Babylon, Oh Babylon
Text by Dave Landy | March 2010
In December, President Obama held a televised press conference live from West Point to plead his case for sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. The speech was anything but the smooth and articulate Obama we have come to know. You could almost see his hair turning grayer if you looked close enough. Time Magazine described it as “unsatisfying,” “defensive,” and “convoluted.” America agreed: USA Today’s overnight poll tabulated his approval rating on Afghanistan plunging to 35%, down from 56% only four months earlier. Even Obama conceded the lack of interest when he said “It is easy to forget that when this war began we were united…I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again.” With these words, our peace-loving President accepted Afghanistan as his war. He has tripled the number of troops since he took office. The days of blaming his predecessors are over.
Yet the public scrutiny and disapproval tell the real story. The American public is tired of waging overseas wars. We are horrified to see the death toll in Afghanistan spike in the past two years. We are frightened to see our monstrous federal deficit balloon by another $30 billion annually. If Obama’s speech is any indication, it seems like America even needed a reminder why we are fighting and what would define success and exit criteria. His stated goals were to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda” and to end the insurgency of the Taliban, who are clearly threatening the stability of the Karzai government.
At the end of his 35-minute speech, I was more confused than when he started. I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist, but Obama raised more questions than provided answers. Did the man who coined the slogan “Change You Can Believe In” actually just agree in lock-step with the Bush Administration on Afghan policy? Does he really think we can defeat al-Qaeda by fighting in Afghanistan, when it is widely known that they are in other countries including (but not limited to) Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, and even the US? Could he possibly be naïve enough to think that we can fight in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, who are known to be hiding in Pakistan? How could Obama set a 2011 deadline for troop withdrawal when Hamid Karzai claims it will take 15-20 years to stabilize the region (and isn’t it too coincidental that this dovetails nicely with the timeline for his re-election campaign)? This month we will take a journey to the Middle East to address the important questions: Why are we really in Afghanistan? Is this a winnable war? And why does Osama bin Laden think that the war is about American greed and consumption? Worse yet, what if he’s right?
