The Midnight Ride of Barack Obama
President Barack Obama’s six-hour foray into Kabul — arriving at dusk and leaving before dawn — makes one wonder if he’s still in the dark about Afghanistan.
According to the press pool, Obama’s clandestine mission — conducted under cover of darkness because security is so dicey even in the Afghan capital — was to press President Hamid Karzai to get on the stick with needed reforms, so that all the sacrifice being made by U.S. and allied troops down in the south will pay off.
Mr. Obama was accompanied by his National Security Advisor Jim Jones who told reporters on Air Force One the President’s intent was to “engage President Karzai… to make him understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have been not paid attention to, almost since day one. That is things like…a merit-based system for appointment of key government officials, battling corruption, taking the fight to the narco-traffickers, which fuels, provides a lot of the economic engine for the insurgents.”
There are two problems here.
I accompanied with Gen. Jones when he traveled to Afghanistan in December of 2006, and sat in on a meeting to Karzai in which Jones basically told Karzai the exact same thing. That was back when Jones was Supreme NATO commander, and the problems in Afghanistan were exactly the same: namely the lack of any tradition of a strong central government, and any of the social institutions that go along with that.
Karzai seems like an earnest and well-meaning guy. But he was completely incapable then, and seems completely incapable now, of harnessing the political power would take to bring about those tremendous cultural and social changes. Frankly I’m not sure any Afghan leader could.
The linchpin of the surge strategy in Afghanistan is supposed to be protecting the people, not killing every last Taliban. And like the strategy in Iraq it hinges on Afghans taking over as soon as U.S.-led NATO forces pull back. Afghanification, if you will.
But unlike the Iraq surge, when President Bush boldly ordered more troops against the counsel of most of his advisers, Afghanistan is not at a tipping point. In Iraq, the surge served to help send a message at a critical time when Sunnis were turning on al Qaeda. Unfortunately, Afghanistan shows no sign of being near a tipping point.
Which brings up the other major problem that President Obama has created for himself. By announcing a target date to begin withdrawing U.S. forces of next summer, the president has boxed himself in. The clock is ticking. He has very little time to turn the situation around, hence the midnight ride to remonstrate Karzai.
While President Obama has ordered some 50,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan since he took office, most of the “surge troops” won’t be in place until this summer. 2011 will be here before you know it. That’s a very short time frame when you are trying to wage a successful counter-insurgency.
The question is, if another year passes, and Afghanistan is unable to step in to do the job now being done by Americans, will President Obama be forced to give up his withdrawal plans?
Photos of President Barack Obama in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 28, 2010 are all official White House Photos by Pete Souza.
Tags: Afghanistan, Jones, Karzai, Obama
