Overcoming The Defeatist Mindset

The Washington Post is going all out to credit Obama with conceiving the military surge strategy that General McChrystal will use to accomplish his mission -- defeat the Taliban.  The headline:  Obama's push for 'surge' shaped Afghan strategy.

Obama pressed for faster surge
AFGHAN REVIEW A MARATHON
'What was interesting was the metamorphosis'

By Anne E. Kornblut, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 6, 2009

President Obama, seated at the head of a conference table strewn with papers in the White House Situation Room, stared at charts showing various options for sending additional U.S. troops into Afghanistan.

He and his top national security advisers had been debating the way forward for two full months. On this day, Nov. 11, the president scanned the choices with a trace of irritation. At a meeting more than two weeks earlier, he had asked for a plan to deploy and pull out troops quickly -- a "surge" similar to the one that his Republican predecessor had executed in Iraq, but with a fixed date to begin withdrawals.

What was in front of Obama -- scenarios in which it took too long to get in and too long to get out -- was not what he wanted.

Obama's insistence on setting a deadline for victory in a war he's already termed "a war of necessity" is a puzzle.  The missing piece to it is the progressive mindset, in which victory in the military context is a totally alien concept. 

In June, McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a slide: "Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population."

"Is that really what you think your mission is?" one of those in the Situation Room asked.

On the face of it, it was impossible -- the Taliban were part of the fabric of the Pashtun belt of southern Afghanistan, culturally if not ideologically supported by a significant part of the population. "We don't need to do that," Gates said, according to a participant. "That's an open-ended, forever commitment."

But that was precisely his mission, McChrystal responded, and it was enshrined in the Strategic Implementation Plan -- the execution orders for the March strategy, written by the NSC staff.

"I wouldn't say there was quite a 'whoa' moment," a senior defense official said of the reaction around the table. "It was just sort of a recognition that, 'Duh, that's what, in effect, the commander understands he's been told to do.' Everybody said, 'He's right.' "

"It was clear that Stan took a very literal interpretation of the intent" of the NSC document, said Jones, who had signed the orders himself. "I'm not sure that in his position I wouldn't have done the same thing, as a military commander." But what McChrystal created in his assessment "was obviously something much bigger and more longer-lasting . . . than we had intended."

Whatever the administration might have said in March, officials explained to McChrystal, it now wanted something less absolute: to reverse the Taliban's momentum, deter it and try to persuade a significant number of its members to switch sides. "We certainly want them not to be able to overthrow the government," Jones said.

So months of strategy review now seem to boil down to educating Obama on what armies do.  They want to win wars, and in this case that would mean defeating the Taliban.  I don't know what progressives think armies are supposed accomplish, probably nothing.  Apparently they exists to provide something for progressives to protest against.  It's not hard to imagine administration officials looking on in slack jawed amazement when the General put up his 'Defeat the Taliban" slide.

But it gets better.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, it gets even more entertaining.  After months of public agonizing over the request for more troops, Obama wonders why a surge can't happen faster.

Turning to Petraeus early in the Nov. 11 meeting, Obama said, "What I'm looking for is a surge." Obama had opposed the troop increase in Iraq as a U.S. senator and never fully embraced its apparent success as a candidate.

Petraeus, now the head of U.S. Central Command with responsibility for Iraq and Afghanistan, backed McChrystal's request for more troops. He was "only too happy" throughout the deliberations to share the similarities and differences between the two conflicts, Jones said.

What Obama wanted to know, Jones said, was: "Can we do it quicker? If we narrow the mission, and tighten the timelines, are there some effects we can achieve quicker?"

By happy coincidence a surge is just what General McChrystal had proposed.  And on an even happier note everyone agreed that a surge is just the ticket, although the mission has been refined.  Defeating the Taliban is implied.  Success can be claimed with something less.  Obama is not one to stick his neck out.

Obama then went around the room asking one question: Do you support the strategy?

"If they didn't support the decision, he was going to issue another decision" until there was unanimity, a senior administration official said. "But it was his assessment that everyone could and should get behind it."

Each of them did.

What luck!