The Democratic Party Crack-Up over Afghanistan
Some politics of foreign policy and war…
An implicit theme of the “no drama” Obama administration is “You can trust Democrats with National Security“.
Until, of course, there is a roll call. Funding the Obama administration’s strategic policies in Afghanistan and Iraq are going to have to pass with Republican and Blue Dog Democrat votes as the graying, liberal, Boomer Democrats in Congress relive ( for the 1000th vote) the one time they waved an anti-war sign on the quad back in ’69 after toking up a doobie in the dorm hall, and vote in a bloc against the leader of their party. Good. I hope they make an enormous media production out of it featuring the most extreme crazies in their caucus making abrasive, tone-deaf, comments on national television.
In 2010, the GOP ( if they have any political sense – a long shot at this juncture) may be running campaign commercials on how their Republican members stood solidly with the president against al Qaida when their Democratic counterparts did not.
October 13th, 2009 at 4:50 am
Nah, it’s all kabuki.
Seriously, though, and politics aside for a moment, how can anyone sensibly argue about the resources needed until we have a grownup talk about what the objective is?
October 13th, 2009 at 8:21 am
Mithras:
Here is the objective done succinctly:
http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2009/10/12/toward-a-guidepath-for-afghanistan.html
October 13th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Ah and here is the leak that will make the President’s job harder with this pathetic bunch:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101203142.html
"Obama’s been lying to us!"
There is a growing caucus of hostile war skeptic Republicans who sure as hell don’t want to send more troops there with Pakistan being the real problem and no one seemingly having a plan to deal once and for all with the duplicitous Pakistani military and intelligence communities at the heart of many of these problems. They tire of being lied to at committee hearings by Obama officials much in the same way Bush officials did the same regarding Pakistan’s role in this mess, and Karzai’s open theft of the election only sealed his fate in their minds.
We should also keep in mind what Kilcullen said earlier this month about Karzai’s shenanigans:
"Counterinsurgency is only as good as the government it supports."
At some point with Karzai showing no signs of giving a damn about our concerns or his public’s problem, Gates, Clinton and Biden are going to have to tell the military "no." We can’t do everything for these people.
For now though, I agree with you about the Democrats being guilty of trying to scuttle this far too soon. I just don’t think the American people at this point (looking at the polls and what they see on TV) are with the President or the Republicans on this.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Zen,Implicit in your post is the belief that there’s absolutely no legitimate reason to oppose US ground troops in Afghanistan. The only possible reason Democrats could vote against a 2nd troop increase in a year is because they smoked pot 40 years ago! They all must be dirty hippies, like Andrew Bacevich and Rory Stewart.
October 13th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Hi guys,
.
Mithras wrote:
.
" how can anyone sensibly argue about the resources needed until we have a grownup talk about what the objective is?"
.
Agreed. This is a bipartisan problem. The civilian leadership is supposed to cenceive of a grand strategy and national security policy from which the military crafts theater strategy then the tactics to implement the strategy when force is required. Adam Elkus and I discuss the breakdown of strategic thinking here at Small Wars Journal. Reader’s Digest version is that the system is a mess.
.
Eddie – I agree with you that Pakistan is the elephant in the room, though I will wager that no one, not even the "war skeptic Republicans" are eager to put up a plan to deal with Islamabad. A combination of international pressure ( China, India, Russia joining us in Afghanistan in some fashion) and direct pressure in FATA/Baluchistan needs to be applied to Pakistan to the point where they feel they need to cut a deal for fear of missing the bus and losing their "strategic depth" for good. Karzai needs to be dropped by working around him at the district level with the locals who control guns and influence the people.
.
Adrian – there definitely are legitimate reasons to oppose any particular US policy on Afghanistan. There’s also a knee-jerk itch in certain sections of the Left wing of the Left wing of the Democratic Party to re-live the salad days of the anti-Vietnam War movement with every intervention, anywhere by any president, regardless of the reason why. Good grief, Obama’s the most liberal POTUS we will ever see and these ppl are in a hurry to give him headaches and undercut him in the key area of foreign policy in his first year before he’s even enunciated his plan.
October 13th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
1 Rep from upstate NY (Maffei, D) just did an interview with a local paper in which he explained he would vote against the expansion because there is no defined victory. That seems pretty legit to me.Any specific Reps you think oppose re-upping a 2nd time due purely to past drug use?
October 13th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Adrian, I was employing sarcasm as a literary device.
.
Are there or are there not self-described "anti-war" types of Democratic members of Congress, past and present, whose career voting records reflect those convictions? If you say there are none, I can falsify that pretty quickly. If you agree that there are such people in existence then we might as well move on.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Adrian,
In your first post, you imply that Bacevich and Stewart are dirty hippies.
I’m just sayin.
October 14th, 2009 at 1:05 am
Schmedlap: I, like Mark, was employing sarcasm..Of course there is 1 "anti-war" democrat in Congress. Her name is Barbara Lee and she’s the only Congressional Rep to vote against invading Afghanistan in 2001. She must have been high and thought it was 1969..Democrats in Congress don’t oppose Obama’s escalations in Afghanistan because they are confused over what decade it is. They oppose Obama’s escalations in Afghanistan because of popular opinion and the lack of a clear strategy..In all likelihood, the US will leave Afghanistan under less than ideal circumstances. That’s going to be hard enough. Pretending that people who support the US extracting itself are just hippies from Berkeley will make political debate much more poisonous.
October 14th, 2009 at 2:42 am
I don’t think that we are obligated to use the Jeanette Rankin stardard as a litmus test, Adrian. The number of core anti-war Dems in the House varies by who is estimating but it seems to be over fifty but less than a hundred, with an ultra hard core of about 32.
.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/16/speaker_nancy_pelosi_pressures_anti_war
.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/68306.html
.
http://demockracy.com/san-francisco-gets-an-antiwar-congresswoman/
.
http://www.alternet.org/world/140715/shame:_the_'anti-war'_democrats_who_sold_out_/