Is Pres. Obama's Afghan decision already a done deal?
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Pres. Obama plots future of the Afghan Mission.
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Pres. Barack Obama must sell base on unpopular war in Afghanistan
In his speech to the nation next Tuesday, President Barack Obama must persuade supporters who thought they’d voted for an anti-war president to back a plan expected to roughly double the number of troops in Afghanistan from when he took office.
Obama’s rise as a national political figure was fueled by his early opposition to the war in Iraq, which distinguished him from primary foes who’d initially backed the invasion and which quickly won him the support of millions who had grown weary of that conflict. While he repeatedly talked on the campaign trail about directing more resources to the fight in Afghanistan, many of his supporters took that rhetoric primarily as a critique of President George W. Bush’s military priorities.
“It was an excellent campaign line for Obama to say, ‘We took our eye off Afghanistan and fought the wrong war in Iraq,’” said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department South Asia specialist now affiliated with the Middle East Institute. “The implications of what he was saying I don’t think registered on people…..They didn’t see it.”
“I don’t think there was a consciousness in the electorate that, if we elect Obama, we’re sending 50,000 troops to Afghanistan,” said Kurt Volker of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “It wasn’t hidden, but it wasn’t evident to voters who were focused on other issues."
In major foreign policy speeches in August 2007 and July 2008, Obama did talk of sending “at least two” more U.S. combat brigades — made up of between three thousand and four thousand troops each — to Afghanistan. However, the 21,000 troops he has already sent far exceed any troop increase he discussed publicly before the election, even before the 30,000 or so more he’s expected to announce he’ll add to that number in Tuesday’s speech.
Volker said part of the reason Obama’s campaign talk of shifting focus and troops to Afghanistan didn’t sink in with voters was because such a mission didn’t seem terribly dangerous to the public when the upstart candidate, and many of his Democratic colleagues staked out that position during the early stages of last year’s campaign when Iraq was the war that occupied the lion’s share of media coverage and the public’s attention.
“The situation in Afghanistan now appears to be definitely worse than it was then,” said Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who supports a troop increase. “What seemed to be a steady course, responsible and not that hard last year, now seems to be a big gulp.”
As Obama prepares to unveil his Afghan strategy to a military audience at West Point on Tuesday, it’s his most loyal political supporters who need the most convincing.
A USA Today/Gallup Poll released Wednesday showed slightly more Americans supporting an escalation of the war than supporting a decrease in troop levels. But the survey also shows support for sending more troops comes largely from Obama’s political opponents, while those who voted for him and who will be critical to reelecting Democrats in Congress next year are deeply skeptical.
The new poll found 57 percent of Democrats favor beginning a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, while just half as many, 29 percent, favored a hike in troop levels. Republicans were far more likely to back Obama’s expected call for 30,000 or so additional troops, with 72 percent backing some increase, while just 17 percent want to start pulling out.
The White House has concluded that making a troop increase more palatable to Democrats means framing it in terms liberals are more comfortable with, as just one part of a much bigger strategy involving diplomatic, multi-national and civilian aid efforts. At the same time, he has to reassure Democrats who worry that the war, now entering its ninth year, will or has become a quagmire.
“This is a complex decision. It does not just depend on what number we put in there,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” "One of the things the president has spent probably the most amount of time on [is] not just trying to figure out how many we get in but how we get our troops out.”
Gibbs added, “The president will ... underscore for the American people that this is not an open-ended conflict, that we will not be here forever, that we have to pass this on to the Afghans.”
Many analysts say that if Obama can’t get most Democrats on board with a troop increase, the consequences could be politically serious both for the Democratic Party’s 2010 electoral prospects and the president’s broader agenda.
“I think it threatens his domestic agenda pretty substantially, unless he takes the people along with him,” said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas. “That’s what a lot of other Democrats like [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi are worried about right now. ... He risks alienating large chunks of the Democratic Party.”
The danger is particularly acute for Democratic members of Congress who need a robust turnout from their core constituencies next November to stave off the losses the party in the White House usually suffers in such elections.
“War is an emotional issue,” Buchanan said. “In the midterms especially, some of those people who are conflicted may sit on their hands ... All those things make it a sticky wicket for Obama.”
Some lawmakers such as Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.) are trying to sell wary Democrats on a troop increase by coupling it with a promise to hike taxes to pay for the additional cost, which could be on the order of $30 billion a year.
In the past, Obama has promised that all supplemental war funding would be offset with budget cuts or revenue hikes. However, the White House seems to be giving a chilly reception to the idea of a broad-based tax hike to pay for additional troops.
“I have been in no meetings where there’s been a war tax discussed,” Gibbs told CNN Wednesday.
While many pundits see the Afghan situation as a likely loser politically for Obama, at least in the short term, a few see more promise than peril in the president being forced to rely on Republicans for support.
“I don’t see why that isn’t a complete win-win domestic political equation for him,” said Tom Donnelly, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “Obama’s got an immense upside in this, if you ask me. With all the questions about whether he’s forceful or decisive enough, he’s got a real opportunity to get his mojo back. There’s nothing like victory to make a politician popular.”
Donnelly said he thinks rumblings from Democrats about blocking any escalation are essentially empty threats. “Are you trying to tell me that a Democratic Congress that couldn’t cut off funding on George Bush’s awful Iraq war is actually going to pull the plug on [Obama]?” Donnelly asked.
If the Obama surge focuses at first on limited areas in Afghanistan, such as the Kandahar region, nervous congressmen could actually be able to point to some progress on the ground before they face voters next November. “By the middle of next year, we ought to be able to see something for our effort,” Weinbaum said.
However, one analyst of public sentiment in wartime warned any progress is likely to be accompanied by an increase in American casualties.
“If [Obama’s] going to be more aggressive militarily, it means more Americans are going to die and that’s the thing that moves public opinion more than anything else,” said John Mueller, a professor of political science at Ohio State University.
Mueller noted that once Americans give up on a war, it’s difficult to get them back on board even when there’s compelling evidence of a turnaround on the ground.
“Once people are turned off on a war they tend to stay turned off,” Mueller said. “That’s what happened in Iraq. Even when it became clear that the war was decidedly going better, the numbers of people who supported it didn’t move much.”
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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Google Maps
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