Restitutor Orbis

President Obama has made his long-awaited decision about Afghanistan. The question never really was whether or not to leave, but came down to how many additional troops were we going to send, and how long were they going to stay. There were vague demands that we fight to win from such stalwarts as John McCain, but what constitutes victory?

In modern American wars, that idea seems to be little considered. Take Korea. In the just-concluded Second World War, the United States knew just what it wanted to do: destroy Hitler; destroy Japan. Easy. We knew what we wanted, we knew what the public demanded, and we did it.

But then Korea came along, a war nobody really wanted, except perhaps Douglas MacArthur. And nobody really knew how to win the damn thing. It was in many ways a precursor to Vietnam. Both wars took place in Asia, far away from home, in areas the American public knew little about and cared about even less. And both wars put us in position of creating bigger wars - World Wars - if we tried our WWII strategy of total annihilation.

We couldn't invade North Korea without triggering a Chinese response (as events proved) and we couldn't invade North Vietnam without...you got it, triggering a response, either from China or from Russia, which was busily supplying the North Vietnamese army and even providing, as we had done in the 60's, military advisers.

Afghanistan is different. Again, it is far away. Again, it is in Asia. Again, it is a country the public doesn't really know much about and doesn't seem to care about. Add to that the fact that in all of history, only Alexander the Great seems to have had any luck there, and that was more than two millennia ago.

Not promising.

And here, even if we wanted to, there is nobody to invade. We're already IN the country. Coming to grips with the enemy and destroying him has proved difficult. Promoting the local government and infrastructure seems to be the way to go. We can't just role over the enemy with superior numbers or fire power. "Shock and awe" don't mean much in that remote country. The enemy is neither shocked, nor awed.

The decision could not have been easy for President Obama. The New York Times tells us,

On the afternoon he held the eighth meeting of his Afghanistan review, President Obama arrived in the White House Situation Room ruminating about war. He had come from Arlington National Cemetery, where he had wandered among the chalky white tombstones of those who had fallen in the rugged mountains of Central Asia.

That visit must have made for a sobering period of reflection. "How much their sacrifice weighed on him that Veterans Day last month, he did not say. But his advisers say he was haunted by the human toll as he wrestled with what to do about the eight-year-old war."

Think about it: eight years. We were in WWI for just two years; in WWII for just four. We fought two world wars in a period of just six years. We have been in Afghanistan for eight. And we're still not entirely done with Iraq.

And Mr. Obama made Afghanistan of central importance during his presidential run. He constantly harped on President Bush's mistake in invading Iraq, saying Afghanistan was where the war should have been fought. You have to wonder, knowing what he knows now, how President Obama feels about those words. He committed himself; now, as president, it was time to put his money where his mouth was.

Now as his top military adviser ran through a slide show of options, Mr. Obama expressed frustration. He held up a chart showing how reinforcements would flow into Afghanistan over 18 months and eventually begin to pull out, a bell curve that meant American forces would be there for years to come.

“I want this pushed to the left,” he told advisers, pointing to the bell curve. In other words, the troops should be in sooner, then out sooner.

The new plan in a nutshell? Mr. Obama seems to be hoping for a little shock and awe, getting 30,000 additional troops (Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the man on the spot, made a request for 40,000) there as quickly as possible (within the next six months - not exactly Hitler's invasion of Poland or France) in the hopes that we can regain the initiative (if we ever had it to begin with) not to win a crushing victory on the ground, but to buy time. Time in which to permit the Afghan government to establish itself and for their forces to pick up the slack so that our boys and girls can come home, starting in a year.

We have a huge stake in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama has a lot to gain (he can win a war the Republicans didn't even try to prosecute, let alone win) and a lot to lose (though the Democrats didn't start the war, they'll certainly take the blame for losing it). And he had already sent additional troops: Even before this decision for a surge he had "ordered the military to send 21,000 more troops there, bringing the force to 68,000."

We already have more men there than Alexander did; and we've been there a lot longer. Of course, Mr. Obama can't cement local alliances by marrying a chieftain's daughter and the enemy is no longer foolish enough to fort up on a convenient mountain top to give us the victories Alexander so often gained.

And, of course, the United States is sadly lacking in spare Alexanders. We haven't had one of those, or even anything close, since WWII.

How will it all end? Can we win the victory we want and need? An end to terrorism? Even if we put a strong Afghan government in place, will the United States have succeeded in its goal?

It's impossible to say.

As the New York Times says, "When the history of the Obama presidency is written, that day with the chart may prove to be a turning point, the moment a young commander in chief set in motion a high-stakes gamble to turn around a losing war."