Obama Masters Foreign Policy

The recent successful end of the rebellion in Libya marks another milestone in President Barack Obama's conduct of foreign policy.  This latest in a remarkable string of successes is all the more striking given the president's lack of international or defense credentials when he ran for office.  It says a lot about his basic outlook, validating a measured and principled approach to the world in contrast to the wasteful, unprincipled and ultimately counterproductive methodology of his predecessor in office. While Obama has certainly shown no aversion to the use of force when he considers it necessary, he has consistently shown an astute capacity to tailor the scale of the action to the need at hand.

On his third day in office, Obama fulfilled campaign promises by signing executive orders ending torture and closing secret CIA prisons.  These actions were met with relief around the world. Juxtaposed with this was his order three months later to kill Somali pirates holding American merchant sea captain Richard Phillips hostage.  The lesson seemed to be that the U.S. could and would stand firm against criminal thuggery and extortion while upholding its traditional principles--that it was not an either/or proposition as the Bush-Cheney administration had contended.  Why not both?

President Obama followed this up with the first visionary appeal by an American president to the people of the Middle East on their own soil with his landmark Cairo Speech of June 4, 2009.  In it he spoke out against the allure of violence by stating, "So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity."  And in a passage that now sounds prophetic, he continued,

"But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose.  Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.  Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away...and we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments--provided they govern with respect for their people."

That these words were delivered in the Egypt of the corrupt and oppressive dictator Hosni Mubarak is not inconsequential.  To what extent these appeals contributed to later events may be revealed in  historical studies to come, but it cannot be denied that the American outreach Obama initiated in his early months culminated in the October 9, 2009 announcement that the new president had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.  In the words of the Nobel Committee, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy, and cooperation between peoples...Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics."

This climate was revealed in the Arab Spring of 2011, when the citizens of Tunisia and Egypt successfully agitated for freedom and democracy and ousted their authoritarian rulers.  Uprisings also took place in Libya, Syria and Bahrain.  Obama's adroit handling of the situation in Libya, focused on air support and enlisting the contributions of allies, ultimately resulted in the overthrow of the odious regime of Moammar Ghaddafi without a single American casualty at a cost of about $1.5 billion: a clear delineation from how the Bush Administration went about regime change in Iraq.  There, U.S. boots on the ground resulted in American losses of 4,481 dead and 32,195 wounded at a financial price tag of $757.8 billion in direct costs and possibly $1.9 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, including indirect costs.

Speaking of the inherited wars, Obama personally made the bold decision that killed Osama bin Laden in May despite potential diplomatic fallout with Pakistan, and also recently eliminated English-language Al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen.  His stepped-up use of drone attacks has decimated the terror group's leadership in Pakistan.  Meanwhile, all American forces are scheduled to be out of Iraq by the end of this year and Afghanistan by 2014. The Obama scalpel has proven to be a far more effective and economical strategy than the Bush-Cheney bludgeon.  While they excelled at braggadocio and posturing, Obama quietly shows good judgment and gets results.  The contrast could not be more refreshing nor more helpful to America's image and interests. 

An Evening With Greg Mortenson

Last night my wife and I had the pleasure of attending Greg Mortenson's appearance at the Visalia Convention Center. Greg Mortenson is the author of the bestselling books "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones into Schools" and the director of the Central Asia Institute, which has built over 140 schools in the rugged mountainous areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. What began as the promise of one lost mountaineer to build a school for the villagers who saved his life in 1993 has turned into an ongoing mission to spread education and hope to one of the most remote and poverty-stricken corners of the globe.

What an inspiration this man is. He started as a nurse with no money of his own and had to raise it from scratch. The materials for the first school he built in Khorfe, Pakistan cost only $12,000 and teachers can be hired for $100 a month. He has been effective in an area notoriously volatile and suspicious of outsiders because he listens and lets the local villagers determine what they want--with the one rule that girls must be educated as well as boys. Experience has shown him the wisdom of an African proverb he uses, "Teach a boy and you educate an individual, teach a girl and you educate a community." That's because 2/3 of the schooled boys tend to leave the local community looking for jobs while 2/3 of the girls remain local. They also have much less infant and maternal mortality; since Bangladesh increased female literacy from 20% to 65% the average woman has gone from 8.5 children to 2.8.

Though much of his work is in areas with strong Taliban influence, not a single one of these schools has been bombed. Education is an effective antidote to extremism. And the local buy-in is a strong protective factor. While Mortensen raises the money, the local people must provide the land and most of the unskilled labor for each project. He showed lots of slides of the region, its people (especially the children) and the schools his organization has helped build. The conditions they live under have to be seen to be believed, high-altitude vistas of rugged beauty to be sure, but places with sparse vegetation where agriculture is difficult and herding on the scant forage a challenge made often perilous by the presence of lethal mines left over from the region's legacy of war.

I was impressed with Greg's demeanor. He is not a really adept speaker, which was reassuring. He seemed like a regular person of strong purpose rather than a glib salesman type. That made his sincerity evident. He related how he asked the Afghan minister of Education how much money he would need to revive a good national education system. $248 million a year, he was told. Greg commented that with 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and a war effort costing $100 billion a year, that works out to $1 million per soldier a year. Greg asked, "What if we withdrew 248 soldiers and used that money to completely fund the country's school system?"

Greg Mortenson has already been awarded the Star of Pakistan, the nation's highest civilian honor, by the country's president. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 and I'm quite certain he will win it one day. He certainly deserves it. One of the most touching parts of the evening was pictures Greg showed of a group of elders touring one of his schools to see if they wanted one for their own community. These scary looking guys with black turbans, big beards, and toting Kalashnikovs dropped their weapons and turned into little boys when they got to the school's playground. Imagine the audience's laughter when we were treated to pictures of them playing on the swing set. "We were trained to hate and fight from an early age," Greg reported the leader saying. "I never got to be a child, to play and laugh and learn to read and write. Now I have the opportunity to give our children the chance we never had."

Just as the subtitle of "Three Cups of Tea" says, Greg Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute are truly "promoting peace one school at a time." If you have not read this book or looked into this worthy organization I heartily recommend you to click on the links provided here and spend a few minutes. This cause is really worth your support.

Greg Mortenson's Amazing Story

I recently finished reading one of the most remarkable true stories of recent times, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. The book, which spent three years on the New York Times bestseller list, tells Mortenson's story of surviving a disastrous failed attempt to climb the notoriously dangerous Himalayan peak K-2 in 1993 and stumbling into the mountain village of Khorfe in northern Pakistan where the villagers took him in and nursed him back to health. In exchange for their hospitality Mortenson promised to build them a school.

Not a wealthy man, Mortenson went back to the United States, working as a nurse, and raised the money. What makes the story so interesting are the cultural aspects of dealing with people in that part of the world. Mortenson found he had to learn local languages, respect and follow local customs, listen to local concerns and hire and work through local people to get anything done, and often indeed, to stay alive. His approach has been so successful he and his Central Asia Institute has now built over 155 schools, insisting that girls be admitted as well as boys. As he likes to quote an African proverb, "Teach a boy and you educate an individual, teach a girl and you educate a community."

Beginning in 2004 he began building schools in Afghanistan as well, after initially having been invited to do so by Kirghiz tribesmen in the Wakhan Valley who heard of his efforts across the border in Pakistan. I am currently reading this story in a sequel book, Stones into Schools. His nonideological schools are a welcome alternative to the fundamentalist madrasas often funded in the region by Saudi Wahabis which all too often preach the kind of xenophobic and sexist extremism that inculcates a Taliban or terrorist perspective. Three Cups of Tea is said to be required reading at the Pentagon these days.

I really recommend you pick up Three Cups of Tea if you haven't done so yet and treat yourself to this amazing story. This is the way to spread peace and goodwill in the world. I'm thinking Greg Mortenson will win a Nobel Peace Prize someday. And if you live in my area you even have an opportunity to see him this fall. He will be appearing at the Visalia Convention Center at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, November 16. For tickets you can contact the Convention Center or Tickets.com. I hope to see you there.

An Interesting Week

It's been an interesting week. The Gulf oil spill remains staunched and a more permanent fix may be near. In related news, former BP chief Tony Hayward is receiving his wish about getting his life back. He's currently even casting himself as the victim. See the Wall Street Journal on this here.

Ag Department official Shirley Sherrod's image went from racist to lightning rod to wronged party to hero in the span of three days. News now is she is planning to sue right wing blogger Andrew Breitbart for intentionally and falsely maligning her by doctoring that speech of hers to the NAACP many years ago. See Breitbart defending himself on Fox News here. It'd be fun to see the would-be character assassin get what he deserves in court. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

Private First Class Bradley Manning is being held in Quantico, Virginia on charges of leaking classified material. He may well be the primary suspect in the 92,000 pages of Afghanistan War reports recently sent to WikiLeaks. The Washington Post reports evidence this young man was a rather troubled fellow already, having already been busted down in rank. Liberal sources are making much hay over the numerous references to heavy civilian loss of life there as a result US and coalition action and pointing to that and the hushing it up as causative of the ongoing conflict there. Conservatives rage about the leak of classified materials they fear will help insurgents in the war. Both are right to be upset. I'm disturbed that one 22-year-old PFC has access to so much of that kind of information. Who the hell is in charge of security over there?

The performance of GM and Chrysler is vindicating the Obama Administration's decision to extend them stopgap loans over a year ago. Both have returned to profitability and GM has paid its back four years ahead of schedule. If the Republicans had had their way both companies would now be defunct and another 400,000 workers in the two corporations and their suppliers would now almost certainly be unemployed. Good move.

Meanwhile, the slow recovery continues. The second quarter GDP grew at an annualized rate of 2.4%. The pundits are painting this negatively because a higher rate was widely forecast. Still, given where we have come from, another quarter of positive growth is, well, positive. If an economy were to grow at 2.4% every year its overall output would double in less than 30 years. Revised figures also point to a worse recession than previously thought. CBS News reported the economy contracted 2.6% from the last quarter of '08 through the middle of '09. Expect to see better job growth return fairly soon. Soon enough to help the Dems in November's midterms? We'll see. A lot of that depends on whether the media reports the glass half empty or half full.

Re-Examining Afghanistan

The dismissal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his replacement by the celebrated Gen. David Petraeus has engendered not only discussion about whether his counterinsurgency efforts will be more effective, but whether our intervention in Afghanistan should be continued at all. There are many persuasive considerations that point to the conclusion that it should not. Let's take a look at the rationales behind our continued presence there.

The first is to fight terrorism, specifically the Al Qaeda organization that masterminded the 9/11 attacks back in 2001. Yet CIA Director Leon Panetta reports there are only an estimated 50-100 Al Qaeda operatives in the country. There are very few terrorists there. 100,000 troops to look for less than 100 enemies? For nine years? It is thought the Al Qaeda leadership is across the border in Pakistan, where they are by the same intelligence estimates thought to number less than 300. The whole cadre is estimated to be fewer than 500 in the entire Middle East. Trying to defeat them with a large army in one country is futile. They simply disperse and set up shop somewhere else. They are in Pakistan, but also Yemen, Somalia and various other places. They are much more a law enforcement than a military problem.

The second is to support the "legitimate" Afghan government. Yet by all accounts President Hamid Karzai stole the 2009 election that kept him in power. His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is reputed to be one of the biggest opium dealers and influence peddlers in the country. Others in Karzai's ruling coalition circle are similarly unsavory, including the notorious Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum. Are these the kinds of people to win the allegiance of the Afghan people or to send young Americans to die for?

A third justification given is to keep the Taliban out of power. Mindful of what he may need to do to stay in power once his foreign props are gone, Hamid Karzai has been making increasingly explicit overtures to coming to a modus vivendi with those selfsame Taliban. It appears likely they will enter the coalition soon anyway. Fighting to stave that off for a couple of more years hardly seems worth the cost. And speaking of cost, how long can the U.S. continue to spend $100 to $130 billion at a time of economic recession and deficit at home?

In short, the enemy is no longer there, the government is not worth fighting for and we cannot afford the expense. It is time to begin winding down this rather pointless and tragically costly exercise. The July, 2011 target date for beginning a withdrawal is none too soon.

Obama Shows Leadership, Sacks McChrystal

Today President Obama did what he needed to do. In accepting the resignation of Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal the President asserted civilian control of the military, showed himself to be a strong leader and served notice that disrespect verging on rank insubordination cannot be tolerated.

Revelations that came out yesterday about a story in an upcoming issue of Rolling Stone Magazine appeared to show the general and his staff openly contemptuous of the authority of the Vice President, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Ambassador to Afghanistan and the National Security Advisor. A reference to the President himself was in a similar vein. The quotes have to be seen to be believed. Click here for a synopsis.

An attitude that would not be acceptable for a lieutenant with respect to a captain or major certainly cannot be permitted with respect to the top members of the chain of command. Obama would have been seen as weak beyond redemption had he not reined in such public humiliation.

Fortunately, the highly respected and proven effective counterinsurgency leader Gen. David Petraeus was available and willing to take a step down from theater commander to take McChrystal's place at the head of operations in Afghanistan. But even if he hadn't been, Obama would have needed to make the change. A soldier who doesn't know enough to act like one cannot be trusted in a position like McChrystal held. Obama correctly acted without delay in getting rid of him. This was a job well done.

Obama on Afghanistan

President Obama has so far had to spend the greater part of his first ten months in office cleaning up the Stygian mess left him by George W. Bush. His speech last night on Afghanistan certainly falls into that category. As a candidate Barack Obama said Iraq was the wrong war. He said he would wind down there and ramp up in Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda had been based and where its Taliban enablers had ruled and were once again regaining strength. There is some semblance of sense to this. Iraq was indeed a colossal blunder, and there was reason to pursue Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Once becoming President, Obama augmented the 30,000 troops he inherited from Bush with another 30,000. Now, after after long study and consideration, he has settled on sending another 30,000 and plans to keep them there until beginning to draw down in July, 2011. It's an Obama Afghan "surge," if you will, designed to pacify the countryside and allow time to train up competent Afghan security forces to take over the work themselves. Will it work? Well, that depends on what you mean by "work."

There is no doubt another 30,000 American soldiers will tamp down violence around the country. There will be increased casualties as they enter hostile ares to establish a presence. If they stay and hold for awhile, the losses will then decline. That was the pattern in Iraq, and in areas in Afghanistan where the increased personnel has already been committed.

But the real problem will be to establish anything lasting. The Taliban is indigenous and we are transient foreigners. Tribal leaders will determine the long term situation, not the United States. The only way to change that would be to keep a lot of troops there for ten to twenty years and to spend a couple of hundred billion dollars in aid. Obama realizes that is something the American people will not stand for. Nor should they.

Pakistan will determine the regional fate of Al Qaeda, not us. Al Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan, anyway. Intelligence testimony is that there are no more than 100 al Qaeda in Afghanistan. They are across the border in Pakistan. The President paid attention to that in the speech, saying repeatedly that the security of "Afghanistan and Pakistan" is a vital interest of the United States. The limitation, of course, is that Pakistan is a sovereign country that does not want an American army on its territory. For its success, therefore, the goal of eliminating Al Qaeda in Pakistan's western tribal regions depends on the Pakistani Army being the hammer while the U.S. presence across the border in Afghanistan is the anvil. That places great reliance on an army and a government that have proved much less than dedicated to actively prosecuting any such sustained effort.

In this light it is little wonder Obama took such a long time to come to a decision on strategy. He has no good options. He has seemingly settled on the political expediency of not leaving too early to anger the hawks while trying not to stay too long to anger the doves. With a year and a half to play with, who knows, maybe he could even get really lucky and have a Predator strike nail Osama bin Laden. In the meantime, he will hope that a period of relative quiet in Afghanistan will be accompanied by enough progress in Pakistan to claim success and get the whole miasma behind him in time for the 2012 election. That's about what it comes down to.

Thinking Afghanistan Through

General Stanley McChrystal says the 21,000 additional troops dispatched to Afghanistan this year are not enough. He wants 40,000 more. President Barack Obama is conducting an overall review of Afghan policy. He wants clarification on what the mission is, what victory would look like, what the prospects truly are and what level of forces might be needed to accomplish whatever the mission is finally determined to be. Congress will shortly vote on another funding bill for Afghanistan. They are expected to pass it even though they are not sure how many troops they are funding nor what the mission or exit strategy might be. To say we appear confused about Afghanistan is an understatement. It's time for some clear thinking.

Let us consider the mission. What are we trying to accomplish there? Let's zero in on what is essential, and that is the defeat of the al Qaeda organization. Though there are many other considerations that seem to have gotten in the way and clouded the issue, that is the only plausible reason for us to be there. They are the organization that attacked us on 9/11, has spread mayhem on numerous other peoples around the world since and remain unalterably our implacable enemies.

No other mission there is worth more years, lives and resources. Whether the corrupt Karzai regime or one of the other figures or warlords runs Kabul is of little long term difference to us. The "no cut and run" argument is simply bullheaded, chest-thumping foolishness. Such thinking kept us in Vietnam five years and 35,000 American deaths longer than necessary, to no purpose. Even the prevention of a Taliban reinstatement is not necessarily a real concern of ours. As repugnant as they are with their subordination of women and close-minded intolerance as evidenced by their destruction of the Buddhist relics, they have never come after us outside their country. Humanitarian relief? Give me a break. To commit 60,000 and now a proposed 100,000 troops at $50-$100 billion a year for another eight or ten years so that we can invest $5 billion a year in development aid to a backward foreign country in civil war is beyond lunacy.

What is key to understand is whether they would invite or permit al Qaeda back into Afghanistan should we leave and the Taliban retake control. That is what our intelligence needs to discern. In Iraq, the resistance, including especially al Qaeda elements that entered Iraq after our invasion there, flourished as long as the Sunni tribes tolerated them and allowed them to operate in their tribal areas. Once the locals turned on them for their vicious excesses, their defeat was rapid and complete. In Afghanistan, which is much more cohesively tribal and localized than Iraq, this would be even more strongly the case.

Adding to this is the presence of nearby Pakistan. It is clear that al Qaeda is principally based across the border in Pakistan now. If the Pakistanis continue to prove reluctant or unable to eradicate al Qaeda on their side of the border (and it has been eight years, after all) it makes little difference what we do in Afghanistan. They will simply continue to base wherever they can operate. We can make things annoying for them by launching the occasional Predator strike against what we think is one of their safe houses, but that kind of campaign can never eliminate an entire movement, and to the extent we inevitably get some attacks wrong and kill innocents we merely play into their hands.

So it comes back to the Taliban's intentions. Have they, like the Iraqi resistance, come to the view that al Qaeda is a threat to their own power and a destabilizing factor that will bring undue Western wrath down on them if they are associated together? If so, we can begin leaving Afghanistan as soon as we can make the arrangements. If they have not, perhaps it is time to quietly begin letting them know our views on this, and quietly spreading some money around as we did to get the "Sunni awakening" underway in Iraq. Otherwise, we may be stuck in Afghanistan for a very, very long time in a classic exercise in futility.