The Obama Doctrine

"Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban, so we've got to get the job done [in Afghanistan], and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there. It means that we have enough civilian support, agricultural specialists, people who are engineers, people who are building schools and so forth to help the Afghani government do a better job of delivering on behalf of its people."

- Senator Barack Obama, August, 2007

The world has spun a couple of laps around the sun since the Illinois Senator and would-be Democrat presidential candidate responded to a question in New Hampshire about moving troops out of Iraq, so more than a few folks are probably willing to claim they're too hot and dizzy to remember what he said.

Now is the time for an Afghanistan debate, many of those suffering from the most severe form of amnesia insist. Well, this being America it's always time for a debate somewhere. For instance, way back in September and October of 2008 that same Senator debated Senator John McCain on all sorts of topics - including Afghanistan.

Lot's of folks listened to what they said, and voted accordingly. Certainly many spoke out against Obama's clear and well-stated plan for Afghanistan at the time, no doubt just as forcefully as they had against his statement from the year previously. (Just because I don't remember them doesn't mean they didn't.)

And certainly a majority of Americans did not vote for him - though a majority of voters did, and that's what matters.

And clearly Afghanistan mattered to candidate Obama. If asked about Iraq, he mentioned Afghanistan; when asked about Russia, he mentioned Afghanistan. The resulting debate transcripts are thus full of references to Afghanistan. But take them all out and put them in topical order and the result is a coherent narrative that clearly states the candidate's position - his identification of the problem we face and his plan to fix it.

What follows is candidate Obama's position on Afghanistan, culled from the two debate appearances linked above, with the statements re-ordered in a more cohesive and narrative form. I've added nothing beyond brief bracketed words for clarity, and for good form I've repeated the opening points as the close - common practice for a persuasive essay. The rest: 100% pure Obama, distilled to its Afghan essence, the foundation of the official policy of the United States of America.

Enjoy.

Al Qaeda is resurgent, stronger now than at any time since 2001. We took our eye off the ball. ...they are more powerful now than at any time since we began the war in Afghanistan. That's going to change when I'm president of the United States.

We will kill bin Laden; we will crush Al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

[al Qaeda] are now operating in 60 countries. We have to go to the root cause, and that is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's going to be critical.

...every intelligence agency will acknowledge that al Qaeda is the greatest threat against the United States and that Secretary of Defense Gates acknowledged the central front -- that the place where we have to deal with these folks is going to be in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

They are plotting to kill Americans right now. As Secretary Gates, the defense secretary, said, the war against terrorism began in that region and that's where it will end.

We have seen Afghanistan worsen, deteriorate. We need more troops there. We need more resources there. they've [al Qaeda] reconstituted themselves. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself acknowledges the war on terrorism started in Afghanistan and it needs to end there.

And the point that I originally made is that we took our eye off Afghanistan, we took our eye off the folks who perpetrated 9/11, they are still sending out videotapes... nobody is talking about defeat in Iraq, but I have to say we are having enormous problems in Afghanistan because of that decision.

...we rushed into Iraq and Sen. McCain and President Bush suggested that it wasn't that important to catch bin Laden right now and that we could muddle through, and that has cost us dearly.

You don't muddle through the central front on terror and you don't muddle through going after bin Laden. You don't muddle through stamping out the Taliban. I think that is something we have to take seriously. And when I'm president, I will.

And right now, the commanders in Afghanistan, as well as Admiral Mullen, have acknowledged that we don't have enough troops to deal with Afghanistan.

We had the highest fatalities among U.S. troops this past year than at any time since 2002. And we are seeing a major offensive taking place -- al Qaeda and Taliban crossing the border and attacking our troops in a brazen fashion. They are feeling emboldened.

...what our commanders have said is we don't have the troops right now to deal with Afghanistan. So I would send two to three additional brigades to Afghanistan. Gen. [David] McKiernan, the commander in Afghanistan right now, is desperate for more help, because our bases and outposts are now targets for more aggressive Afghan -- Taliban offenses.

Yes, I think we need more troops. I've been saying that for over a year now.

And I think that we have to do it as quickly as possible, because it's been acknowledged by the commanders on the ground the situation is getting worse, not better.

We are going to have to make the Iraqi government start taking more responsibility, withdraw our troops in a responsible way over time, because we're going to have to put some additional troops in Afghanistan.

But in 16 months we should be able to reduce our combat troops [in Iraq, and] ...bolster our efforts in Afghanistan so that we can capture and kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda.

So here's what we have to do comprehensively, though. It's not just more troops.

We're also going to have to work with the Karzai government, and when I met with President Karzai, I was very clear that, "You are going to have to do better by your people in order for us to gain the popular support that's necessary." We have to press the Afghan government to make certain that they are actually working for their people. And I've said this to President Karzai.

I don't think he has to be a dictator. And we want a democracy in Afghanistan. But we have to have a government that is responsive to the Afghan people, and, frankly, it's just not responsive right now.

No. 2, we've got to deal with a growing poppy trade that has exploded over the last several years. So part of the reason I think it's so important for us to end the war in Iraq is to be able to get more troops into Afghanistan, put more pressure on the Afghan government to do what it needs to do, eliminate some of the drug trafficking that's funding terrorism.

No. 3, we've got to deal with Pakistan, because al Qaeda and the Taliban have safe havens in Pakistan, across the border in the northwest regions, and although, you know, under George Bush, with the support of Senator McCain, we've been giving them $10 billion over the last seven years, they have not done what needs to be done to get rid of those safe havens.

And until we do, Americans here at home are not going to be safe.

But I do believe that we have to change our policies with Pakistan. We can't coddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants.

What I've said is we're going to encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our nonmilitary aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants.

...we have a difficult situation in Pakistan. I believe that part of the reason we have a difficult situation is because we made a bad judgment going into Iraq in the first place when we hadn't finished the job of hunting down bin Laden and crushing al Qaeda.

So what happened was we got distracted, we diverted resources, and ultimately bin Laden escaped, set up base camps in the mountains of Pakistan in the northwest provinces there.

They are now raiding our troops in Afghanistan, destabilizing the situation. They're stronger now than at any time since 2001. And that's why I think it's so important for us to reverse course, because that's the central front on terrorism.

This is not an easy situation. You've got cross-border attacks against U.S. troops.

And we've got a choice. We could allow our troops to just be on the defensive and absorb those blows again and again and again, if Pakistan is unwilling to cooperate, or we have to start making some decisions.

...if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to hunt down bin Laden and take him out, then we should. And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. ...if the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out.

Now, that I think has to be our policy, because they are threatening to kill more Americans.

Al Qaeda is resurgent, stronger now than at any time since 2001. We took our eye off the ball. ...they are more powerful now than at any time since we began the war in Afghanistan. That's going to change when I'm president of the United States.

We will kill bin Laden; we will crush Al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

[al Qaeda] are now operating in 60 countries. We have to go to the root cause, and that is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's going to be critical.

...every intelligence agency will acknowledge that al Qaeda is the greatest threat against the United States and that Secretary of Defense Gates acknowledged the central front -- that the place where we have to deal with these folks is going to be in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

They are plotting to kill Americans right now. As Secretary Gates, the defense secretary, said, the war against terrorism began in that region and that's where it will end.

And that's that.

Iraq, of course, is less an issue now (Though we've still got an awful lot of troops there. What's up with that?) so that impediment to an Afghanistan increase is shrinking daily. (I'll be shocked, shocked I tell you, if all the Brigades scheduled for Iraq this fall actually go to Iraq.)

No doubt there's at least one thing somewhere in the above quotes that will cause most people - even the President's most ardent supporters - to wince. (Alice Walker, for example, thought he shouldn't be so mean to Osama bin Laden.) Some word choices might have led them to wish he hadn't said that, or hope it didn't mean what it sounded like. Still others may have had a strong, negative reaction to each and every word. I'm curious, however - does anyone have a good counter-argument from back then, when it mattered? Those initial "two or three brigades" have been delivered as promised, more will indeed be available from Iraq, but suddenly I'm starting to see many of the President's above points assailed today. I'm sure there were folks actually arguing against them when it mattered. Can anybody point me to a few?

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