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View Full Version : A Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Presidency?



bobdina
09-14-2009, 10:52 PM
Opinion with insights

The single most damning story about President Obama so far is one we know courtesy of his national security adviser, Jim Jones. Visiting the newly installed military commanders in Afghanistan in late June, Jones told General Stanley McChrystal that if he requested more troops any time soon, Obama would have a "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" (i.e., "What the f--") moment. Jones then, in an interview, made the claim--denied by everyone else involved--that military leaders had agreed that when the president earlier sent 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, "there would be a year from the time the decision was made before they would ever come back and ask for any more."

Okay. Jones is in way over his head. And, we gather, he'll likely be gone by Christmas. But it's still a remarkable statement by the president's national security adviser. Afghanistan is a war Obama supported repeatedly as a candidate. One of his first acts as president was to recommit to success in the struggle. Yet Jones was willing to portray his boss, both privately and publicly, as timid and fearful of tough decisions.

What's worrisome is that most of Obama's senior advisers seem to be on the same page as Jones. We hear that Rahm Emanuel is counseling the president to figure out how to get out of Afghanistan rather than how to win. He's convinced that this is Vietnam redux, and that his job is to prevent Obama from going down the path of LBJ. The president's grand poobah for Afghanistan and Pakistan,
Richard Holbrooke, who was shaped by his experiences as a young foreign service officer in Vietnam, has weighed in behind the scenes against McChrystal's coming request for more troops. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats, led by House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, are falling all over each other searching for the exits.

Of course this wing of the Democratic party--the dominant McGovern-Carter wing--has been wrong about just about everything in foreign policy over the last three decades. So maybe President Obama should look for guidance to another kind of Democrat. House Armed Services chairman Ike Skelton would be a good choice.

He is a 77-year-old Missourian in the Harry Truman tradition (indeed, his father was a good friend of Truman's). Last week, on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, Skelton put out a statement titled "Americans Must Not Forget Why We Are In Afghanistan":

America's security depends on our success in denying al Qaeda breathing room to plot future attacks on the U.S. and our allies. .  .  . Tragically, the attacks of September 11, 2001, were not al Qaeda's first acts of war against the United States. The same plotters were behind the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center, the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, and the attack on the USS Cole in the year 2000. And given the opportunity, al Qaeda would attack us again. We must keep al Qaeda on the run, as we have since 9/11.Skelton reminded the president that "Now is not the time to lose our resolve. We must give our forces the time and resources they need to show progress in the fight against the enemies responsible for the attacks of 9/11."

General McChrystal and his boss, General David Petraeus, with the support of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, are about to request additional forces needed to prevail in Afghanistan. We trust the president will approve their request--and if higher to lower risk options are presented, that he will choose the lowest risk option. That is, the option most likely to produce decisive results the most quickly.

The president must understand that this war is eminently winnable. He must understand what would be the consequences of retreat from the theater from which we were attacked eight years ago--for Afghanistan, for Pakistan, and around the world. Emanuel might want Obama to avoid being LBJ. But if Obama pulls out he will be Jimmy Carter--a post-9/11 Jimmy Carter. Not a recipe for a successful presidency.

This decision really shouldn't be based on politics. Obama should, as Ike Skelton suggests, remember 9/11. Previous generations of Americans remembered the Alamo and the Maine and Pearl Harbor. Surely this generation of Americans can remember 9/11 and act on the memory by winning the war in Afghanistan.

It's up to Barack Obama. Surely he doesn't want to be remembered for a Whisky Tango Foxtrot presidency?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/938sdxzy.asp?pg=2

nastyleg
09-14-2009, 11:00 PM
Two thumbs up on this article and a big pat on the back to you Bob for posting it.

Reactor-Axe-Man
09-15-2009, 11:48 AM
If this is true, it sounds like The Big O was going to commit the 21K merely to fulfill his campaign rhetoric, but wasn't much interested in actually, you know, winning the fight. Hence the 'understanding' that military commanders should shut the fuck up for a year or so. The policies of restricting the use of artillery/close air in support of troops merely augment this conclusion. O doesn't want to be an Afghanistan (I don't blame him for that, the place is/was/and will be forever a mess), sees it as a mess he inherited from his predecessor and therefore somehow not his problem, and wants out as soon as politically possible.

That he even spoke of supporting operations there was merely a shallow effort to portray himself as being 'tough foreign policy' to address a well-earned reputation as milksops that the Democrats have, as he found himself trapped in the rhetorical hole Democrats and the Left have been digging since 2003 - that Afghanistan was the real fight and Iraq a costly distraction. By election time 2008, Iraq was relatively stable and no one was mentioning it much (to avoid giving McCain ammunition by being right about the surge when so many - including The Big O - were wrong), so O needed to talk tough on something he had no desire to be a part of. Now he's stuck with it. Unfortunately, rather than manning up and doing what was right, he's going to let the place wither on the vine. Casualties are good for him - they cause the public to question our presence there and eventually give him an out for withdrawal.

Sucks to be the guys there, he may be thinking, but hey, they volunteered, right?

ghost
09-15-2009, 02:50 PM
Thanks for sharing, Bob. At least Skelton is standing behind our military leaders.

nastyleg
09-15-2009, 10:26 PM
gotta agree reactor big O is a joke.