There's My Two Cents: Afghanistan Speech Recap

So, what's the reaction from Obama's Afghanistan speech last night? Mixed, but generally not impressed. Here are a couple of the best reactions I've read.

For the best short summary of the major aspects of the speech, here's a video that captures it well:

Now, let's get into some of the details. Some (even on the Right) are giving Obama some due credit for actually sending more troops to Afghanistan. That's true, as far as it goes. Sarah Palin offers some modest support, but with concerns:

Three months ago, I joined a number of Americans in urging President Obama to provide the resources necessary to achieve our goals in Afghanistan. Tonight, I am glad he mostly heeded that advice.

...

We should be clear, however, that fewer troops mean assuming more risk. Talk of an exit date also risks sending the wrong message. We should be in Afghanistan to win, not to set a timetable for withdrawal that signals a lack of resolve to our friends, and lets our enemies believe they can wait us out. As long as we’re in to win, and as long as troop level decisions are based on conditions on the ground and the advice of our military commanders, I support President Obama’s decision.

Those are some big 'if's, and as long as Obama's radical Leftist anti-war base is angry about any troop build-up, the notion that Obama is 'in it to win it' is tenuous at best.

One aspect of this that smacks of political opportunism is the schedule Obama laid out:

Dare I say it? I question the timing.

President Obama is sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan but wants to conclude the war and withdraw most U.S. service members within three years, senior administration officials told CNN Tuesday.

Just in time for the 2012 election. Hmmm...

Another distasteful aspect is the fact that Obama, in an attempt to prevent the 'Vietnamization' of the Afghanistan war effort, proposes to do precisely what Nixon did in Vietnam:

Among his "Big Ideas" is Vietnamization. Which Nixon did with Vietnam-- making the Vietnam War more dependent on the Vietnamese. Which makes sense, except for the minor fact 1, they weren't ready and knew they would lose, so 2, they had no reason to fight and awfully big reasons to ingratiate themselves to the soon-to-be-victors by selling information and such to the North.
Basically, when you tell your ally you're bugging out in a couple of years, and they know when you do bug out they lose, you have incentivized them to begin defecting to the enemy early.
It's not just that he's proposing Vietnamization -- it's that he's doing so with a hard-date for his "exit strategy." Which Nixon did too, for all intents and purposes, making it clear he didn't want to win the war, he just wanted a "decent interval" between America's exit and the North's victory.

Of course, there is also this:

Allah says there's an escape clause in that. But of course there is. Set a hard date for evacuation and then put in an escape clause in it too, so maybe you will stay on longer if conditions demand it. Throw one clause to the left, then a different clause to the center/right. Vote present.

Not that he ever does that, of course.

The biggest sticking point, though, definitely seems to be the timetable that Obama openly advertised:

The two major concerns from Obama’s path forward are the proposed timeline for withdrawal and the replacements for the U.S. surge troops, while the message to the Afghan people is muddled at best.
The surge in U.S. forces will be completed by the summer of 2010, and President Obama said that the military will begin to withdraw beginning in July 2011, just one year after the increase in forces, security conditions permitting. First, the setting of a timeline gives the Taliban and allied Islamist groups all of the evidence they need that the U.S. and the West seeks to leave the country sooner rather than later. Expect Obama timeline to be used in al-Qaeda and Taliban propaganda. Second, the timeline reaffirms Pakistan’s belief that the U.S. stay in Afghanistan is short lived. The incentive for Pakistan to take on the “good Taliban” groups in their tribal areas that attack U.S. and NATO forces has eroded. And third, Obama has not explained from where the Afghan troops to take over from withdrawing U.S. forces will come. Afghanistan has an 80,000 man army and its police forces are in disarray. Unlike Iraq, there is no glut of troops to turn over security to.
Finally, Obama’s message to the Afghan people was poorly crafted and delivered. First he told them their security and development is important. Later he said the overriding U.S. objective is to defeat al-Qaeda and nation building is not a requirement. He can’t have it both ways, and the fence-sitters in Afghanistan won’t be encouraged by the conflicting message.

The conflicting message is detrimental:

Most striking was the dramatic mismatch between the dire consequences of failure and the very limited means the president intends to bring to bear. The goals he has established for Afghanistan cannot be achieved in the time frame he committed to begin withdrawing troops in. Afghanistan fell 2,000 recruits short last month alone in meeting its current goal of 134,000 soldiers and 83,000 police. The president’s new approach envisions producing additional Afghan forces superior in quantity and quality to the present. That is wildly unrealistic.

To emphasize in the same breath the importance of increased forces and the necessity of removing them in eighteen months will badly diminish the positive effect those troops are intended to have. The point of counterinsurgency approach is to protect the population so that they participate in security efforts and change the political dynamic of the war. The president was silent on what he will do if his objectives are not achieved.

As in Iraq, the president doesn’t have an exit strategy, he has an exit timeline. He did not outline the positive conditions that must be met for our withdrawal to proceed. He did not provide a vision of an Afghanistan that is capable of achieving what we need for our country to be secure. He provided an absolute withdrawal date that will encourage our enemies to game the timeline, and discourage our friends from helping.

RedState puts it this way:

Proving yet again that he is a rank amateur, Obama intends to have a surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, but concurrently announce the timeline for their withdrawal. This is akin to announcing to burglars exactly the time at which you intend to depart your house and also announcing you intend to turn off the burglar alarm. Al Qaeda will just wait us out. They’ll only need to wait a year. The men who spent years planning 9/11 are more patient than this President who wants instant gratification in a never ending campaign.

And that is, at the end of the day, what this was — not the speech of a Commander-in-Chief to his troops, but a campaign speech at time of falling poll numbers because of his dithering, trying to blame the other guy.

Only, there is no other guy now. There is only Barack Obama. A man who sees no special role for America in the world and a moral equivalence between good and evil.

Oh, and there's that little thing called victory that he didn't mention:

Barack Obama spoke at West Point tonight on the issue of Afghanistan. In 4608 words, he did not once mention the word “victory” and the closest he came to using the word “win” was those three letters appearing in the word “withdrawing.”

True to form, Obama spent most of his speech decrying the Bush administration going into Iraq. He said — a lie — that “Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.” The historic record shows that George Bush never denied commanders in Afghanistan the support they requested.