President Obama: Nobel Peace Prize and Afghanistan

President Obama: Nobel Peace Prize and Afghanistan

By Fubara David-West

President Obama was the pride of his nation and the world, as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. His speech showed both his humility and his thoughtful approach to leadership, by refusing to ignore the controversy swirling around this particular award, which became even more pronounced, following his decision to introduce more troops into Afghanistan.

That decision will define the president's stewardship in the arena of national security, especially with regard to the multilateral uses of force on the international stage. The president's actions from this point on will be crucial. Meanwhile, he should find a way to de-emphasize this notion about the United States being at war on two fronts.

That will help steer him away from sounding increasingly like President George Bush, whose notions about the so-called global war on terror was unmistakeably repudiated, just a year ago. This will be difficult to do. Why? The president has to contend with the influence of the defense department, on matters such as this. He also has to be mindful of the fact that there are many in the Republican Party, who are looking for any movement away from their beloved president Bush's misguided "war," to highlight as evidence, that President Obama is weak on national security.

There is also the increasingly desperate President of Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai, who seems to recognize the potential problems that President Obama faces. That must be the explanation of the Afghan president's intimation, during the recent trip to Afghanistan by defense secretary Gates, that his country would need American and NATO forces for up to 30 years. The reaction of the United States to that, should be to the effect that in that case, Afghanistan has both the wrong man, and a supporting administrative cast in place.

Sometime during his second year in office, President Obama should become less enamored with the badge of war-time president, which his speech-writers continue to add in different guises into his speeches. Every military action is not a war. The campaign against Al Qaida and the Taliban is not a conventional war, even though some of its objectives cannot be met without the use of conventional forces. Furthermore, when actions such as the use of drones in Pakistani territory, and possible actions against elements of the Al Qaida network in places like Somalia are taken, we are not going to say that the United States is at war with either Somalia or Pakistan.

The fact that a significant element of the Afghan program involves training Afghans, to take over responsibilities for the security of their country, is also an important distinguishing element. The pressure being put on the Afghan government to fight corruption, as a way to make the government more of an efficient manager of the allocation of resources to its population is another.

Indeed, the more president and his national security team moves away from conceptualizing this military-political campaign as a conventional war, the easier it will become to focus on the essential elements of the campaign. That will make it more likely, that the anticipated draw-down of American military deployment in Afghanistan will become a reality. It will also make it possible to stick to a limited mission, for which the definition of success is ultimately possible.

I thank you.

Fubara David-West.

Obama on Afghanistan: Will the Public Tune him Out

Obama on Afghanistan: Will the Public Tune him Out?

When President Obama ends his address on a new strategy for the "war" in Afghanistan tonight, one group that will be beaming with pride will be those in the corner of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, who have been opining that the president is handling national security rather poorly.

Vice President Cheney, in particular should be a credible voice, if he now accuses the president of endangering the lives of American soldiers and the overall mission in Afghanistan. The argument will be that he has wasted too many valuable weeks, making up his mind on whether to accept his general's recommendation or not. General McChrystal reportedly asked for 40,000 troops. The president wants to send 34,000.

The argument that he has wasted time and endangered the troops will be given more credibility, by the fact that the president, after all of that time, holding his well-publicized meetings with his war council, has basically made a decision that he could have made weeks ago.

There is no credible way to dress up the message that President Obama needed all of those high-powered meetings, all of these weeks, just to shave off a few hundred soldiers from the number General McChrystal wanted. That is why the public will be quite justified, if it tunes the president out tonight.

This writer does not think that the difficulties, which the President Obama has put himself into will be overcome, with one of his great speeches. It will also be surprising if both his allies in the Democratic Party and Republicans, who in a few weeks will smell blood in the water, as this president staggers badly with this bad call on Afghanistan, do not recognize the writing on the wall.

The message will become ever more jarring, if members of the Congress start insisting upon a "war tax" to pay for this mission. Such a tax will push back the prospects for any quick recovery from the current recession. By the mid-term elections the unemployment rate might be 15 percent.

The latest word on the president's anticipated speech is that he will present a program to quickly have the troops in there, and ensure that this is not a long drawn-out program. That suggests that the president might also be seeing the writing on wall. If he does not decipher its every political code with some wisdom, his popularity will drop precipitously in a year, and with that much of the influence he might have in the Congress will disappear. A second presidential term might become an unrealistic goal.

I thank you.

Fubara David-West.