The Obama Doctrine
By Ahmad Faruqui, PhD
Dansville, CA
The Bush Doctrine, based on the idea of launching a preemptive war to advance American interests, lies in ruins. Unprecedented in its arrogance, it led to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Americans were told more than once by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld that their soldiers would be greeted with hugs and kisses when they marched into Baghdad. That never happened. Instead, as US soldiers pulled out of all Iraqi cities last week, Iraqis celebrated a new holiday called the Sovereignty Day.
Not one Iraqi leader chose to convey his thanks to the Americans for the thousands of lives they had sacrificed in liberating the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein or the trillion dollars they had spent in reconstructing Iraq during the past six years. To add insult to injury, hugs and kisses were given to Iraqi soldiers who were now taking over the responsibility for Iraqi sovereignty from the Americans.
Traditionally, American presidents drawn from the Republican Party have focused on Foreign Policy and those drawn from the Democratic Party on Domestic Policy. Obama, with his international upbringing, is breaking this trend. What is the Obama Doctrine?
Obama’s grand strategy is premised on restoring America’s moral authority by building coalitions, not on acting unilaterally to build empires on the backs of the American military. That was the message that came through loud and clear when his national security advisor, former General James J. Jones, toured Afghanistan.
The message, delivered to Marine General Lawrence D. Nicholson who commands the Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Afghanistan and to his senior staff of 20 colonels and lieutenant colonels, was simple: Don’t ask for more troops. Get the job done with what you have.
Jones stated in no uncertain terms that Afghanistan was not Iraq. To the assembly of colonels, many of whom were veterans of that failed war, he said: “We are not going to build that empire again.” That is as clear as it gets. America will not impose itself militarily on other nations.
Jones retired as NATO commander in 2007. He later joined the Atlantic Council, an American think tank which issued a report in 2008 on the situation in Afghanistan. It stated bluntly what most policy wonks knew but few were willing to say publicly: the international community was not winning in Afghanistan.
In a recent interview, Jones said that the bleak conclusions of the report – which detail the corruption and drug trafficking that have prevented the return of normalcy in Afghanistan — still apply. The new US strategy, articulated by Jones, is akin to a three-legged stool. First, ensure national security and bring law and order to the streets. Second, focus on economy, development and reconstruction. Third, restore political governance through the rule of law.
Jones stated that Afghanistan was poised at a razor’s edge. He noted: “This is a decisive moment. A strategic moment, and we better get it right.”
And that is how most observers see the situation in that country: fraught with danger and pregnant with ambiguity. Just in one week in May the insurgent Taliban launched more than 400 attacks. While these are still a quarter of the 1,600 attacks per week that were witnessed during the height of the Iraq War, they mark a dangerous escalation in the Afghan conflict.
The war will not turn around overnight. But the new strategy at least points in the right direction and embodies the right set of priorities. Why did it take so long to pick the right strategy? Historians will have to answer that question. And when will the obvious mistakes be corrected? If victory is to be achieved, they better be corrected quickly.
Today, there is only one Afghan soldier who ventures out with 10 NATO soldiers. That Afghan simply serves as a scout and translator, not as a fighter. Is a ratio of 1:10 between local and foreign troops the right number? No! As long as that ratio continues to dominate the battlefield and the country side, the Afghans will continue to view the Americans an occupying empire.
And the problem will not be solved by sending in more American troops. Unless the Afghans people can be made to see the threat posed by the Taliban, this war will not be won. In fact, there is a good chance that the more numerous the Americans become in Afghanistan, the more their predicament will resemble that of the French Legion in Algeria.
At the outset of the Iraq war, David Petraeus, at that time a junior general, asked an embedded reporter, “Tell me how this ends.” Petraeus, now a four-star general and head of US Central Command, was petrified to see the same question being put to him as he was testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee by Senator Jim Webb, himself a former soldier.
Petraeus responded by saying that the Afghans will eventually “shoulder the responsibilities of their own security.” To which Webb asked: “When was the last time that Afghanistan had an actual functioning national army?” Mortified, Petraeus replied, “More than 30 years ago.”
While Webb may have won the debate, it is hard to argue with Petraeus’ logic. There is no other way out of this war. The Afghans have to dig themselves out of this hole. This is not a hole that anyone else dug for them. They dug it for themselves.
And the solution is not just going to require a rebuilding of the Afghan army. It will require a rebuilding of the strategic culture of the country. And that has to begin with a repudiation of the hatred-based ideology of the Taliban.
The Afghan people have to rally in the streets of Kabul and in Kandahar against the oppression of these bigoted and illiterate mullahs. The Afghan farmers have to stop producing opium which fuels the war chests of the Taliban. And the Afghan citizenry has to stop being cowed down by the warlords.
More than anything else, the Afghans have to stop blaming the Americans for all their woes. Unlike the Soviets in the 1980s, the Americans are eager to get out of their backyard.
The Americans only came there because the Taliban let Al-Qaeda establish a beach-head there which led one day to 9/11. Which nation would not have counter-attacked? Once the Americans are convinced the security of the American homeland is no longer threatened by terrorists located in Afghanistan, they will leave.
Faruqui@Pacbell.net.
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