Hard Questions for President Obama

Last year I posted here, and at my blog at Standpoint Magazine, a series of "hard questions" for then-Senator Obama, who had shown himself during the primaries and election campaign unusually adept at avoiding such.

Herewith a new edition of Hard Questions for President Obama.

1) What are the US goals in Afghanistan?

2) What, so far as we understand, do the Afghan people want?

Given the degree and length of US and NATO involvement, answers to these questions should be clear, as for instance they are in Iraq, yet they are not.

Readers' answers in the comments section are welcome.

My previous "hard questions" posts may be found by following the link at the tag below.

A Look Back at Hard Questions on Iraq and Afghanistan

I'm back, then. Returned after an extended hiatus to finish a film adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel, and to support the release of "The Garden of Eden."

I'd like to start by taking a look back at some hard questions I rhetorically posed in July 2008, during the run-up to the presidential election, on my Standpoint magazine blog to then-Senator Obama. Time changes one's perspective. Iraq is now comparatively stable and may, with its scrappy educated population and its untapped oil wealth, have a promising economic future. Afghanistan continues to be a challenge in terms of conflict, politics and especially development. With both countries there should be no easy answers. Here are the hard questions I posed in July 2008:

1. Why does Senator Obama advocate a surge of troops in Afghanistan though he considers a surge of troops in Iraq to have been a mistake?
2. Why is a stable Afghanistan crucial to US interests while a stable Iraq is not?
3. How long does Senator Obama expect to keep troops in Afghanistan?
4. Why is an open-ended commitment in Afghanistan manageable while the same in Iraq is not?
5. How much does Senator Obama expect to spend rebuilding Afghanistan?
6. Why is rebuilding Afghanistan affordable while rebuilding Iraq is not?
7. Why does Senator Obama consider the ethno-sectarian issues in Iraq to be nearly intractable while in Afghanistan they are something we can overcome?
8. If leaving Iraq will make the Iraqi government behave more responsibly, how will an increased presence in Afghanistan affect the Afghan government?
9. Why does Senator Obama advocate a "surge in diplomacy" and multilateralism in Iraq while simultaneously advocating unilateral action in the Pakistani tribal areas?
10. How large of a "residual force" will be left in Iraq and for how long?

UPDATE: Some of these challenging questions are addressed in a new book I've just run across by Bing West entitled "The Wrong War: Strategy and Way Out of Afghanistan." A comprehensive review, admiring with caveats, is offered by Andrew Exum HERE.

Iraq - The Hard Questions

As the press becomes distracted by the latest non-controversy in the primaries, the hard questions about Iraq are receding from view. However, "Iraq," meaning the continuing conflict, the efforts to build a civil society, is not going anywhere. It's always tempting to push difficult questions aside.

The next president will face questions raised by the facts here. , and by Muhammed Fadhil here.

The candidates should begin to address them now.

Also noted, Mudville Gazette retraces his own time-line here. As his parsing shows, his own narrative differed markedly from that of the main-stream media. The LA Times, NYT, and WaPo is only this week catching up to him.

About this Victor Davis Hanson comments:

How odd (or to be expected) that suddenly intelligence agencies, analysts, journalists, and terrorists themselves are attesting that al-Qaeda is in near ruins, that ideologically radical Islam is losing its appeal, and that terrorist incidents against Americans at home and abroad outside the war zones are at an all-time low—and yet few associate the radical change in fortune in Iraq as a contributory cause to our success.

Read the whole thing here.

Good News, and HARD QUESTIONS on Iraq for Obama

As we've noted before, Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, the mainstream media have been slow to recognize the progress in stabilizing Iraq and building a civil society there.

They've refused to acknowledge a distinction between the war to overturn the regime of Saddam Hussein, which Obama and some others were against, and the recent counter-insurgency effort to support the democratically-elected, pluralist government now sitting in Baghdad.

Today brings news that Anbar Province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, the Sunni Tribal region, the so-called "Wild West" has been handed over to Iraq control.

Read the Reuters report, HERE, and also see AFP report.

Rather than adopt an isolationist posture, the Democratic Party needs to address the Hard Questions.

Hat tip to the Times for the photos.

Redux: Hard Questions for Senator Obama

Last year I posted, on this blog and on my blog at Standpoint magazine on-line, an occasional series, entitled “Hard Questions for Senator Obama."

Here were some I posted in July 2008:

1. Why does Senator Obama advocate a surge of troops in Afghanistan though he considers a surge of troops in Iraq to have been a mistake?
2. Why is a stable Afghanistan crucial to US interests while a stable Iraq is not?
3. How long does Senator Obama expect to keep troops in Afghanistan?
4. Why is an open-ended commitment in Afghanistan manageable while the same in Iraq is not?
5. How much does Senator Obama expect to spend rebuilding Afghanistan?
6. Why is rebuilding Afghanistan affordable while rebuilding Iraq is not?
7. Why does Senator Obama consider the ethno-sectarian issues in Iraq to be nearly intractable while in Afghanistan they are something we can overcome?
8. If leaving Iraq will make the Iraqi government behave more responsibly, how will an increased presence in Afghanistan affect the Afghan government?
9. Why does Senator Obama advocate a "surge in diplomacy" and multilateralism in Iraq while simultaneously advocating unilateral action in the Pakistani tribal areas?
10. How large of a "residual force" will be left in Iraq and for how long?

Hard Questions #4 - Obama and Iraq

...as BEFORE, hard questions on Iraq and international matters face Obama.

George Packer in the New Yorker elaborates.

Hard Questions - and Robert Kagan

If you want to see someone stick to their guns, watch neo-con, McCain advisor, and classics scholar Robert Kagan on BBC's Hard Talk. Video, available only in the UK, here.

Hard Questions for Obama on Iraq at STANDPOINT

Further to my "Hard Question" series below, I've just posted a piece on my new blog at STANDPOINT magazine.

"Barack Obama has had an Iraq problem building over the last ten months. Ever since General Petraeus’s Iraq counter-insurgency strategy, involving “the surge” of troop deployments in theater, has shown signs of success, the Democratic Party and its attendant commentators have been in a quandary."

Read the whole thing HERE.

Obama and Iraq again

I've just posted again, at the STANDPOINT magazine site, about developments in Iraq and how success there continues to throw up hard questions for Barack Obama.

Mickey Kaus has waggishly suggested that the looming "tipping point" in Iraq may lead to a "flipping point" on the part of Obama.

Obama himself has gamely allowed that when facts change he changes his opinion... and quite right.

The key question for him, and the Democratic party, is define which Iraq war it was they were against. As I say at Standpoint:

Is the Iraq War they opposed "the invasion of 2003, the subsequent counter-insurgency effort devised by General Petraeus and his strategist David Kilcullen in support of the pluralistic, democratically-elected government in Baghdad... or the long “engagement” dating from sporadic bombing inflicted by the US and UN on a recalcitrant Iraqi regime throughout the 1990s?

"Obama has pledged both to 'end the war' and 'support stability in Iraq.' Of course one way to accomplish those aims would be to WIN the various conflicts in Iraq, including those against al Qaeda, now composed of a rump collection of fighters being pummeled in their last urban redoubt in Mosul, as well the Shiite militias, confronted in Basra and aligned to some degree with Muqtada al Sadr and/or Iran, who may reach some other accommodation with the Iraqi government. Iraqi forces, along with the Coalition, look on the verge of accomplishing just such a win."

Please read the whole thing HERE.

Iraq - More Hard Questions

As note by WSJ:

"This spring, the Iraqi army routed insurgents in three of their most important urban strongholds. These gains follow the success of the surge in crushing al Qaeda in the Sunni triangle, meaning that we are at last on the verge of winning in Iraq and securing a strategic victory in the Middle East. Question: Is this emerging victory – achieved at a cost of more than 4,000 American lives – something we are prepared to abandon after November?
...
"This is the improving Iraq that the next U.S. President will inherit, and it is the heart of the Iraq debate Americans should have in November."

read the whole thing here.

Caleb Carr on Bernard Lewis's "Was Osama Right?"

Caleb Carr sent TMP this missive responding Bernard Lewis's "Was Osama Right?" in last week's Wall Street Journal:

Lewis's piece is, unfortunately, a further demonstration that he has lost the laser-sighting he had before, during, and after 9/11; and he's lost it, as have so many, because of a genuine, deep, and almost unbelievable unwillingness to comprehend the complexity and importance of Iraqi Shi'ite politics.

But first off, the piece is an extraordinarily narrow view of the problem, in terms of American society. It is true that the American reaction to the Al Qaeda threat has not yet been deep or broad enough; but that has nothing to do with any inherent weakness on the part of the American people. As I'm often told by people in my impoverished corner of upstate New York State, which gives more than its fair share of troops to the cause, the population of America is still ready to be fully mobilized and to pay any price required -- if the reasons behind both can be adequately and respectfully explained by the administration. That's been problem number one since 9/12. In the vacuum left by that absence, the division of America, regionally and economically, as well as between military and non-military classes, has been the principal operating influence: 9/11 hit a narrow slice of America, in all of this categories; and it may well be that it will take a "major event" that kills thousands of Americans from all walks of life to inspire a modern Pearl Harbor-type response -- remember that the sailors and soldiers at Pearl did come from just such a broad cross-section of America, which was why that attack was felt so hard. It appears that AQ is busily preparing just such an event; the Las Vegas New Year's Eve plot (both Richard Clarke and I had already picked Vegas as the city most at risk, during this phase, although that's likely now shifted, obviously).

Whether they can pull it off depends on several things, all in the balance:

1) Will we allow the Iraqi Shi'ites to finally exterminate everyone even disposed to support Al Qaeda in their country, since AQI and their affiliates are the main force of the insurgency now? "Extermination" may sound a strong word; given what their own language toward the Shi'ia is, given their continued propensity toward what is as close to genocide (NOT "execution styled killings") that they can manage, the Sunni and particularly Al Qaeda extremists have earned it. Furthermore, will we finally abandon Maliki's corrupt government for the true Shi'ite power, the Sistani-Hakim axis, and believe that Muqtada's followers are once again pulling back at their bidding?

2) Is all of this activity being coordinated with/by Ryan Crocker, and is he coordinating with Rice's negotiations with Iran? This would seem a no-brainer, but as we have learned, there's no such thing, in this administration.

3) Will Musharraf survive and get the final upper hand on the ISI, or will he get himself killed/leave Pakistan first? And, if the latter, will AQ get their nuclear device from that source (which is a FAR greater and more imminent danger than a nuclear Iran) in the short or the long run? Will NATO not only meet but increase its commitment to Afghanistan, which is at a critical pass (and which only the Brits and the Dutch seem to take in any way seriously)?

These are the questions upon which the struggle depends on, now; not issues of "American weakness." That IS an issue; but one of rather subordinate importance. The American public is in a state of very profound confusion that the anti-war groups and Congress are choosing to read as blanket opposition to the war; yet reactions to Congress indicate that Americans are looking for solutions, not unqualified withdrawal.

- c.c.