Yes, that's the part that I find hard to swallow.
In a rational world we could weigh the potential benefits of his decision in terms of probable achievable goals and probable costs. In my view the achievable goals are to find ways to effectively reach into terrorist strongholds and get Bin Ladin or as many of the decision making leadership of Al Queda as we can, weaken the most radical resistance to moderate Afghan national rule, maintain whatever level of commitment credibility we have left in the world and lay the groundwork for an after-occupation era where we can maintain operatives and a base of operations to gather intelligence on terrorist activities and, if necessary and practical, mount operations against them.
Whether the odds of achieving those ends would justify the likely casualty, economic and lost opportunity costs of continuing our efforts there for another few years should be the issue we debate. Instead we're given a generous sprinkling of pie in the sky goals because anything less would leave him vulnerable to charges from the "our team's number 1" cheer leaders that he's too weak and that he's standing in the way of our wise military's potential victory.
In my view, if he's actually planning to get out and this latest "surge" is a gambit to attempt the practical goals that I see as achievable, and if I'm right in believing that a withdrawal at this time would critically limit the possibility of achieving important domestic breakthroughs on health care, climate protection, judicial appointments, restructuring of the power of lobbyists, etc, and would tear the country apart, then I can accept accept the cost of the Afghan surge with a heavy heart.
But I'm only reading between the lines on this and, as you know, that's a dangerous practice since we all tend to project our own views to fill the gaps. Ed |
