Yesterday was a bonanza of foreign policy speeches, denunciations, one-ups, flip-flops, macho chest-bumping, and anti-terrorist fist-bumps. The race to the White House, we were reminded, is really a race to be commander in chief, and our candidates have very different views on how they would conduct the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (from now on, I urge journalists/columnists to order the wars as such). But one of our candidates is clearheaded on how to the win the war(s), while the other offers up, well, pretty much the same entree of muddleheaded policies we've seen over the past six years, only vaguer.
To get a sense of what I'm yapping about, read McCain's "strategy for victory" in Afghanistan. If that name sounds vaguely familiar, that's because it's the same one given to the plan President Bush laid out in November 2005, shortly before the worst bout of sectarian violence in Iraq. Ah, but McCain's plan in Afghanistan calls for a "comprehensive strategy." Oh, my bad (How come whenever anyone calls for a plan, they always call it a "comprehensive" or "multifaceted" strategy? Are there single-faceted strategies that lack comprehensiveness making the rounds in Washington? This is the kind of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo that is the bane of op-ed pages and policy papers everywhere).
Let's hear what our commander in chief called for back in November 2005:
"Our comprehensive strategy will help Iraqis overcome remaining challenges, but defeating the multi-headed enemy in Iraq -- and ensuring that it cannot threaten Iraq's democratic gains once we leave -- requires persistent effort across many fronts."
Notice anything, well, vague about that statement? McCain, on the other hand, is a man of specifics, a "straight-talker." Today he called Bush's earlier war plan on Iraq a "failed strategy" yet strangely decided to crib the same name for his own strategy on Afghanistan. Let's read McCain's plan.
"[W]e need an integrated, nationwide civil-military campaign that is focused on providing security for the population."
He goes on to call for a "multi-front plan" to boost aid to the Afghan government, before complaining of the lack of unified command there. Keep reading to get the full effect:
"Last year, the administration took a step in the right direction and appointed a war czar. But the situation in Afghanistan demands a separate Czar based in the White House, reporting directly to the president and dedicated to the sole mission of ensuring we bring the war in Afghanistan to a successful end."
Why stop there, senator? Why not appoint a czar for Kandahar, a czar for Kabul, and maybe a czar for the road linking the two cities? Yet McCain is just getting started. He also wants a "special presidential envoy" to sort out the Afghan mess (Am I the only person who doesn't know the difference between a "czar" and an "envoy"?). Plus, what's comprehensive about appointing czars and envoys -- isn't that by definition a piecemeal band-aid-like solution? And czars tend not to work, not in 19th century Russia, not in contemporary Washington, whether fighting drug lords, Bolsheviks or bearded guys strapped with bombs. And didn't we send a presidential envoy to Darfur almost two years ago? Yeah, that did wonders to tamper the violence there.
It gets vaguer. McCain goes on to say he will "put special focus on Pakistan" and "strengthen local tribes in the border areas." Put special focus on Pakistan? First, I have no idea what that means -- like his call for an "integrated" "multi-front" plan, this is just gobbledygook for "stay the course but make tweaks around the margins." This kind of beauty-contestant vagueness should hitherto be banned from all foreign policy speeches. Also, didn't Musharraf already sign an agreement a few years back aimed at strengthening local tribes in the border areas--isn't that why we're in the mess we're in now?
Frankly, I have a hard time believing anything that McCain says about foreign policy. He writes in Foreign Affairs that he is against a troop buildup in Afghanistan. Now he says he's for more troops. Then he goes and slams Obama for giving foreign policy speeches ahead of his foreign trips, as if he's diagnosing the car without lifting up the hood first. "In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy," McCain said in Albuquerque. OK, fair enough. But McCain, if you've been on all these fact-finding missions, while your opponent hasn't been to Mesopotamia in 918 days (don't you love the war McCain's goons, especially Randy Scheunemann, bust out specifics?), why is your national security strategy so larded in vague nonsense? I'm sure the senator has an answer -- nay, a comprehensive answer -- to that question.
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After 8 years of all flopping, Republicans are no doubt heartened by McCain's willingness to add some flipping to the mix.
Very few politicians will give a clear answer to any question. There are several reasons for this, not all of which have anything to do with honesty.
News Media is one reason. They love to twist words out of context to paint their own picture of anything any politician may say.
Being painted as a flip-flopper on an issue by the media or the opponent is another. The issues today are complicated and the circumstances are always subject to change. What may be a good option to apply to a problem today can be changed by circumstances to require a different approach tomorrow. World and national events are ever-changing and require a President to think on his feet.
However the public and a candidate's opponent will try to portray a fast thinker who is in tune with the changing environment as being a flip flopper, not someone who knows adjustments must be made with the times.
Excellent point. I am not a sports fanatic, but I know enough to figure out that in a football game, even though the strategic plan is to get to the goal line, sometimes you have to change your tactics from say, a ground game to an air game, and then maybe right back again - perhaps all in just the first half. Life is dynamic - and war is a part of life. First you have to identify the goal. Oops - maybe that is the first fallacy of GW's current strategy. In football, winning is getting across the goal line more than the other guy. In Iraq, what was the definition of winning? I'm sorry, I keep hearing John and George and Paul and Ringo (sorry, I just couldn't help myself) talk about winning and losing in Iraq so much, I must have missed the part where they explained how you know which we are doing.
Anyway, my point is that as circumstances change, then we must be prepared to adapt to those changes. That is not flip-flopping, that is common sense.
However, if this year you are Pro-abortion and next year you are Anti-abortion, depending on the popularity of the particular viewpoint at the time, THAT is flip-flopping.
McCain's broad labels leave me scratching my head because I just don't know what he means unless he would include some illustrative details. He always get applause with his "Victory" line but never gives a clue as to what HIS definition of "Victory" is. So it's all Bush III allover again. America: fool you twice, shame on..._..._...don't get fooled again.
Definitely "your bad" ... I'm not seeing anything but "single-faceted strategies that lack comprehensiveness making the rounds in Washington."
And I'd actually seen very little evidence of an ability to think strategically in previous administrations. But the talent has definitely been driven to the brink of "extinction" under the "leadership" of our current MBA President. Perhaps we should pay some credence to the accusation that the only institution that has caused more damage in the world than the Harvard Business School is the School of the Americas.
Listening to Amory Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado talk about the elements in a sane energy policy, and the rationale(s) for pursuing specific tactics on DemocracyNow today ... made me want to both weep and cheer. There are strategic thinkers out there, the ability is only "endangered," and January is coming.
McCain was calling for a surge strategy as used in Iraq, which I believe was successful. In my humble opinion, the one with an unclear stategy is Obama who seems to change his mind about Iraq daily, and has now scruubed his website of the surge criticisms. I'm expecting him to come back from Iraq and change his stance on the surge also. No wonder the PUMA movement is growing.
The "Surge" reduced violence.... it did not succeed in the fact that there is still not a stable Iraqi govt....
The "Surge" was given a kickstart by the commanders on the ground who recruited Iraqis to police themselves and then PAID them to work for us.....
The "surge" is supposedly over but there are 18000 more troops there than there was before the surge started and ended......
The SURGE was a failure.... O won't say that because all of you idiots out there still think that it worked.... O still maintains that we need to hold the Iraqis to the fire and let them stand up their govt and pay for themselves......
O still says that he will keep troops there to enforce and maintain peace.. I find that wrong... If we give Iraq back to Iraqis then what they do in their own country is their business..... if they want democracy then they will have it... if they want sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing... they will have that too....
Either way.. IT IS NONE OF OUR BUSINESS how the Iraqis wish to govern themselves....
Who will sit down on the other side of the table and sign the Articles of Surrender?
They have no Leader, they have no Army, they have no Country. We are shooting at an ever changing group of people.
We can"t win and we can"t lose. All we can do is to shoot at them until we get tired of the killing or we run out of money.
When we come home, we will neither have won nor lost. We will only be poorer and the subject of World scorn. America has lost its center.
"Round and round goes the falcon
The center can not hold.
The best lack all conviction,
the worst are full of passionionate intensity." -Yates
That's why i am voting for Obama. He is the first stratigic thinker we have heard in a long time. He is "best" and full of conviction, but not afraid to change his mind to fit the changing facts. As my husband put it when asked why he was voting for Obama at our caucus, "He is smart, educated, good, wise and wants to be President. It's hard to figure why he would take the ugly job, but give it to him quick before he changes his mind."
Agreed. I especially like how your husband put it!
McCain's new crew has new news. Eventually they will come out with the diagnosis of his issues. He
hasn't learned a thing and yet yearns to demonstrate his rightness. He thinks to show us the way to win a war. The last one he was in was fouled up by the bureaucrats. He never has caught on to the fact that you can not win a fight against guerillas with the press looking over your shoulder. To carry this program he has allied himself with our strategic oil interests. I wonder if it would be worth all the oil in Iran to build a wall along Afganistan's southern border.
We have been in Afghanistan how long? McCain has been in the senate even longer. What has he done so far?
Nothing but kiss Bush's butt....
Vote McCain and watch him kiss his own butt !
Lionel,
You're smart. How about starting a movement amongst reporters, whereas they'd bring some viable, equitable solutions to any one of the messes Americans are faced with cleaning up?
Then the Huffington bloggers could follow suit with same.
Who was it that said "You're either a part of the problem, or part of the solution?"
I'll start by making a conscious effort to use my own so as not to burden you.
If each of us made this effort, we could collectively re-new America virtually overnight!
McCain's plan in Afghanistan calls for a "comprehensive strategy.":
"Our comprehensive strategy will help Iraqis overcome remaining challenges"
I do notice that the plan for AFGANISTAN is so comprehensive that it is talking about the wrong country!
MCCAIN'S PROBLEM ISN'T VAGUENESS...
It's that there are no "wars" to be won. There are the criminal U.S. occupation of Iraq and the marginally legal U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. As I've said on Huffpost many times before, an occupation cannot be "won" or "lost" it can only be continued or discontinued. And if such a foreign occupation is resisted by local insurgents, it will remain a violent occupation for as long as it is continued. There is not any chance that the insurgents in either Iraq or Afghanistan are going to lay down their arms and simply "give up." Never, not ever. Hostile foreign occupation = perpetual violence.The Russians tried this before in Afghanistan for a decade. But hey, it didn't work before, it didn't work in Vietnam, so let's keep trying it over and over again....
I agree that for the most part he has been vague and attempting to be illusive on the tactics and strategy on the ground.
I think they are going to be exposed in debates.
Can someone please answer the following question for me: WHAT IS THE NEOCON DEFINITION OF SUCCESS IN IRAQ?!?!
I am SO tired of the neocons criticizing Obama for wanting to withdraw troops when "the surge is working, and the war is being won." If the neocons say that we are winning, they must be measuring our "success" by some standards, by some criteria, so you would think that they could use those criteria to formulate conditions that, if satisfied, would allow us to remove our troops from Iraq.
However, when they are posed with the question, "When can we leave?", all they do are repeat talking points such as "We must defeat the terrorist threat" or "We will listen to the generals on the ground,' both of which are vague and leave us with an open-ended commitment over an indefinite period of time (they also will simply repeat their favorite phrase, "The surge is working!", even though that doesn't even answer the question in a vague sense).
We need to stop allowing the neocons to give themselves a win by falsely touting that "The surge is working!" while criticizing Obama for wanting the withdraw the troops (despite the "fact" that "we are winning") and simultaneously giving no definite conditions under which they would feel comfortable removing the troops.
Be ready to hear Obama taking the same stance as those you are criticizing. He has erased his objections to the surge on his website, this weekend. I wouldn't be suprised to hear he supports it after his trip to Iraq. Especially since the polls show most americans believe the surge has worked. Oh wait, he wouldn't do that he promised to not be a typical politician.
What is a neocon, and why are you so hung up on them?
Where do you get your apparent inside info? Would like to study them, and do the comparisons.
Thank you.
Bravo, djk37! The very notion of "victory" in Iraq is absurd. An immediate US withdrawal would leave the Shiites in control of the central government of Iraq, and Baghdad. Staying for many years to come, at a cost of mulitple hundreds of billions of dollars, will result in the Shiites being in control of the central government of Iraq, and Baghdad. Jacques Chirac told Tony Blair, before the invasion, that this would be the result, and that it "should not be confused with a democracy".
When most Iraqis want all US forces withdrawn ASAP, and when most Iraqis believe their country will be as secure or even more secure, without the US troops, on what basis can continuing to stay against their will be regarded as "victory"?
Let us remember that John "Bomb Iran" McCain still thinks the Vietnam War could have been "won" - - meaning the artificially created government of "South" Vietnam could have been propped up for years further if only the US public had been willing to spend many more hundreds of billions of dollars on the adventure.
NOT ONLY IS WORKING BUT ***DID*** WORK...
They're saying now that the "surge is over" (although this hasn't gotten much play in the media). They're now supposedly "evaluating" the effects of the surge for the next couple of months. So the new mantra is "The surge worked." (Past tense.) I say fine, great, we won, let's declare victory and, having saved face, leave. NOW.
I have to disagree, Lionel.
McCain is not the least bit bit vague. He advocates with clarity his intention to remain in Iraq for 100 years in the model of N. Korea or Japan. He assuredly declines diplomacy with Iran on the principle that we don't talk to our adversaries (then who DO we talk to?). He is certain that he knows how to win wars despite that fact that he's never won one (he sat one out in a POW camp, though). And he persistently refuses to define what winning is.
McCain exercises the same stubborn certainty of his model, George W. Bush. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result. That is a portrait of McCain. And there is only one response to such madness.....
http://www.crasscommerce.com/product_info.php?products_id=390
"Doing the same thing over and over" again . . .
Reminds me of any old joke about the (insert your preferred butt of joke here) who stayed through two showing of a movie in the theater. When someone asked him why he watched it the second time, he replied "I wanted to see if it would end the same way as the first time."
Strategically better he be vague than exposed as confused.
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Posted July 16, 2008 | 08:54 AM (EST)