[R-G] AEI and Afghanistan: Listen to Petraeus!

[Anthony Fenton]

AEI and Afghanistan: Listen to Petraeus!
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 02/19/2009 @ 09:23am
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/409838/aei_and_afghanistan_listen_to_petraeus_

Across the left and among progressives, there is angst about President  
Obama's decision to add 17,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan. Among  
neoconservatives and the right -- judging from a session that I  
attended yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute -- there is  
angst of another kind. They're worried that Afghanistan is a "war that  
we may walk away from," as Danielle Pletka, AEI's vice president for  
foreign defense policy studies put it. And they're very worried that  
the Obama administration doesn't have the stomach to pursue "victory"  
there. Lets hope they're right.

True, Obama said he's ordering the dispatch of 17,000 troops to  
bolster the 36,000 US forces already in country. But there's lots of  
room for a new policy to emerge, since virtually every part of the US  
national security apparatus is conducting a review of the war,  
including one led at the White House by Bruce Riedel, who served as  
Obama's top adviser on Afghanistan-Pakistan during the campaign. There  
are few doves doing the reviews, but it isn't at all clear that  
they'll endorse the "long war" strategy pushed by General McKiernan,  
the US commander in Afghanistan, who's predicting that he'll need tens  
of thousands more troops who'll have to fight a war that might last  
five years or more. And, at AEI at least, there is great concern that  
the left and anti-war Democrats will convince Obama not to fight that  
war.

First to speak at AEI was Tom Donnelly, the thinktank's top defense  
analyst and former deputy executive director of the Project for a New  
American Century. (PNAS, of course, was the hawkish combine that  
pushed hard for the war in Iraq in the 1990s, with the backing of Dick  
Cheney, Doug Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz.) Donnelly complained that  
public opinion and "elite opinion" are rapidly shifting against the  
war. The notion that Afghanistan is "Obama's Vietnam" is gaining  
currency, spreading from the left into the mainstream media. And he  
noted that polls show that only 34 percent of Americans support an  
escalation in Afghanistan, while an equal number supports getting out.  
The war will be a "critical test for Barack Obama," he said, who will  
be "tested by the hard-core left in the Democratic Party."

Donnelly also slammed the Obama team for "the dumbing down of  
Afghanistan strategy." He was sharply critical of reports that the  
administration is planning to announce limited goals in the war,  
breaking with the Bush administration's plans for imposing democracy  
and American-style values on that ultraconservative state. He  
criticized Obama for the apparently unpardonable sin of wanting " to  
reclaim a larger role for the White House and civilian decision- 
making" on war, seemingly alarmed that the military, and General  
Petraeus in particular, won't be getting carte blanche. Donnelly also  
doesn't like the idea of using diplomacy, economic development, and  
other aspects of US influence. "This administration has a theory of  
smart power, which is an attempt to demilitarize policy," he said. The  
civilians at the Defense Department, he said, seem to have "no clear  
commitment to victory in Afghanistan."

Donnelly said that the 17,000 troops Obama has authorized are only a  
"down payment" for a much larger force needed to win.

Next up was Gary Schmitt, AEI's director of advanced strategic studies  
and, from 1997 to 2005, the executive director of the Project for a  
New American Century. Schmitt's focus was NATO, and he bemoaned that  
aside from the US, the UK, Canada, and the Netherlands, our allies  
aren't willing to fight. They're just doing their alliance duty, he  
said. "Most of our allies are there because they think it's a good  
thing to do for the alliance," he said. "They're not dedicated to the  
idea of Afghanistan as a key strategic mission." Still, their role is  
useful, he noted, since if they left they'd be hard to replace with US  
forces. And it is good for NATO. "Fifteen years ago, you'd get a big  
belly laugh if you said that today they [NATO] would be involved in a  
ground war in Asia."

The final speaker was Fred Kagan, one of the principal architects of  
the 2007-2008 surge in Iraq and a former professor of military history  
who is now a resident scholar at AEI. Like Donnelly, Kagan was upset  
at what appear to be efforts by Obama and Co. to "define success  
down," that is, to come up with drastically limited goals for the war.  
He ridiculed what he called "Holbookian hyperventilating" about how  
hard the task in Afghanistan is, referring to Obama envoy Richard  
Holbrooke's recent comments that the Afghan war is a lot harder than  
Iraq.

Most importantly, perhaps, Kagan slammed those who believe that  
solving the Afghan crisis means dealing with Pakistan and viewing the  
war in a regional context that includes India, Iran, and other  
countries. That's likely to be the core of Obama's strategy, but Kagan  
was having none of it. "I question the truism that success in  
Afghanistan is contingent on success in Pakistan," he said.

They key question, said Kagan, is whether Obama will do what Petraeus  
wants, or will he listen to those pesky liberals and critics. "Is  
President Obama going to listen to the military commander who turned  
one war [Iraq] around. or is he going to listen to other advice?"

To make sure that Obama does the right thing, according to AEI's  
catechism, next week the thinktank is bringing in none other than John  
McCain, according to Pletka, who will speak at AEI. It appears that  
McCain -- who, umm, lost decisively to Obama -- will take a strong  
stand for AEI-style victory in Iraq, making a frontal challenge to the  
Obama administration as a sort of official spokesman for the hawks.

Here's AEI's breathless preview of McCain's appearance next Wednesday:

     The narrative of last year's U.S. presidential election focused  
on two different wars: in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democratic candidates,  
including President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of  
State Clinton, argued that the Iraq war had distracted from the more  
important fight in Afghanistan. Now in office, President Obama finds  
his administration at the center of a hot debate on the future of the  
war in Afghanistan, and the United States at a strategic crossroads.

     Will the Obama administration support a counterinsurgency  
strategy in Afghanistan designed to achieve meaningful long-term  
stability, or will success be defined in much more limited terms,  
saving the United States from a difficult reassessment and retooling  
for which there is little appetite? Most importantly, can the U.S.  
mission--with or without additional troops--succeed without a new  
strategy on the ground that confronts the growing Afghan insurgency?

     Three and a half years after his seminal AEI address on "Winning  
the War in Iraq," Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) will deliver a major  
policy address at AEI on the path to victory in Afghanistan.