ABSTRACT
On July 15, 2008, Senator Barack Obama made what had become an obligatory step for American presidential candidates by publicly pledging to be a more decisive commander in chief. “Instead of being distracted from the most pressing threats that we face, I want to overcome them,” he said. He asked his Washington audience to imagine “what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11,” to include deploying “the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan.” The threat to America posed by instability in Central Asia was real, the candidate argued. “If another attack on our homeland comes,” Obama predicted, “it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned.” But current US commitments to Afghan security fell short of the need, in the candidate’s opinion. “Our troops and our NATO allies are performing heroically in Afghanistan,” Obama said, “but I have argued for years that we lack the resources to finish the job because of our commitment to Iraq . . . And that’s why, as President, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win.” The winning steps Obama recommended that day were comprehensive: two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, greater contributions from NATO allies, training for Afghan security forces, support for the rule of law, a “bottom up” program of economic development. He also proposed pressuring Pakistan to stabilize its bordering tribal areas with a tough-love approach that combined increased operations against insurgents with US economic assistance to the Pakistani people (Obama 2008). As a newly elected president, the details of Obama’s initial plans for aiding Afghanistan remained consistent. He deployed two brigades-one Marine, one Army-within his first month in office (DeYoung 2009a). Announcing his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan on March 27, 2009, he directed “a dramatic increase in our civilian effort.” Obama promised to use these resources to “increase the size of Afghan security forces” and to “help the Afghan government serve its people and develop an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs.” Assistance to Afghanistan was paired with $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan over five years, provided with the expectation that the Pakistanis would take
action against the extremist “cancer that risks killing” their country “from within” (Obama 2009a). Few Americans disagreed with their president, especially on the need for a larger military effort. A Gallup poll established that a majority of Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, approved of Obama’s February 2009 decision to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Seventy-seven percent of all the president’s supporters backed a hypothetical increase of another 13,000 personnel (Newport, 2009). In a March 2009 review of leading newspaper editorials, magazine features, and Sunday talk show segments about Afghanistan since the 2008 election, the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that news media endorsed a troop escalation in 31 of 47 instances (Ward 2009). Following the March 27 strategy roll-out, the New York Times concluded that “President Obama has asserted leadership over the war that matters most to America’s security” (New York Times editorial 2009a). The Washington Post considered the strategy “conservative” for embracing “many of the recommendations of US military commanders and the George W. Bush administration,” but “bold-and politically brave-because, at a time of economic crisis and warweariness at home, Mr. Obama is ordering not just a major increase in US troops, but also an ambitious effort at nation-building in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is right to do it” (Washington Post editorial 2009). Senator John McCain, Obama’s rival in the presidential race, said in a press statement that he welcomed a “long overdue change of course in Afghanistan,” and that the “broad components” of the administration’s plan “appear sound” (McCain 2009). During a speech later that week, McCain said he had no doubt “that in a year from now, we will be looking at a greater level of opposition to the war than we are seeing today” (Hornick 2009). It was not a difficult forecast to make, but it was correct. By November 2009, public opinion on whether American should increase or decrease its presence in Afghanistan was split along party lines (Jones, J. M. 2009). By the following February, public approval of the president’s handling of the Afghan war had dipped to 48 percent (Newport 2010). When a $33 billion bill to fund the war went before the House of Representatives in July 2010, more than 100 members of the president’s party voted against it-three times more opposing votes than there had been for a similar bill the previous year (Camia and Jagoda 2010). The New York Times confessed in an August editorial that “like many Americans, we are increasingly confused and anxious about the strategy in Afghanistan and wonder whether, at this late date, there is a chance of even minimal success” (New York Times editorial 2010). By November 2010, another Gallup poll described public division over Obama’s announced intention to withdraw all US forces by 2014, with only one in five Americans agreeing with the timetable (Jones, J. M. 2010). Reporting these results, a front-page story in USA Today portrayed the president as “at odds with his Democratic base, which wants troops out faster, and with newly empowered Republican critics in Congress, who opposed deadlines and timetables altogether” (Page 2010). Many things happened inside and outside Afghanistan during Obama’s first two years in office that contributed to this slide in support among the American
public and policy elites. Widespread fraud marred Afghanistan’s presidential election in August 2009 and parliamentary elections in September 2010. Afghan President Hamid Karzai vacillated between authoritarian defiance and appeasing deference to both the international community and Afghan power brokers. The additional forces authorized by Obama grew from 17,000 to 51,000 over the course of 2009 as casualties mounted. Military offensives and civilian aid programs in Helmand and Kandahar-the southern Afghan provinces considered to be the heart of the Taliban insurgency-appeared to stumble toward only modest gains. Pakistan attacked Taliban elements that threatened its own security but was accused of offering support or at least respite for other insurgent groups intent on destabilizing its neighbor. At home, Obama struggled with the lingering effects of a recession, a divisive fight over health care, and other issues that made the president as many political enemies as he had friends. President Obama and senior members of his administration had direct control over few of these developments. But one series of decisions the administration could and did make involved the form and content of strategic and public discourse used to develop and explain its strategy for Afghanistan in 2009. It is therefore worth considering the extent to which choices about discourse in that year contributed to rapid disillusionment with the strategy. Understanding this dynamic begins with the recognition that the Obama administration faced a greater challenge in sustaining elite support beyond 2009 than the Bush administration faced in launching the war in 2001. The crux of that challenge was that Obama, unlike Bush, did not benefit from a public imperative for quick, decisive action against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and their state sponsors. After more than seven years of war, America had options in Afghanistan, and Obama’s team therefore had the responsibility not just to choose a strategy but to make that choice understandable against possible alternatives. Administration officials seemed to recognize this responsibility and, moreover, to characterize their deliberations as a process of strategic discourse that helped the president decide on the right course of action. The irony of that characterization was that the administration’s decision emerged after news media had already described its closed discussions in ways that made the result seem more a matter of political discipline than rational conviction. This chapter considers how internal policy discussions struggled to meet the standards of strategic and public discourse-complicating broad understanding of the president’s decision and promoting alternative explanations for the strategy that emphasized the influence of power politics or state militarism.
