Obama's Afghanistan dilemma

October 20, 1:24 PMNY Conservative ExaminerTodd Keister

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President Obama confers with General Stanley McChrystal aboard Air Force One.  Source photo/AP

On March 27, 2009 – nearly seven months ago – President Obama stood in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building with CENTCOM Commander, General David Petraeus, and said the following: “Today, I'm announcing a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. And this marks the conclusion of a careful policy review…” Then on September 21, three weeks after Obama’s hand-picked Afghanistan warfighter urgently requested 40,000 additional troops, the White House press secretary said, “We're going to conduct [a] strategic assessment and do that in a way that lays out the best path forward before we make resource decisions…” What happened to the comprehensive strategy they had six months earlier?

President Obama faces a serious dilemma over the Afghan war. He campaigned on the Afghanistan war as the “war of necessity” and repeatedly criticized the Bush administration for its alleged distraction from the Afghanistan operation by its supposed military adventurism in Iraq. This was a convenient tactic for the Obama campaign; they could appeal to the far left by berating the president for the war in Iraq, but appear to be tough by insisting that we throw all our efforts into Afghanistan and get Bin Laden.

Unfortunately for the new president, the campaign is over and he is now the commander-in-chief of the United States. It is clearly a role he is totally unprepared for and uncomfortable with. The left wing radical base of his party demands that all the troops be withdrawn immediately, which the president cannot do without contradicting his own pronouncements about the importance and necessity of winning in Afghanistan. His own general, Stanley McChrystal has told the president he requires more troops to secure victory. Now Obama the candidate has painted Obama the president into a corner. Obama merely used the war in Afghanistan as a convenient club with which to bash the Bush administration, while still appearing tough on terrorists. Now, as president, he has dithered for more than seventy days while his general waits for an answer.

Obama is entirely focused on “fundamentally changing the United States of America.” His attention is completely centered on domestic issues – presently healthcare. Securing a government takeover of the healthcare system is truly the Holy Grail for the president and his statist followers. Now the pesky war in Afghanistan threatens to distract from placing the crowning jewel on the past seventy-five years of government growth. If the president gives General McChrystal the troops he requires, he will alienate many of his core supporters – the left-wing diva Arianna Huffington even stated this week that Vice President Biden should resign in protest if Obama sends additional forces to Afghanistan. Lefty Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold has recently come out forcefully against sending additional forces to the Afghan theater.

So the president equivocates while American soldiers wait for reinforcements. President Obama and the great warrior Joe Biden are conducting an inquiry into the best strategy for Afghanistan even though they just announced that they had a comprehensive strategy in place in the springtime. What the president is really doing is simply stalling until congressional Democrats can finish crafting their secret healthcare bill and ram it through on a party line vote some late Friday night.

President Obama is finding out the hard way that being an actual leader and wartime president is lot harder than making high-sounding, empty speeches about hope and change; it requires courage and decisiveness – traits that are not developed during a career of “community organizing.”