Tragic mistake

The mounting news over the past weeks has come to a head, and President Obama is expected to announce this evening: America will send a few more tens of thousands of military personnel to Afghanistan. Over these weeks, I have felt myself becoming sadder and sadder, more and more disappointed in our President, who I had hoped would have the sense and the courage to disengage militarily. Bob Herbert, in his op-ed column, "A Tragic Mistake," in today's New York Times, expresses my opinion better than I could:

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan....
    More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for which we have complete records. But the military is now able to meet its recruitment goals because the young men and women who are signing up can’t find jobs in civilian life. The United States is broken—school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding—yet we’re nation-building in Afghanistan, sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each.
    I keep hearing that Americans are concerned about gargantuan budget deficits. Well, the idea that you can control mounting deficits while engaged in two wars that you refuse to raise taxes to pay for is a patent absurdity. Small children might believe something along those lines. Rational adults should not.
    ...The tougher choice for the president would have been to tell the public that the U.S. is a nation faced with terrible troubles here at home and that it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago. But that would have taken great political courage. It would have left Mr. Obama vulnerable to the charge of being weak, of cutting and running, of betraying the troops who have already served. The Republicans would have a field day with that scenario.
    ...We still haven’t learned to recognize real strength, which is why it so often seems that the easier choice for a president is to keep the troops marching off to war.

Mr. Herbert states flatly that this "will prove to be a tragic mistake." I am afraid that he is right.

See others' opinions

On The Caucus, The New York Times's blog of politics and government, find today, under "Full Circle for the Commander in Chief," other readers' responses to the questions:

What would you like to hear from the president tonight? Will his supporters be open to persuasion? How can he best convince you that he is proceeding on the right path in Afghanistan?

    You're invited to share your thoughts there, too, if you can manage to do so before comments are closed.

I myself was able to register a comment on the Caucus blog. I didn't read all of the comments (there were hundreds), nor did I literally count the pros and cons, but I got a sense that there were five or more comments against sending more troops than comments in support of doing so.
    I think that all of the high-level military and political planning (summarized by President Obama on Tuesday evening) dwells in Fantasyland. When it comes to those ancient tribal cultures, we are utterly foolish to think we can establish in them any lasting structures to our liking (without far, far more dedicated resources than we remotely begin to have or could remotely hope to find support for).
    Don't say it, for I know: I shouldn't take all of this so seriously.

America's angry "debaters"

This morning, a friend brought to my attention Newsweek's series of pictures ("of angry 'debaters'," as he said) from the recent town hall meetings ("Town Hall Face"). My friend commented, "The town halls are a true hallmark of today's American democracy: pure, direct, misinformed, and opinionated." And he asked, "Who subverted this direct form of democracy, after the indirect parliamentary form had long been chained by interest groups?"
    Well, I wonder whether part of the answer lies with the 1988 Willie Horton ad campaign against Michael Dukakis on behalf of George H. W. Bush for President. During that campaign, George W. Bush and Karl Rove received their most intense tutoring from Lee ("You gotta go negative") Atwater¹ (not that Rove hadn't already learned and practiced much of the art). (I read about this in two books: Molly Ivins's and Lou Dubose's Shrub: The Short [unfortunately not short enough] but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, and Carl Cannon's Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The Architect of George W. Bush's Remarkable Political Triumphs.)
    Not to exempt Democrats, but no one among their ranks comes to mind who was or is even half as committed to going negative as Atwater and Rove were.
    And possibly Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America" might have been significantly involved. At any rate, that Congress seemed to shelter and feed hugely subversive figures like Tom DeLay. And (my friend mentioned interest groups) I don't believe that lobbyists had ever experienced anything like the golden age that began to flourish about then (despite Ike's January 17, 1961 speech about the "military-industrial complex").
    I think that the willful exploitation of certain "party bases," along with a policy that any means are okay so long as the end to be achieved is necessary surely influenced what has come to pass with respect to "America's angry 'debaters'." (For Rove and DeLay, the end was for the Republican Party to control all three branches of government, not to mention the media, to be led, of course, by Fox News [sic].)
    And when did Rush Limbaugh arise? Ah, 1988!
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1. Whether Atwater's deathbed "I'm sorry" for the Willie Horton ad was sincere or a last-minute effort to try to win eternal bliss, I guess we'll never know, unless all things get revealed to the Elect someday in heaven.