May the Tail Wag the Dog No More

Fresh on the heels of President Obama’s primetime speech to Congress and the viewing public on his healthcare plan, a few things became clearer.  For one, a president has much more clout when rising above the cacophony of rumors, fear-mongering, and recriminations, and addressing the nation directly and plainly, as evidenced by the shift in support for his plan: a quarter of viewers initially opposed now support it.  What is also clearer is that as this uncivil war in America continues to rage, pitting family members and neighbors against one another, we are witnessing a time-honored pattern of ideological polarization that distracts  Americans from the larger crises on their periphery, namely in economic and foreign policy.

Obama was savvy to make a connection between health care and the economy in his analysis, considering the doubt in his ability to pay for his program: "If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close."

 

The line comes like a swift dagger into a weary chest.  Of course, we also have to consider as contributing factors to the deficit the hugely unpopular bailout for banks and the auto industry, government spending in conjunction with broad tax cuts, and the “untouchables” of the federal budget, namely the Pentagon’s and secret services’ budget, which has approached or surpassed $900 billion this year.

Obama acknowledged these externalities in part by deferring to his formerly dominant colleagues: “Now, part of the reason I faced a trillion-dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for -- from the Iraq war to tax breaks for the wealthy.  I will not make that same mistake with health care.”  Those initiatives gained so much traction, even among a significant number of Democrats, as they played on the terror and confusion that persisted long after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Eight years since that day, the fog of confusion remains about the motives and the means of carrying out the attacks on Washington D.C. and New York City, but what we as a nation lack is the lingering, base terror they engendered.   Countless missteps and the lack of a clear definition for victory has led us to where we are today:  Polling shows that a majority of Americans no longer support what Obama and the Democrats called the “right war” in Afghanistan and a recent survey by Gallup states that only 1% of Americans think terrorism is the most important problem facing the US.  It’s been a long war, indeed.

Granted that Obama has a colossal challenge facing him in Afghanistan, at least as great as that in Iraq.  So far he has followed the same path as his predecessor, that when in doubt, drop more bombs and throw more bodies at the fire.  The very idea that applying the “surge” strategy carried out in Iraq would engender peace in Afghanistan should have thrown up red flags from the start to anyone following the deterioration in the country, increase in inter-ethnic hostilities and resurgence of the Taliban over the past eight years. 

The two countries’ dissimilarities should have been obvious – from differences in geography, desert versus mountain, to source of insurgent funding – external and internal, to insurgent popularity in the countryside of the South and East.  In Iraq we could pay Sunni tribal insurgents in the “Triangle of Death” a monthly salary to cease support for foreign fighters, but in Afghanistan there is no one to pay, not a single “moderate Taliban,” as we desperately sought out. 

In Afghanistan, US troops faced their deadliest month in August with 47 deaths, as the insurgents have applied technology and lessons learned from other battlefields.  Then there is the collateral damage: from both sides of the conflict, the loss of civilian life has skyrocketed.  As the side with better information and technology, as much as the US government hates to admit it, the onus is more for them to reduce their civilian casualties, and engage insurgents on the ground only when they can isolate them from the surrounding innocent population. 

Another serious mistake being carried on by the president is the support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.   Karzai has attempted to shore up support by seeking unholy alliances with the very same warlords who murdered prisoners of war during the reign of the Taliban and at the end of our invasion and toppling of the Taliban in 2001.  These warlords have also been accused of arms and drug trafficking, and certainly have brought stability to Afghanistans periphery in the worst way.  Now, Karzai stands to win re-election despite widespread reports of fraud on election day.

Support for regimes that hold power through thwarting the democratic process is not new for the US.  In recent years, the regimes of Jordan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan who we call allies in the War on Terror have all suppressed their opposition and we have turned a blind eye.  But we should look back further to the man Obama is most compared to – John F. Kennedy – and his support for the leader who maintained his power through fraud and extreme corruption, President Diem of South Vietnam.  We protected Diem for many years as opposition within South Vietnam raged internally, until finally the dam burst and the man was assassinated.  If we continue to protect Karzai from the ramifications of his own corruption, we are setting ourselves up for a similar failure in Afghanistan as we tragically witnessed in Vietnam. 

In 2002, a State Senator from Illinois, speaking during the build-up to war in Iraq, stated that he was not against all wars.  He was against “dumb wars . . . rash wars . . . a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”  I think it’s time for the President to realize that this war in Afghanistan fits that bill as well.  Consider de-escalation, and ultimately a peaceful withdrawal with a semblance of dignity.  Then we can get back to what we do best: squabble with each other over our support for capitalism or socialism.