With echoes of George W. Bush's post-Sept. 11, 2001 call to arms, President Barack Obama worked diligently Tuesday night to make his wartime address sound like an endgame rather than what it was – a striking escalation of the US presence in Afghanistan. Even as US voters grow impatient with the eight years of war and Democrats fret about their prospects in next year's elections, Obama made the hard decision to increase the US force in Afghanistan to 100,000 – nearly three times as many as when he took office. Harder still, explaining it. “I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan,” Obama said during his prime-time speech at the US Military Academy. “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.” He did not say how many troops would pull out in July 2011 or how many would be left and for how long. What is the strategy behind his exit strategy? Obama gave scant clues. He pledged to improve Afghan security forces, help improve Pakistan's ability to fight terrorists and press Afghan President Hamid Karzai to eliminate corruption. But nothing – not even an intriguing, if vague, promise of an exit date – changes Obama's hard bottom line: A lot more Americans are going to fight and die in a war supported by merely 35 percent of the public. Fellow Democrats in Congress are threatening to withhold war funding. Liberal supporters are sounding cries of betrayal. Republicans are praising the surge but accusing Obama of endangering troops with an exit date. He took on his critics as deliberately as he reached his decision, literally counting off the concerns over his approach. “First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam,” Obama said, raising the sad specter of Democrat Lyndon Johnson, whose presidency was consumed by the unpopular Asian war. Obama said Afghanistan, unlike Vietnam, was home to terrorists who spilled blood on US soil. “Unlike Vietnam,” he added, “we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our actions.” Both arguments echoed President Bush, who invoked the Sept. 11 attacks to buttress his foreign policies and made more of the “coalition of the willing” than was warranted. Obama's strongest argument for war in Afghanistan also channeled Bush: “So, no – I do not make this decision lightly,” he said. “I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al-Qaida. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.” It makes sense that Obama borrowed some rhetoric from Bush; they're following the same path. Obama inherited Bush's wars in two nations that have confounded world powers for generations. Like Bush, Obama spoke forcefully about defeating Al-Qaeda. But, in stark contrast, Obama never flatly promised victory at war. Afghanistan would be brought to a “successful conclusion,” Obama said, and Iraq to a “responsible end.” Perhaps those wiggle words, more than any others Obama uttered Tuesday night, underscore the complexity of the commander in chief's decisions as he ends his first year.
