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James Vega–writing for The Democratic Strategist, co-edited by William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira–just published a 2,600+ word memo arguing that "Obama’s final decision" to "approve a significant increase in the number of troops" would not be a "betrayal" of the Democratic base.
You know, that Democratic base that overwhelmingly opposes sending more troops. What utter garbage.
Democrats — Don’t be misled. The media is going to call Obama’s new Afghan strategy a "betrayal" of the Democratic base — but it’s not. It’s actually a decisive rejection of the Republican/Neo-Conservative strategy of the "Long War"
…Based on current reports, Obama’s final decision will approve a significant increase in the number of troops – the exact number depending on the number of major cities to be covered and the degree of protection to be provided for the major road highways. For the many critics who believe that sending large numbers of additional U.S. troops may actually be counterproductive, this is a clear disappointment. But it is also already clear that Obama’s strategy will do several other important things.
- It will establish specific criteria for success and failure.
- It will define the mission in a concrete and specific way that can be openly debated and revised.
- It will include an explicit “exit strategy” rather than an open-ended commitment.
Obama’s specific plan for Afghanistan may turn out to be right or wrong – there are entirely reasonable and cogent arguments that a smaller military “footprint” could actually enhance our ability to achieve our ultimate objectives more than a larger one. But, in any case, the method Obama has used to reach his decision is one that has profoundly undermined the basic foundations of the strategy neoconservatives have been following to embroil America in a perpetual “Long War” – an endless series of open-ended, military campaigns that drag on for decades, constantly requiring more and more troops to achieve hopelessly vague and unquantifiable objectives of fundamental social and cultural transformation across the Muslim world.
Again, total garbage. Decision-making processes are important, true. Asserting civilian control over the military is fundamental to the health of our democratic republic, true. But these issues are totally separate from the question of whether or not sending more troops is a betrayal of the president’s base.
Look, "strategists," this is very simple. Decisive majorities of Democrats oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan: 60 percent want to actually start withdrawing troops, versus only 26 percent who favor adding any number of troops.
Memo to the memo-writers: you might want to refer to well-documented Democratic public opinion since your About Us section says you:
"seek to publish substantial articles that draw strategic conclusions from the latest public opinion and demographic research conducted by the academic community and commercial public opinion polling firms as well as from the leading think-tanks and policy institutes across America."
If President Obama sends more troops, he "betrays" his base. The end. This is not complicated.
Writing 2,600+ words to take the long way around doesn’t change a "no" to a "yes." The very least you could do to sell this attempted Jedi mind trick would have been to fabricate a poll. At least then you wouldn’t be patronizing the majority of Democrats whose names you use to get your analysis in the door in order to stab us in the back.
Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.
15 Comments
“If President Obama sends more troops, he “betrays” his base.”
Aren’t you used to it by now?
You’d think, but I continue to hold out hope we can beat him into submission. In a nonviolent way, of course.
Count me in that group.
Me too.
The majority of President Obama’s base does want to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, but to call his decision a “betrayal” implies that, when he was Candidate Obama, he promised that he would withdraw them. But he never said that.
During the campaign last year, he said things like this:
He was saying that more needs to be done in Afghanistan.
And he said this:
Seems to me that, like it or not, he’s doing exactly what he said he would do.
And he summed it up like this:
I’m not saying that anyone who wants the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan is necessarily wrong for wanting it, but you can’t call what President Obama is doing a “betrayal.”
Perhaps. The argument above rests on the idea that no matter what Obama does, he’s not buying into the open-ended, “long war” type commitment of neo-conservatives. I’m not sure that this is true. Obama already sent tens of thousands of more troops into Afghanistan without a strategy, as he himself admitted. If he does that again, as McCrystal would be calling for, I’m not sure how it’s not a “long war.”
You’re right that I only addressed the characterization of what Obama’s doing as a “betrayal.”
As for calling the argument in The Democratic Strategist “total garbage” (i.e. that what Obama’s doing now is a continuation of a “long war”), I wrote on Nov 14, 2009 about how “President Obama is demanding that his advisors stop figuring out how to continue aimlessly speeding down the highway and start figuring out where the exits are,” and cited just one report of many.
If you think that President Obama’s plan is to remain in Afghanistan any longer than necessary, I urge you to read my diary about Obama telling Dick Cheney to go fuck himself (November 14, 2009).
Since Eikenberry’s leak, the debate has shifted away from troops numbers and has become much more about a division between those who want to rush in w/o a decent plan (Dick Cheney and the neocons) and those who want to achieve clear goals according to a well-thought-out plan with clearly identified exits (Obama and company).
Re: “total garbage,” I’m not referring to the moves by the president to reign in the military and to force them to plan all the way to the end. I’m referring to Vega’s argument that the base should not be outraged at being overridden. He drives 80 miles out of the way to avoid addressing the point on which folks will feel “betrayed.” I support the President in his attempt to yank the leash on the Pentagon. I don’t support James Vega’s attempt to avoid the issue by typing lots of words. Democrats know what they want, and they need their elected officials to respond to them, not attempts by folks supposedly writing “Democratic” strategy memos to cover official behinds when they act in opposition to clearly documented Democratic opinion.
Sorry! I misunderstood what you were calling “total garbage.”
I’m hoping for those exits, yep.
I agree with a lot of what you say in your comment about the President being open about his desire to deepen our military commitment in Afghanistan should he win the election. That is beyond dispute. So, if you want to say that “betrayal” requires President Obama reversing himself on a campaign platform plank, then I will agree with you that this did not take place.
However, that’s not how James Vega is using the word in his piece. His memo is, in my opinion, a clever way of attempting to discredit Democrats who will be angry about him ignoring their clear wishes by telling them they’re being manipulated by “the media,” and that they should not worry about the president overriding their overwhelming preferences because they’re getting all these other things. But these other things (process, foreign policy grand strategy corrections) do not address the point on which Vega correctly assumes the base will feel “betrayed,” i.e. adding troops in Afghanistan over their very clear objection. In my read of Vega’s piece, what he means by “betrayal” is “getting blatantly overridden by a president whom we elected.” That’s the sense in which we are definitely getting “betrayed” if the President increases troops, again.
Seems to me like Vega’s using “betrayal” in the way that I understood it and, his arguments aside, I still think that anyone who heard Candidate Obama speak about Afghanistan last year and went ahead and voted for him anyway has every right to feel disappointed by and unhappy with his decision re Afghanistan, but not to feel “betrayed” by it.
See, that would have been a better argument for Vega to make.
Knowville, it is true that Obama campaigned on escalating the war in Afghanistan as you correctly point out.
However, you must acknowledge that many Dems saw this campaign pledge as one Obama “had to make” to provide cover against the war-like McCain. And Obama has broken plenty of other pledges too, hasn’t he?
You must distinguish whether an escalation of the war would be a:
1. betrayal of Obama’s campaign statements (no, it would not be; for the very reasons you provide);
2. betrayal of the beliefs of most Democrats (and yes, most Democrats are strongly opposed to an Afghanistan escalation) so for THEM it would be a betrayal of their core beliefs. Remember too that Obama although he campaigned on escalating the war in Aghanistan ALSO ran as a kind of peace candidate and held himself as such. He repeatedly referred to his single vote against the war in Iraq, for example. So what this escalation to be really does is to show the fissures in Obama’s own candidacy: he campaigned as a dove but also campaigned to escalate in Afghanistan.
3. Obama is NOT the Democratic base. You are confusing his position with the base opinion which is overwhelmingly against escalation.
James Vega should meet Heather, the new GOP strategist:
Take That, GOP!
(satire)
[Mod Note: Only one per day please.]