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And Obama's date for beginning the withdrawal? Conway struck a condescending tone: "When some American unit somewhere in Afghanistan will turn over responsibilities to Afghan forces in 2011, I do not think they will be Marines."
Rather, it is likely that Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen will be asking for still more troops before many more months go by. They would almost certainly calculate that Obama would see little option but to acquiesce once again or face the combined wrath of the military brass and the neocon opinion-shapers.
But didn't the generals, including Petraeus, promise Obama last November not to ask for still more? The generals probably had a good laugh, seeing the President as naà ¯ve enough to have thought he could eke leverage out of an implicit threat to cry foul if they backtracked on their assurances.
Did Obama really expect to be able to shout: "But don't you remember? You promised me last fall not to ask for any more; I've got it on tape."
Wooden-headedness
More troops will never be the answer to the Afghan quagmire. And yet politics, together with what historian Barbara Tuchman called "wooden-headedness," prevail. Tuchman pointed to what flows from "not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts":
"Once a policy has been adopted and implemented, all subsequent activity becomes an effort to justify it. " Adjustment is painful. For the ruler it is easier, once he had entered the policy box, to stay inside. For the lesser official it is better not to make any waves, not to press evidence that the chief will find painful to accept. Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant information "cognitive dissonance,' an academic disguise for "Don't confuse me with the facts.'"
No one should be surprised that Barbara Tuchman's daughter, Carnegie Foundation President Jessica Tuchman Mathews, has been inoculated against "cognitive dissonance." A January 2009 Carnegie report on Afghanistan concluded:
"The only meaningful way to halt the insurgency's momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban."
Obama is smart enough to know that, but he lacks the courage of his convictions. Teaching law or speed-reading a teleprompter does not a president make.
Eight hundred years ago, Thomas Aquinas observed that courage is the precondition of all virtue. In other words, you can be smart and well intentioned as all get-out; but you cannot be a real leader if you have no guts.
Sure it's hard; and no one is going to make it any easier for Obama to avoid caving in to the military once again. Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak complained to the BBC on Monday that NATO has neither provided enough troops, nor trained Afghan forces quickly enough. Adding salt to NATO/U.S. wounds, Wardak said, "We have never had enough forces that were required by the principles of counterinsurgency warfare."
To reach those multiples would require a major escalation, which privately is what many generals are hoping for. And remember, it was Gen. Petraeus, who "wrote" the update to the counterinsurgency manual.
Yet, wooden-headedness prevails. On Thursday, Adm. Mullen attempted to reassure the press about Afghanistan, stating that although "this is a very, very difficult year, we've got the inputs right" and "we're starting to move forward."
For his part, Defense Secretary Gates expressed full confidence in the current approach and predicted only "some adjustments and tweaks" during a planned December war review "to try and enhance what's going on."
God help us; doesn't he know what's going on?
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