-By Dan Scott
We have been hearing in the news lately that President Obama and his cadre of advisors are stumped as to what to do with Afghanistan. The Left is telling him to cut and run and the Right is accusing him of being soft on terrorism. Obama’s response so far has been to dither. Politically, Obama is in a tough spot because he painted himself in a corner. Only the incompetents paint themselves in a corner. If Obama doesn’t lay out a concise plan to get out of Afghanistan then Nancy Pelosi will have no choice but to throw Obama under the bus as she is beholding to the lunatic left fringe. Any plan that doesn’t involve a quick exit strategy or gives the appearance of slogging it out with terrorists (freedom fighters and aggrieved poor not on US welfare to the left) means he is merely following the policies of the hated George W Bush. On the other hand, if Afghanistan falls into chaos where the Taliban and al Qaeda go back to business as usual pre-911, Barack Obama will go down in history as the one who led the US (a superpower) to defeat at the hands of a group of people who don’t even own a tank or fighter jet. He will be known as Jimmy Carter the second, you know the guy who gave us Khomeini. The repercussions at the 2010 and 2012 elections would be decisive in toppling the Democrat Party from power.
Any reading of the liberal criticisms regarding both Iraq and Afghanistan will be consistent with Obama’s current remarks about his dithering on sending more troops to Afghanistan. This is the same group of people who said the Surge wouldn’t work.
fundamental objectives President Obama announced in his March 27 speech, “…to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”
To sum up Obama’s method to achieve his objective is a defensive military posture to roll up in a ball and wait out the bullies until they get tired of kicking. Barack Obama like the rest of the liberals who dither with him fail or more likely refuse to understand why the Surge worked.
The Surge was more than just having more boots on the ground, it was more than just getting the locals to see they had a vested interest in joining the fight against the insurgents. The Surge and Iraq in particular became the means to level the playing field between the methods of war called terrorism versus the traditional uniformed services method of war using occupation. For the uniformed services, the front line creates a security zone of sorts where they know it’s safe here and it’s unsafe over there, success is defined in terms of safe zones. The advantage of terrorism is there is no safe zone since there is no front line. The success of the terrorist method of war is the creation of a swamp where the enemy is demoralized by a lack of clear boundaries (safe zones) since those boundaries are their means to define success. The point of which is to get the enemy to quit based upon their defined failure of success.
The success of the Surge and Iraq was to turn the tables on terrorism. Those tables were turned based upon the definition of success as defined by the terrorist. That definition was getting the enemy to quit by supplying as many volunteers as it took to martyr themselves. As long as volunteers existed, the terror campaign could be continued. The means of asymmetric war was to make up the difference between a hundred thousand uniformed men versus ten thousand terrorists by making each terrorist death count by taking as many as they could with them. The effectiveness of the uniform services is to create a fighting front to efficiently kill large numbers of the enemy, the effectiveness of terrorism is to avoid the front line by killing large numbers of people. To the terrorist, it didn’t matter that those who were being killed were mostly civilians, the body count was all that mattered since by their objective was to eliminate the safe zones. The sticking point for the terrorists which the US and specifically George W Bush exploited was the number of terrorist volunteers. The number of people willing to kill themselves is a finite number consisting of radicals and dupes, called cannon fodder in the old days. Many liberals mistakenly believed the US was only fighting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan as though terrorism is a provincial matter, it isn’t, it’s a worldwide fight thus forcing the US into a different perspective on war.
What the US did in Iraq was to create a point where all the terrorists wanted to go and thus concentrate their forces, more importantly the terrorist hierarchy foolishly fell for it thus sending every available martyr. Any time you concentrate forces the advantage in fighting falls to the group who specializes in fighting large groups, i.e. the advantage falls to the US military. The net result of this Rope-A-Dope strategy in Iraq was to move most of the potential terrorist martyrs from all over the world to a single geographic location to the point they were falling all over themselves to run into the gun sights of the uniformed military services. The consequence of this Rope-A-Dope strategy by George W Bush was to reduce incidents of terrorism world wide thus making the world as a whole a safer place. The success of the surge was to lure thousands upon thousands of would be terrorists to a single geographic location to be killed. The worst place in the world for a terrorist is in a so called safe haven since by definition they are concentrating themselves in one area. It wasn’t until the terrorists gave up sending (rather couldn’t find enough) martyrs to Iraq that the problems in Afghanistan began to mount to the current level of instability. Thus here we stand today with Iraq having sporadic incidents and Afghanistan seemly under threat, a complete role reversal.
The reason why Barack Obama and his liberal advisors are dithering is because they never had a viable strategy to deal with terrorism worldwide never mind in Afghanistan. The strategy they rejected is to draw the terrorists to one place and kill them. Liberals rejected this strategy because they believe they can negotiate an end to hostilities with an enemy whose goal is to get the US to quit and roll up in ball. In other words, Barack Obama is willing to quit based upon some promises made by a bunch of hard core gun toting radicals whose objective is to get the government to quit. What is the definition of success for terrorists again? Talk about playing into the hands of the enemy! The bottom line here is if President Obama fails in Afghanistan, that country’s chaos will be the least of our problems as a safe haven since thousands of would be terrorists will be emboldened and free to spread their terror around the world. There is no ball in which the US could possibly roll itself tight enough into to end the carnage to come.
Sources:
A Comprehensive Strategy for Afghanistan: Afghanistan Force Requirements
Who’s Afraid of A Terrorist Haven?
Drop in terror attacks in Iraq leads worldwide decline, US says
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Dan Scott calls himself a “Member of the Global Capitalist Cabal preaching Capitalism and personal responsibility as the economic solution to world poverty.” He is also a member of the 14th Amendment Society — victimhood is a liberal code word for denying the civil rights of others. He is also a proud member of the Global Warming Denier Cabal, insisting that facts not agendas determine the truth.
Dan can be seen on the web at http://www.geocities.com/fightbigotry2002/ as well as http://www.geocities.com/dscott8186/saidwebpage.htm, And can be reached for comments at dscott8186@yahoo.com.
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Obama never had a meaningful plan for Afghanistan or any of his half-baked socialist ideas, IMO, any more than the Democrats had a “new direction” for Iraq for the 2006 elections. The only plan that Obama and the Democrats ever had was to invent disasters as an excuse to legislate thousands of “nonexistent” special-interest earmarks in bills claimed to remedy phony Democratic disasters; the ongoing enslavement of taxpayers by the corrupt Democratic elite.