Five Quick Thoughts On Obama And Afghanistan (Updated Below)

Quick points before I go to bed. Sorry if they come out as incoherent, but I spent all day writing academese and my brain is fried.

1. Everyone knows that the top general in Afghanistan has asked for more troops to fight in Afghanistan. The question now is whether or not Barack Obama will oblige. Leaving those considerations aside for a second, I want to echo what Neil Sinhababu says here (via Ezra Klein):

It's generally hard to know what to make of military commanders' requests for more resources. On one hand, they're very close to the situation at hand and thus have a very good knowledge of it. This fact gives them a great deal of credibility in public debate. On the other hand, they're managers, and managers always request more resources whether they need them or not.

This second fact isn't that well appreciated in media coverage of their requests, but it's something that anybody who works in a big organization is very familiar with. If you went to Sor-Hoon Tan, my department chair, and asked her if she'd like to have funds to hire two more philosophy professors, she'd say yes. As would the chair of just about every department in the country. Nobody ever says, "Well, we're making great use of what we have, and while we could do more work with more resources, these positions would really be put to better use in Sociology, so why don't you give this money to them." When something is your job, you focus on doing it, whether it's building the NUS philosophy department or rooting out the Taliban in Afghanistan.

This is exactly right. No one in charge of anything going not well ever says: "thanks, but no thanks, we're good with what we have". This may not be the primary driver of the McChrystal request, but it's something to keep in mind. (For a similar bureaucratic/organizational point about how it's not surprising that the think tankers and so-called intellectuals who are behind this have requested for more troops, click here).

2. I'm not sure more American troops is going to make the U.S. safer and less likely to be the target of a terrorist attack. What exactly is their job going to be there? Prop up a corrupt Karzai government? Occupy the country and try to do state-building at the barrel of a gun? Train Afghan forces into a somewhat viable force? I consider each of those goals highly unlikely to be met, and furthermore, consider the connection between the goals and American security writ large extremely tenuous. And that's not even considering the cost of such an escalation: in Afghan (primarily) and American lives, in dollars, and in the possibility of greater politco-military instability in Pakistan (though I must confess that I would like more time to think about the likely repercussions for Pakistan).

3. This is difficult to ascertain given I am imputing motives which I obviously cannot be sure of, but I am doubtful Obama truly believes his own words on this. We may recall from the campaign Obama being very hawkish on Afghanistan, which would lead one to think that this request will be met immediately. It may be so, but my guess is Obama's stance on Afghanistan during the campaign was in part driven by his staunch opposition to the Iraq war. Thanks to the crazy belief in modern American politics that a viable Presidential candidate must demonstrate his/her ballsiness by waging or promising a war of some sort, it is conceivable that Obama wanted to balance his Iraq war posture with an aggressive Afghan war posture only to placate the war-hungry crowd. We're about to find out just how deeply Obama believes in this.

4. One thing that is heartening is that there seems to be an actual debate in the U.S. on whether or not this is a good idea. I came to college in the U.S. in the midst of the runup to the Iraq war, and what was most crazy to me from an outsider's perspective was how little disagreement there was on what was a massively risky venture. The level of conensus was truly startling.

It is different this time (though it bears noting that there is a distinction between arguing about launching a war in the first place, and arguing about an escalation of a war that is going badly). Prominent specialists, academics, op-edders, and editorial positions have expressed reservations on escalating the Afghan conflict. Put it this way: when Tom "Suck. On. This." Friedman starts questioning conflicts in far-off lands, you know there's great trepidation in this country.

5. Obama is an immensely intelligent man. I have said this time and again. But even highly capable and astute people make boneheaded judgments. David Halberstam wrote one of the most brilliant books ever written, called The Best and the Brightest, about the Vietnam war. The basic point was that the people making the decisions for America in Vietnam were all pedigreed -- they all went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, they were all eloquent and well-spoken and well-traveled and knowledgeable and whatnot. But they made one stupid decision after another. That should serve as a lesson: smart people can do incredibly stupid things. And I get the feeling that Afghanistan is going to be Obama's incredibly stupid thing.

UPDATE: Please check out the Daily Show clip on this issue. John Oliver is brilliant.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Unwinnable War in Afghanistan
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