At a certain point the definition of "war" becomes the issue, like the definition of empire. When people speak of "preventive war" or "Bush's wars," they're speaking conventionally. I agree that we're "trapped" in the GME, but we were already "trapped" long before Operation Iraqi Freedom, which, as I've frequently argued, can be viewed as the deferred continuation/completion of Operation Desert Storm. OIF played out very much on the basis of violation of the terms that ended or suspended ODS, and according to the concept of the "turn to Baghdad" envisioned and rejected in 1991 by Bush 41: Fraying of coalition under exceeded mandate, difficult and expensive occupation, etc. We've been trapped in the GME ever since we replaced the Brits at the crossroads of civilization, and as Guardians of the Sacred Fount of Easily Accessible Fossil Fuels.

So, in that sense, Bush had relatively little choice on a strategic level. Invading Iraq was for him and us a path of least resistance to cope with a geopolitical imperative. We might imagine some other means for dealing with it, some other stratagem more supportive of a transnational consensus, but there would have been no guarantee that it would have been more effective or in the end less violent, and, anyway, it's not where the U.S. is or was historically. In this phase of world history, we seem to be a reactionary and defensive power, not yet ready to give up national ownership of a transnational project whose terms we at the same time are unwilling to accept fully.

Obama represents a compensation toward a transnationalist resolution of the national-transnational contradiction. As we can see - as we saw with Bush in reverse - as soon as one side begins to receive greater emphasis, the forces on the other rise up with renewed vigor and apocalyptic desperation. Bush was seen as a mortal threat to progressivism-transnationalism. Now Obama is seen as a mortal threat to conservatism-nationalism. What's true is that Americanism faces a mortal threat, but the name of that mortal threat is Americanism.

@ contra:
I don't claim to have followed the issue of rendition (or "extraordinary rendition") very closely, but I do know that within days of being inaugurated O signed an Executive Order intended to put an end to "rendition for torture" and other practices he and others had long criticized. Whatever the Azar case is, it's not sending off a guy to an Egyptian dungeon to be dealt with by sadists. So, lots of things could be happening, or a few things, or one or two things. We don't know, but the evidence is that O Administration policy is anti-torture, by us or anyone, and that if anything tangible emerged to contradict this position substantively, then they'd pay a heavy price.

As for the uses of rendition otherwise, there are many circumstances in which states will want their citizens back, or we'll want to send them back. It occurs between states of the United States.

But my disagreement with your rendition of Obama's supposed continuity of Bush era policies didn't rest on detainee treatment.

those innovative policies that had, against all odds, preserved the country from some vastly greater version of 9/11, for so long.

I've seen no evidence that AQ had the odds in its favor on the goal of accomplishing some vastly greater version of 9/11.

Under cover of changed rhetoric, the Bush Doctrine is very much in force; we are fighting preventive wars (I’ve always considered “preemptive” a euphemism);

We're discussing attempts to wind the Bush wars down somehow, and O is criticized from the Neocon right for his reluctance to bomb Iran. What other preventive wars are out there for us to fight?

The beginning point of this whole discussion is the supposedly scandalous conduct of O sending troops to a theater from which he hopes to withdraw. Any problems in Iraq will be attributed by neocon critics to his insistence on timely withdrawal.

we are expanding our military presence in the Greater Middle East;

On balance? Including Iraq reductions? I wonder if that's so. Depending on how you define GME, our presence is already so substantial, it's hard to get an overview.

Gitmo is still open;

Much to O's chagrin. I always saw this issue as overblown anyway.

there is more forcible interrogation of terrorists (through rendition);

Evidence for that? I believe the opposite is the case.

Electronic surveillance is expanded, too;

How so?

the CIA is assassinating enemy leaders in greater numbers than ever – ignoring collateral civilian damage.

Drone strikes have certainly gone up, especially lately, though I'm not sure that that quite equates with "assassinating enemy leaders in greater numbers." And "ignoring collateral... damage" is an exaggeration. I believe it would take around a century or two of drone strikes at their current high rate to get near the collateral damage of Operation Iraqi Freedom alone.

I could go on and on. McCain, were he elected, could not get away with all this – not to such extent.

McCain would have been elected (by a different country than we actually were, apparently) with the expectation of a more "muscular" foreign policy, though on detainee treatment issues I don't think there was much daylight between him and O, and he might very well have made it even more of a personal mission to reverse certain Bush Era policies, against opposition within his own political coalition.

fuster wrote:

but he was good and engaged.

The Woodward portrayal comes across to me, anyway, as "very engaged." Which means there's no need to argue this point, since the next round of criticism will be that he was over-engaged, micro-managing even. Should have just left the war to the professionals and focused on something he understands like socialite Alinskyism.

miguel cervantes wrote:

He fired McKiernan, although he asked for roughly the same number of troops as McChrystal,

The reporting is that McKiernan was fired because he was a "languid" "old school" type, without much political support, who had spent too much time fighting the Bush-mandated holding action, making do without, while an "A-team" was in the wings, including McChrystal, who was supposed to be the very model of the modern American general.

None of which has anything to do with the phony, melodramatic charge that you initially made, that McKiernan was fired for being "honest." I think that the excitable Ralph Peters may have made an argument along those lines, attempting to cast McKiernan as a Shinseki type, in a way that served Peters' explication of his own extremely skeptical and pessimistic views on the Afghan Surge.

Now, McKiernan himself may have spoken further on this subject, and filled in the difference between what he thought was doable with 30,000 additional troops and what the Petraeus/McChrystal plan attempts to do with them. That's why I asked what you were basing your criticisms on. You still haven't said.

@ contra:
I agree that what you describe stinks, but I'm not sure that what you describe is what's occurring.

@ miguel cervantes:
"AQ would have an emirate" is an assumption. No one knows precisely what would have happened without the Surge, and it's too early to say that the Surge was more than a temporary political success for the U.S. - a serviceable framework for withdrawal and "decent interval."

What's your evidence for the notion that McKiernan was fired for "too much honesty"? If his primary failing was too much honesty, then you're calling those who replaced him dishonest. What do you believe he advocated that all of the others dishonestly rejected? What's your reason for believing it?

Avoiding LBJ's fate is more what the Obami are about. It's one thing to be stuck with a war - or a strategy - that you don't believe in. It's another thing to let it consume and destroy your presidency.

@ contra:
The statements from the Administration regarding Iraq do not amount to a validation of the Iraqi enterprise as a whole. The President in particular has made it clear that he stands by his early opposition to the war. The situation of '09-'10 looks like a relative victory compared to '05-'06, but that's far different from saying, "Boy, Iraq was great, let's do something like that again and sooner rather than later."

Specifically, the Iraq Surge provided some degree of political cover for our drawdown. How much was actually accomplished on the ground by the Surge per se is also debatable, though I don't want to underrate the unique value of putting a stamp on a development - having a narrative that may or may not truly explain what took place, but seems to.

Utilizing and backing Petraeus hardly equates with a full endorsement of the heroic neocon narrative of Iraq. It could be that all O reasonably hopes for from Petraeus, in the best of circumstances, is an Afghanistan inhospitable to AQ (or whatever's left of it), an acceptable framework for withdrawal, and shared responsibility for the aftermath. St. Petraeus + conservatives "on the other side" is a much more difficult political proposition than having Petraeus on his own side, or, at worst facing a Petraeus down the line whose halo has been tarnished by reality.

When you call the Iraq decision "infinitely debatable," that's like calling it "not debatable," which is closer to my position. We discussed Iraq in some detail subsequent to the President's address early last month. Beginning here: https://ckmacleod.com/2010/09/01/the-iraq-syndrome/

Also extensively in the comment thread (amidst lots of cross-discussion) here:
https://ckmacleod.com/2010/09/03/no-alternatives/

contra wrote:

A meltdown because his left base would be pissed with him?

I don't know that an Obama supporter would accept your rendition of his record, but it's at least arguable that maintaining the space to do all of those things of which you approve required some give and take, including but not limited to Afghanistan.

In any event, the Woodward material suggests it was a much more complex situation than care and feeding of the far left. If O had thought that the Petraeus/McChrystal/Mullen first draft was terrific, and his only problem was keeping his "left base" bubbling over with glee, then it would be a weak excuse. But he apparently thought the 1st draft was terrible - a plan which six years later would have the U.S. at about the same position we were in pre-escalation. He's depicted as insisting on a plan that his entire team, including the generals, could support and commit to supporting.

If the policy was really worthy of moral condemnation of the sort coming from Krauthammer et al, what would that say about McChrystal, Mullen, Petraeus? Speaking of them, there's also a subtext of O being determined to maintain control over the policy, and to be sure his generals knew it, alongside a rather unflattering portrait of Petraeus's arrogance, or at least of one or two comments that read as dangerously arrogant, but I don't like building too much on this material, because Woodward's method sometimes seems like gossip and possibly re-contextualized loose talk turned into a second draft of history. Still, if you don't like Obama and are opposed to his policies, and have a high opinion of the good intentions and trustworthiness of his other opponents, it's easier for you to minimize the idea of his stature being diminished, of his coalition fragmenting, of his having to construct a new base, and, by the way, of his program being impaired if not destroyed. Consider how close he came to not being able to pass Obamacare, and how much that whole effort cost him and his party. It's a bit much to expect him and his supporters to be as nonchalant about such matters.

Actually, you're both right. Unfortunately, it's unattainable. All you can ever achieve is some greater or lesser probability of it being used to launch attacks, and lowering the probability doesn't do you much good if the attempt to achieve it tends to increase the probability of some other place being used to launch similar attacks, and also happens to cause greater harm than any such attacks themselves.

@ fuster:
That's one reason I refer to "Woodward's Obama" - who is depicted as chiefly wanting to get us out of Afghanistan without blasting apart the US government and military. The real Obama, if taken on his own terms, or on the basis of his public pronouncements and actions, may be someone or -thing different.

What's clear is that the "withdrawal date" is a signpost, a date for re-assessment as removed from the election calendar as you can get. As it draws near, unless something has greatly changed between now and then, different forces will presumably enter the struggle over defining it, and on determining the shape of our further commitment.

contra wrote:

As to what Obama should have announced instead – the winning model exists: Bush. Obama is now taking credit for Bush’s victory in Iraq. Fine – that’s politics. At least he knows now that it is a victory.

It's a criticizeable presumption that the Iraq model translates to a sufficient degree. And you might want to "stay tuned" on Iraq anyway. Rightly or wrongly, the view that Iraq resulted in a victory worth having is - or was last I checked - a minority view. What Obama really sees as "victory" - perhaps: reducing our commitment without taking immediate ownership of a total/expanding catastrophe - may not be the same thing that others want to celebrate.

contra wrote:

To announce a fixed withdrawal date in advance is disastrous.

No, that's an unproven assumption. Look, I criticized the withdrawal date the moment it was announced on much the same basis that you and the neocons are criticizing it. From the perspective of Woodward's Obama, who does not share your analysis of the Afghanistan surge's prospects, the disaster is already baked in: It's a choice among disasters. In his view, a unified and bipartisan political coalition in support of a less-than-pure strategy is better than a high risk/low odds/politically unsustainable strategy that may amount to tilting after a strategic-tactical windmill. Among the high risks, incidentally, is precisely the appearance of a blank check on an Asian land war. The withdrawal date is Obama's refusal of the blank check.

It's true that in establishing the "begin withdrawal date" Obama indicated that "winning is the only thing" was not his operational calculation. It's true that that's a less than ideal way to fight a war. But the situation and the war and the enemy are already far worse than ideal. Furthermore, if you are excluding political calculations, then you are not thinking strategically: You are imagining a war fought in fantasy or a Petri dish. Whatever the strategic/tactical impact of the July 2011 "begin withdrawal" signpost, it would have to be balanced, in the view of Woodward's Obama, against the strategic/tactical impact of political meltdown in the U.S.

Go ahead and criticize the strategy and tactics on their own terms. What's "unwise and contemptible" on the part of Krauthhammer et al is turning a legitimate difference of opinion into a matter of moral judgment and phony posturing. It's why they end up sounding like Kos Kids.

contra wrote:

Why should a columnist waste bandwidth to discuss himself?

"Their share of responsibility" is partly the share that belongs to every citizen of the United States of America, but the more relevant share is the one that belongs to every public advocate, in Wehner's case in particular a share of official responsibility as well, for seeking to advance and defend the very policies that have put the country, and its soldiers, and their C-in-C, in this predicament. Assigning blame in this way can be a divisive and unseemly enterprise, but that's exactly what's being pushed by this neocon group. Once such a process begins, they may not like very much where it ends.

I don't believe the relevant passages for the statement that you and Dr. Krauthammer find so crushing appear in the excerpts of Obama's Wars published by the WaPo. The larger context was, however, summarized by the NYT as follows:

Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.

The president concluded from the start that “I have two years with the public on this” and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation, the book says. “I want an exit strategy,” he implored at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings, and while Mr. Obama ultimately rejected it, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

The specific context for the statement (or supposed statement) was summarized separately, along with a fuller version:

Mr. Obama’s struggle with the decision comes through in a conversation with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who asked if his deadline to begin withdrawal in July 2011 was firm. “I have to say that,” Mr. Obama replied. “I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

So, while Dr. Krauthammer and you presume to stand in judgment, you don't seem to have assembled your evidence completely. The context doesn't appear to be Obama's explanation for making the decision. The context was his reported reasoning for standing firm on it - specifically in relation to his own rejection of a "war without end." If you want more on the actual process of decision I suggest you either read the book or at least the on-line excerpts. It's a rather more complex story than "throw in a date to make Nancy Pelosi happy."

We can't judge inflections or emphases, and we are dealing with hearsay, but, taking the statement simply as reported, and for that matter in the narrow way that you and Krauthammer have interpreted it, what precisely is unrealistic or immoral about it? What war president has not had to work to hold his coalition together, has not in fact insisted upon particular policies, even particular operations, for political reasons? Politics in a democracy - and even in an absolute monarchy - is as relevant to real war-fighting as logistics, training, orders of battle, bomb damage assessment, and everything else.

Let's just assume that Obama's assessment of the state of his own coalition is accurate, and let's assume further that Woodward's depiction of his reticence about the options given him by the generals and Gates is also accurate. What you and Dr. Krauthammer seem to demand of Obama is that he should have committed to an open-ended warfighting strategy that he believed was wrong, while destroying his own political coalition and therefore his presidency. Even if he was more sympathetic to the blank check approach, since there are many things going on in the world in addition to the fraught enterprise in Afghanistan, such a commitment would still be irresponsible of him, and, worst of all, it probably wouldn't even save the war policy that you and Dr. Krauthammer are insisting on.

Sure, it's easier (at least at first) to rally a public and an army around a simplistic, one might even say primitive, concept of "victory." But, if a president or any other war leader concludes that such a victory cannot be achieved at a justifiable cost, if at all, then it would be the definition of irresponsibility - or madness - to pursue it bis zum bitteren Ende. In such circumstances, there is nothing dishonorable, either for the commander or for the "last man," in ordering or executing a fighting retreat, which, on the strategic level, equates with the "framework for withdrawal" that Max Hastings described (see the "shape of the discussion" post for link), and that somewhat coincides with other suggestions from thoughtful Afghanistan war skeptics like George Friedman.

@ miguel cervantes:
No - K, R, and W want to have their Kerryian cake and eat it, too. They are implicitly adopting the same false, emotionalist perspective on war - the kind of perspective that, when aimed at their preferred policies by the left, they would violently reject: The depiction of the soldier as pathetic victim, for instance, is what war protesters live and beathe.

In both cases, there is a war policy that fails to meet some absolute moral standard - as if there has ever been one that could - and whose compromises are said to make the "some" who "will not come home" strictly the other side's moral responsibility. In other words, any approach that does not conform absolutely to the neocon ideal, in concept as well as result, is treated as an abomination. But the concept may not conform to reality, and the result may therefore be a fantasy. Reasonable minds can disagree. It is the lowest form of demagogy to "wave the bloody shirt" against the commander in chief over such a disagreement.

How much further can K, R, or W go within the bounds of a civil political discourse? When are they going to acknowledge their own share of responsibility and their own imperfections? What is "conservative" about the line they've adopted?