The Geek brings several decades of beavering through the foreign policy archives (at least those so far declassified) of every post-World War II president from Truman through Clinton. This means he brings the vicarious experience of administrations covering the totality of the Cold War as well as the hot excrescences of Korea, Vietnam, assorted proxy conflicts, and interventions, both overt and covert of lesser sort around the world. This establishes a fair baseline for evaluating the conduct of war and foreign policy generally over the past nineteen months by Barack Obama and his "team."
The hot wash can be expressed quickly and accurately by two words: "inept" and "naive." One can add other terms, but to do so would be an exercise in redundancy.
It is tempting to compare Mr Obama with Bill Clinton as both men not only had zero experience with the US military, its defining culture, its world view, its imperatives, its strengths and weaknesses of doctrine or war fighting generally. Both men were notably uncomfortable in the presence of military personnel. Both projected a sense of defensiveness in the face of senior military commanders. Both men had tidy, lawyerly minds for whom the inherent messiness and unpredictability of war constituted anathema.
However the comparison would be unfair to both men so the temptation for comparison will be avoided with one exception. Mr Clinton obviously learned nothing during his eight years as Commander-in-Chief while Mr Obama apparently has learned very little in his nineteen months occupying the Oval.
This implies there is still hope for Mr Obama--if he experiences a learning curve in the future far, far steeper than the one shown to date.
A few considerations which escaped the strategic analysts of the NYT require attention.
One of the two wars "inherited" by Mr Obama had already been "won" as much as any such war can be said to by the day he took office. The much maligned "surge" pushed by George W. Bush accompanied by dramatic and positive changes in the tactics and operational doctrine employed in Iraq reduced the multi-party insurgency in Iraq to a level where it was thinkable to turn over security responsibilities to the Iraqis.
As some personnel on the ground argued at the time, by early 2009 the US combat forces had done all they reasonably could expect to do. Beyond that it was self-evident that the emerging political consensus headed and epitomized by the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, focused on nationalism and national sovereignty. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with its date certain for the ending of US combat operations as well as one requiring the removal of all US forces was a key goal for Maliki and his supporters.
Given the political dynamics on the ground as well as the reduced level of violence, the only realistic option for the US was the withdrawal of combat units. As should of been expected, senior US commanders wanted a longer draw down period than did the civilians in Washington (or Baghdad) so the Obama "compromise" of nineteen months was the best of many proposed de-escalation timeframes.
No one in the outgoing Bush administration and certainly not holdover SecDef Gates expected the aftermath of the SOFA and consequent draw down would be a period of peace, love, and flower power in Iraq. The anticipated political stasis and uptick in insurgent violence has been no more than what any observer well oriented as to time and place would have predicted.
The best any intervenor can hope for in an insurgent environment is to produce a social, political, and security context in which the indigenous actors can have a reasonable expectation of engaging in conflict resolution. Any historian of insurgency well recognizes the vast gulf between hostilities termination and conflict resolution. This historian would also grant that history demonstrates convincingly that outside forces can bring about hostilities termination--provided no one expects such to occur in any formal way--but has a very, very limited capacity to influence the lengthy political process of conflict resolution.
The takeaway from the American endgame in Iraq is simple. Mr Obama needed to do nothing but allow the dynamics established by his predecessor to play themselves out. And, that is all he did.
Of far greater importance is a question. What lessons (if any) did Mr Obama learn from the experience in Iraq and then apply to his other "inherited" war?
The most critical piece of context in evaluating Mr Obama's "leadership" on the Afghanistan war is the simple fact that the US had been using a counterproductive set of strategic and operational procedures since the fatal day when the Bush/Cheney administration opted to go for the gold of "nation-building" rather than to limit American efforts to the narrow goal of destroying al-Qaeda and its host, Taliban.
In addition to the intellectual bankruptcy of American strategy and operational doctrine, the war was fought with too few resources. Making this dismal reality even darker was the composition of the deployed forces--too many were conventional in nature and too few specialists in the requirements of interventionary war and its sub-set, counterterrorism.
The long, long period of Obama dithering over "whether Afghanistan" a year ago resulted finally in a decision to commit more troops. The dilemma of Afghanistan, particularly the problem of regaining the initiative from the resurgent Taliban and its cohorts, could not be solved merely by putting more combat boots on the ground.
In addition to more troops, particularly troops of the right training, organization, equipment, and doctrine, a new set of operational and tactical concepts were needed. So also was a specific statement of goal with an attendant definition of success (or victory, if you prefer a blunter but not more accurate term) and, so as to assure resources were correctly and effectively orchestrated, a theory of victory which took into proper account the nature of the human terrain of the Afghan population as well as the weaknesses of the insurgents.
Mr Obama did approve more troops, less than the number sought by the in-country commanders but more, a lot more, than desired by the "progressive" base on which Mr Obama's ambitious domestic agenda depended. The force augmentation was wrapped in some new operational and tactical concepts which focused on protecting Afghan civilians while carrying the war offensively to the insurgents in their strongholds.
The new approach along with the first reinforcements brought encouraging results. The number of enemy initiated contacts decreased. The number of friendly force initiated ones increased. An indication of the success of the new concepts was seen as well in the Taliban's increasing use of indiscriminate attacks on soft, civilian targets.
Still, without a clear statement of goal, the war effort in Afghanistan will continue to drift. Unless the US explicitly rejects the ill-considered notion of creating a modern, western-style nation-state in Afghanistan, there is minimal chance at best that Washington and Kabul will be able to sing from the same sheet of music.
Any government in Kabul whether headed by Hamid Karzai or some other figure will be resistant to the max on such issues as anti-corruption, an independent, non-Islamic judicial system, transparency in government--or efficiency for that matter. The Afghan political leader who places the abstract of "nation-state" above the reality of family, clan, tribe, or province does not exist, or, if he does, will not gain power.
The very best the US and its allies can hope for is an Afghan government which does not harbor, support, facilitate, or assist in any way proponents of violent political Islam. This was all we could have expected when the first bombs fell or the first made-in-the-USA boots hit the Afghan soil.
It is all we can expect now, hundreds of lives and billions of bucks later. The sooner the Smiley Guy in the Oval understands that this limited outcome is dictated by the nature of the human terrain in Afghanistan and adjusts both our public goal and concomitant definition of success, the better for us--and Afghanistan.
It will not matter how many more Americans and other foreigners die in Afghanistan. It will not matter how much more we spend. It will not matter how much we hector, implore, threaten, or cajole. The basic human reality of the Afghan population is found in a couple of simple, easy to grasp concepts.
Afghans want peace. They really don't care who provides it, government, Taliban, whoever, as long as peace comes to any and all valleys, villages, and cities.
Afghans are traditional, tribal, Muslim, and self-organizing. They are not Westerners. They have no historically informed central identity--although any and every Afghan political figure will invoke the totem of nationalism when necessary or merely convenient. They have no historically evolved idea of a separation between faith and government. They are not people with a historically derived need to look to a central authority, either political or judicial, for protection against the harms to which life is heir.
Our interest in Afghanistan as in Yemen, Somalia, or other collapsing states, starts and ends with the assurance that none will become the safety zones from which adherents of violent political Islam can mount attacks upon us or our allies. It is just that simple, blunt, and brutal.
Each and every of the venues where violent political Islam may take firm root are like Afghanistan in that each has leaders who invoke nationalism as a defense against domestic political opposition. Each and every venue is like Afghanistan in other salient ways as well. Each is traditional, tribal, Muslim, and self-organizing. None are even as "Western" as Iraq.
It is in its "Western" features that Iraq is the odd man out in recent or current experience. But, even there, nationalism is waved as a sovereign remedy against domestic opposition. And, even in Iraq, basic loyalties are oriented toward family, clan, tribe, language, and variety of Islam. Not even Iraq has the same semi-abstract concept of nation-state as permeates the West.
The single greatest lesson not yet learned by Mr Obama is the rest of the world is not like the US. (Arguably not even the US in the flesh is like the US as an image in Mr Obama's mind.) Other people in other countries do not celebrate a national identity above all others. Other people in other countries do not have a great faith in the capacity or will of a central government to solve problems, heal hurts, protect against all harm, or address all inequalities.
While any people in any country are quite willing to take free money, free gifts from the US or any other country rich, generous, and naive enough to give, this is not an anodyne for belief systems which facilitate or accept violent political Islam. Addressing poverty, social, and political inequalities or marginalization, ending misogyny, ending arbitrary justice, are all laudable in and of themselves. But, doing any or all of these will not assure violent political Islam will not take root.
This leads to the second greatest lesson not yet learned by Mr Obama. The US and other civilized countries are faced by a threat from violent political Islam. While there may be other proximate causes for attacks on the US such as this country's support of Israel, the basic reality remains--violent political Islam sees the US as the main enemy and will bend every effort toward attacking, weakening and, should Allah will, forcing the US back to the confines of its own borders.
These are the largest unlearned lessons. There are others, smaller perhaps but still important.
So, what has Mr Obama learned? He has learned that he can ride another man's decisions to success. He has learned he can fire a general with all the right stuff needed to fight the war in Afghanistan successfully. And, perhaps most important, he has learned the NYT will continue to sing his praises no matter how undeserved.
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