Simon Toner: Obama Dashes into an Afghanistan Quagmire

Simon Toner from Dublin is very worried that, days before his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama is creating his first foreign-policy nightmare: Afghanistan.

Many supporters of Barack Obama were disheartened by his endorsement, toward the end of his presidential campaign, of an Iraq-like surge for Afghanistan. Some of those people might have gained solace from the news that, according to yesterday's Washington Post, the incoming administration has now acknowledged that the surge is unlikely to significantly change the state of play in Afghanistan.

It's a false consolation. Far from making the obvious conclusion that it might be best not to pursue a surge which will fail, the Obama administration still intends to send 30,000 additional troops, doubling the US presence in the country. The reason? Not because it will work, but in to buy time for the US and its NATO allies to develop a successful strategy.

"We have no strategic plan. We never had one," a "senior US military commander" says. This is a significant admission and a disturbing one. According to the article, the Pentagon and military are not even certain if the correct strategy to follow is conventional war or "the population security strategy", pursued since early 2007 in Iraq.

Certainly the latter approach would be more effective but even this will have little impact on the fostering of properly functioning institutions that can meet the needs of the Afghan people or address the other important issues that Obama acknowledges. Thus the US is getting deeper into the Afghan quagmire, doubling the number of troops but admitting that it has no strategy for success.

Yes, there are echoes of Vietnam here. From 1961-65 Presidents Kennedy and Johnson continued to commit more troops to South Vietnam, simply to stave off defeat and prop up the failing Saigon regime rather than to pursue a coherent strategy. Unfortunately, in the coming months we may have a repeat. We could end up with more than 60,000 US troops in Afghanistan and still no strategy; not to mention an exit strategy.

As Vietnam and Iraq taught us, it is far easier to get into a war than to get out of one.

Follow-up: Obama Hedging on Guantanamo Promise?

Looks like Canuckistan, who is an optimist regarding the likely closure of the US prison at Guantanamo, and I --- much more cynical about the prospects --- can claim victory today.



The Obama camp, sending out the message through two advisors, has seized the headlines this morning: "Obama to Sign Order Next Week to Close Guantanamo Prison". So the President-elect is sticking to the plan of the high-profile measure to launch, in tone and substance, a different domestic and foreign policy from that of his predecessor.

The symbolism of the step should not be underestimated, but the issue then becomes implementation. The New York Times has the other half of the story: "Obama’s Plan to Close Prison at Guantánamo May Take Year".

It appears that the incoming Administration has agreed to suspend Guantanamo's discredited military commissions and has rejected the idea of indefinite detention in the US. It is unclear, however, what the suggested legal process will be. And that means that, if the Administration cannot  persuade other countries to take the detainees --- which appears to be the immediate thrust of its efforts --- the limbo will continue. And, as long as it does, Guantanamo remains open, in reality if not in good intentions.

Breaking News: The US-UK Divide on Afghanistan

Enduring America, 8 December: It may well be that the Obama Administration has a strategy for “engagement” in Afghanistan, not just with the increasingly precarious central Government, but with opposition groups who are usually clustered under the umbrella term “Taliban”. If it doesn’t, however, I suspect that — as the Pakistan spillover from the Afghan conflict overtakes it in crisis intensity — America’s allies are going to agitate for a political alternative to more troops and more mercenaries.

On the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration, Afghanistan is shaping up as an immediate crisis for Anglo-American relations. Since we wrote those lines, there's been a steady spin out of Washington that the US is not happy with British hesitancy over a military "surge". Now comes the indication, which we predicted, that US forces will take over zones previously overseen by Britain troops:

THE United States is building a command structure in Kandahar that will
sideline the British general who takes command of southern Afghanistan in
May.

Brigadier-General John Nicholson, a senior American officer who previously
served in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division, has already arrived
in Kandahar to oversee the Afghan surge.

Although technically he will be subordinate to the British general who
takes command in May, he will in reality have control of all US troops, UK
defence sources said last week.

The news accompanies a public-relations surge by US officials, setting out that up to 30,000 more American soldiers will be needed in Afghanistan in 2009.

The hitch is that the British military and most British politicians are uncertain --- rightly, I believe --- that the US surge will work. Instead, they are focusing on the political difficulties not only in central Afghanistan but even in Kabul: how will an American show of force win over local villages and lead to a stable central government?

I fear President Obama once again has boxed himself in: for all the talk that his Administration will be looking for "soft power" approaches to deal with crises, he has let his military pull him into a commitment that will undercut that strategy.

Closing Guantanamo: Obama Hedges His Promise

Colleagues and I have had a running debate over the likelihood that Barack Obama would shut Camp X-Ray soon after his inauguration as President. Lately, I had swung towards their optimism, in the midst of affirmations by Obama and advisors that he would announce the closure of the detention centre as one of his first acts.

Now, with regret, I have to say my cynical view wasn't completely wrong.



Obama told American televison on Sunday, "I don't want to be ambiguous about this - we are going to close Guantanamo." However, he prefaced this with the caution, "It is more difficult than a lot of people realise." So it will be "a challenge" to shut the prison in the first 100 days of his Administration.

To be fair to the President-elect, he has been boxed in on this issue (as on so many others) by the Bushmen. He can't just release the detainees to their home countries, since in many cases they are not wanted or would face imprisonment and even torture. The American public isn't going to accept supposed bad guys, after almost seven years in detention, running free in the US, and the legal basis for putting the detainees in US jails is uncertain.

So that leaves the alternative of sending the freed men to "third countries" in Europe and Australia. One after another, however --- with the exception of Portugal --- America's friends have said that they are not keen to take on the US responsibility.

Conclusion? The Guantanamo stain on America's reputation won't be removed easily by the new President.

Israel's Other War: US Rejected Aid for Attack on Iran

Throughout the Gaza conflict, its supporters --- both in the Government and in the media --- have insisted that it is part of a wider fight against Iran. Turns out that Gaza might be a substitute: the Israelis wanted to use the bunker-busting bombs, now being dropped on the Gaza Strip, on an Iranian site. From David Sanger in The New York Times:

President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

While the Israelis didn't get their raid, "the White House [did] step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama."