that Netanyahu lacks.
- ndmackenzie
July 8, 2010 at 1:59pm
Moral, schmoral be damned. My opposition to the Afghanistan war is on a similar basis to my opposition to the Vietnam war decades ago. As someone once said, I'm not against all wars-- I'm against stupid wars. We may well be the good guys (or, at the very least, morally better than the other side.) But the war's un-winnable, and I doubt God's taking sides. We accomplished our initial goal about 9 years ago. Al Qaeda is gone from Afghanistan. If a government really hostile to US interests is put in place after we leave, we can take it out in minimum time at little cost. Google: Afghanistan, 2002-2003. Seven years later, we are creating more terrorists than we kill in Iraq and Afghanistan at horrendous economic cost in the US and moral cost in the Middle East. Iowa Beauty: Usually I agree with you. However, the world has left Afghanistan to build itself after invasions for millennia. Usually they don't bother their neighbors. It's a reasonable bet they won't again--- especially if they know they're toast if they do. Backward they may be, dumb they're not. They know they're NOT losing the current conflict. Do we really want Obama to play the role of George III or LBJ/Nixon?? Both (or their advisors) eventually had the good sense to get out, but at what additional sunk cost??
- drofnats1
July 8, 2010 at 2:15pm
If the USA is successful in killing Osama bin Laden and however many of his cohort in his immediate vicinity, I suspect our troops would leave Afghanistan shortly thereafter. We have no special interest otherwise in advancing the cause of democracy, women's rights, free speech, or gay pride there, just as we are largely indifferent to repressive and backward policies conducted in various other Muslim and/or Arab countries, so long as they pose no immediate threat to us. We are quite aware that the Afghans, in all their ethnic and Islamic variety, will remain there long after we leave, and we have no particular desire to rule them. That is why Obama, rightfully, wants to limit our fight there. There is nothing immoral or embarrassing about that. Perhaps it is just as wise to avoid explicitly mentioning our ultimate goal--to kill bin Laden--because our failure to do so years ago highlights our incompetence, and delay has lessened the suasive power of our just punishment. In fact it makes no difference if we kill bin Laden in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, or anywhere else, so long as the USA succeeds in doing so. As to whether Iran, bin Laden, et al, are as significant threats to the USA as were Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Communism, Nazism, etc., I would advise underestimating neither the intentions nor the powers of the current and future crops of violent Islamic fundamentalists. They intend to destroy our way of life (not to mention our lives!) no less than did the National Socialists or Communists, and have already succeeded (as did neither of our erstwhile foes) in destroying two of our most iconic American buildings, in our first city of commerce, on our home soil.
- JBerkowicz
July 8, 2010 at 2:40pm
ndmackenzie: "there is ample cause for believing Obama doesn't want to be in Afghanistan" Like what? What supports the conclusion Obama doesn't want to be in Afghanistan? Maybe I'm missing something in this thread, but a) Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal, and means for delivering it; b) the Taliban violated all agreements it made with the Pakistani government, during the Taliban's invasion of the Swat area; more generally, the Taliban, by all accounts I've read, function as maximalists wherever the opportunities for doing so arise. Again, where's the evidence that Obama doesn't want to be in Afghanistan? If the only thing which can be brought forward is a time-table for withdrawal, then that's no evidence at all.
- pauldcole
July 8, 2010 at 3:13pm
I'd come at Bacevich's post a different way. I suggest, even if just a thought experiment granting him his premises, which are at least arguable, and then grant him question: ...The question demands to be asked: Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?... Granting him his premises and his question, I'd let my answer be guided by my understanding of the facts of both wars. On that basis, I know who I think would be more deserving of my contempt: Obama, by a country mile.
- basman
July 8, 2010 at 8:05pm
First of all, you give Bush way too much credit. His immensely destructive, deceptive behavior as president was based on a combination of political opportunism, Rovian cynicism and laziness. He couldn't be bothered working at the job he was appointed to by the Supreme Court. He spent more time riding his bike and raising money for the Republican Party than he did giving thought to the serious issues that should have occupied him. He created a huge shit pile for his successor to dig through. After a mere year and a half in office, Obama must contend with an economy in ruins, two wars, Republicans in Congress uniformly hell-bent on obstructing anything he tries to accomplish, a daily assault from the vicious, lying right-wing media machine, and sniping from those on the left whose idealized, fantasy image he couldn't possibly live up to. The front-page headline on "The Onion" the day after Obama was elected was right: "Black man given worst job in America."
- heppner52
July 9, 2010 at 10:13am
I am loathe to draw on the comparison, since I basically think so little of Reagan in most respects, but recall what he did in Lebanon. After sending in some American troops to try and peace things out, when they killed scores of US soldiers with a terrorist bomb, he barely hesitated with the niceties of policy and future implications---he yanked them all out of there in a matter of weeks. And the same situation continued on there to this day, but with few putting any blame on Reagan putting the troops in or suddenly yanking them out with little purpose other than to protect the American boys. Maybe Obama has simply to follow through: get them out as promised. Most Americans just want us out of there and can live with the consequences of a nationalist struggle (true, also with international terrorist implications---but there are other ways to fight that). Yes, in the current hateful atmosphere, right wingers will mercilessly attack him on a number of grounds, but he has to have the steel to live through that fire. Otherwise, I am afraid he is going to get caught up in technical military considerations, much like concerned and distracted LBJ and Nixon when they dithered about getting out of Viet Nam, quickly and simply, because of their immersion in it and a a frustrated desire to control everything within their purview down to the last detail. Just do it!
- atlasqq
July 9, 2010 at 12:22pm
I'm disappointed in Andrew Bacevich's plainly intemperate and evidently impulsive 'cri de coeur'. I don't blame him, but I haven't seen this from him yet, and it makes it difficult to cite him as the sober source that he has been. This repulsively Manichaean question, drawn from the very grossly immature quiver of faux-heroic character that got us today's endless arrows of exposure to international ridicule and abandonment, is so plainly a flight from his own quite well educated awareness of how fast a war is turned around, as to reduce his entire edifice to a choice of sides of a pillow soaked less with tears. He has got to learn to rejoin the agony of humanity, and not just that of a parent, if he intends to counsel us. This is a nation, not a handkerchief, and I am embarrassed as hell to have to spell that out to a critic of its Executive.
- Carter
July 9, 2010 at 9:34pm
Let's at least consider the possibility that the half-hearted "surge" was driven in part (I say in part) by political calculation, namely, that a Democratic administration led by a young and untested president might feel itself under severe pressure not to have the cut-and-run charge thrown at them. I find this possibility disturbing. I don't find it implausible. Some months back Garry Wills (in the New York Review of Books) put a different kind of manhood test before Obama: he asked the president to risk being a one-term president by having the moral fortitude to say that our war was a losing proposition and had lost whatever justification it initially had. I can understand Bacevich's disgust with the temporizing, at least on this issue (I don't feel the same way about an array of other issues, but they're not in dispute here).
- mjhollerich@stthomas.edu
July 10, 2010 at 7:05pm
What the hell with the gratuitous remark about Bibi? Arab responses to Israeli withdrawals have not actually left Israeli leaders with much confidence that withdrawal will not be meet with rocket fire. This is a difficult decision and anyone who is really serious would know that. But real analysis as oppose to sophomoric reasoning is a rear quantity to be found today.
- jneuberg
July 11, 2010 at 2:07pm
pauldcole says "What is it about President Obama which leads so many writers to posit that they know his thoughts and beliefs? " The same thing that let writers posit that they knew Bush's thoughts and beliefs. Everyone has everything to say about the president's motives, deceptions, lies, on and on, no matter who holds the post. So don't be so thin-skinned. President Obama is as deserving of the same questions or skepticism as any other president. Like him or not, fair or unfair, the president will be questioned and second-guessed at every turn. It comes with the job.
- kaybee
July 28, 2010 at 12:28pm