Obama 'Get Afghanistan Right' Campaign Ramps Up
While President-elect Barack Obama made constant pledges to extricate the United States from Iraq during the 2008 campaign, he took a different position on Afghanistan, which he elucidated to Time Magazine during the campaign:
I will send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan and use this commitment to seek greater contributions--with fewer restrictions--from NATO allies. I will focus on training Afghan security forces and supporting an Afghan judiciary. I will once and for all dismantle al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The solution in Afghanistan is not just military--it is political and economic. That is why I would also increase our nonmilitary aid by $1 billion. These resources should fund projects at the local level to impact ordinary Afghans, including the development of alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers. And we must demand better performance from the Afghan government through tough anti-corruption safeguards on aid.
Finally, we need a stronger and sustained partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO to secure the border, to take out terrorist camps and to crack down on cross-border insurgents. We should condition some assistance to Pakistan on their action to take the fight to the terrorists within their borders. And if we have actionable intelligence about high-level al-Qaeda targets, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot.
Now, Obama will face pressure from an organization ramping up to oppose any military escalation in that region. GetAfghanistanRight.com is a coterie of "writers, bloggers, and activists," who have joined forced to urge Obama to use diplomatic means to solve the problems in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, and will use this week to articulate their agenda:
A group of bloggers, writers and activists today launched "Get Afghanistan Right Week," the start of an ongoing campaign to oppose military escalation in Afghanistan. From January 12-18, they will post stories and relevant materials to publicize growing opposition to the idea that more troops will bring stability to Afghanistan or secure the United States. Participants argue that Afghanistan has become an un-winnable, deepening quagmire, and that escalation will drain resources needed for recovery efforts at home. The group will post their work on various high-traffic websites and aggregate their work on a new website, GetAfghanistanRight.com.
Participants include:* Brave New Films' Robert Greenwald
* Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation
* Alex Thurston and Jason Rosenbaum of The Seminal
* Howie Klein of DownWithTyranny!"With the economy continuing a severe decline and the international scene in turmoil, we absolutely cannot afford a hugely expensive troop increase in Afghanistan. The country desperately needs many of the reforms and programs proposed by the incoming Obama administration. But, an escalation in Afghanistan will cripple our ability to mitigate the effects of the recession while making that country less stable. The success of the President-elect's broader agenda depends on his ability to get us out of President Bush's wars," Robert Greenwald said.
[...]
"An escalation would drain resources that are vital to President-elect Obama's goals for an economic recovery, health care, and social justice at home, while impeding other critical international initiatives such as the Middle East Peace process and a regional diplomacy in South Asia. On national security grounds, a U.S. occupation would be counterproductive to the stated goal of defeating Al Qaeda. This week, I and others will blog on this issue to raise awareness about the need to oppose an escalation and to get Afghanistan right," Katrina vanden Heuvel said.
Over at the Washington Independent Spencer Ackerman has some thoughtful things to say about the advent of this organization, his second point being particularly astute, given the way the rhetoric on Afghanistan evolved over the campaign season:
This was probably inevitable, for two reasons.
First, the actual strategy employed in Afghanistan is rather murky -- as Gen. Petraeus' remarks to the U.S. Institute of Peace on Thursday indicate -- and, pending some strategy review from the Obama administration and U.S. Central Command, it's by no means clear why sending additional troops stands a greater chance of yielding success. For that matter: what is success in Afghanistan? The fact that there isn't an obvious answer is a sure indication of policy drift. This is something that isn't just a matter of concern for bloggers. Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Penn.) has been warning about the dangers of a military-only escalation, as has Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.).Second, for at least four years, there's been something of a dodge taken by liberals when discussing Afghanistan. To speak broadly, liberals have endlessly invoked the mantra that the real center of the war on terrorism is in Afghanistan, rather than in Iraq. But that's been a statement about Iraq, rather than Afghanistan. To put it a different way, liberals, I think it's fair to say, have discussed Afghanistan not on its own terms, but as a cudgel against the Iraq war. That's by no means monolithic. A bunch of progressives -- the Democracy Arsenal crew, Matt Yglesias, I daresay myself -- have written about Afghanistan (TWI sent me there last year) from that perspective of first-order-national security importance. But lots of us have been content to take the safe position of rallying to the more-popular cause of the Afghanistan war as a way of insulating ourselves to charges of excessive dovishness for opposing the Iraq war. Well, as he's said all along, Barack Obama will be calling that bluff.
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January 12, 2009 12:43 PM