Stan Geiger

Up to His Neck in Trouble

Jimmy Carter has done the current president no favors with his comments on racism. A firestorm has broken out. The White House finds itself on the defensive. And it is faced with the necessity of calling a leading member of its own party an idiot.

As noted in my earlier piece on the matter, the numbers counter what Carter said. Obama was elected. It took more than black votes to make that happen. It took white votes; it took a lot of white votes.

After Obama took office, his approval ratings exceeded the percentage of votes he captured in the election. That tends to indicate a lot of people that didn’t vote for Obama were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in the beginning. But then he screwed up. He started doing stuff. His arrogance led him to believe he was so freakin’ popular he could get away with anything. His arrogance lied to him.

Much is made of the conservative media pounding away at Obama. What a bunch of racists, right? Well, they pounded away at Bill Clinton for eight years. They pounded away at Gore, Kerry and Hillary during their respective runs for the presidency. If I’m not mistaken, all those mentioned are white.

Obama’s race isn’t the issue. Opposition to what Obama pursues would look no different if he had purple skin.

Meanwhile, another old friend of Obama’s---ACORN---has caused him a major problem. You’ve probably seen the videos by now. I caught some on Today this morning. If I saw one clip right, an ACORN employee appeared to be helping a guy posing as a pimp set up a whorehouse complete with under-aged girls. Hey, baby, your tax dollars at work in community organizing.

Eighty-three percent of the Senate---the Democratic Senate---voted to cut off all funding for ACORN.

But for all that has blown up in Obama’s face to this point, his biggest problem---Afghanistan---looms on the fringe. Afghanistan has the potential to do for Obama what Vietnam did for Lyndon Johnson. If Obama wants to avoid becoming yet another Democratic one-term wonder, he has to effectively deal with Afghanistan. Public support for the war is dwindling, and Congress is beginning to react.

So far, all I’ve heard from the administration has to do with mimicking the Iraq strategy. Send in more troops, set up and protect a central government while building local security forces, then withdraw. That worked in Iraq. (Albeit Obama, for all his yammering about Iraq during the campaign, is dragging his feet on the withdrawal). But it won’t work in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s terrain makes mounting military campaigns very difficult. Afghans have no experience with central government. And how do you build an army in a country that has no economy?

Old White House tapes of Lyndon Johnson’s conversations reveal that even he knew the Vietnam War was unwinnable. But instead of admitting that and withdrawing, he just kept pouring more and more resources into the effort. Obama seems poised to follow that same path in Afghanistan.

As I see it, we have one of two options in Afghanistan. We can maintain a force there indefinitely to keep the Taliban at bay and prop up a corrupt and ineffective central government or we can withdraw all ground forces. I prefer the latter.

We can’t afford to maintain a force in Afghanistan indefinitely---on a lot of levels. If you haven’t noticed, Uncle Sam is broke. That alone calls for withdrawal---from both Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, the longer we have troops deployed the more troops we will lose to death or dismemberment. Putting lives at risk when no gain is at hand doesn’t set well with me.

And it is important to note that the cost of war doesn’t end with the conflict. Physical injuries aside, soldiers that have seen the horrors of war can’t come home, flip a switch and be done with it. Often, soldiers that have seen combat---even the ones that escape physical injury---return home and become patients for life. We are still paying a price for Vietnam. As it is, Iraq and Afghanistan will cost us for decades to come. We should not seek to worsen that situation for no good reason.

Yes, I understand that if we pull out of Afghanistan the current government will likely fall and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda will likely return. But things might be different, nonetheless. Al-Qaeda has admitted it has taken a beating; it has lost much of its leadership. The Taliban was deposed, put on the run and has taken a beating of its own. In short, I think we’ve made our point. I mean we did it once, and we can always come back and do it again. That’s our ace-in-the-hole.

Most certainly, I do not advocate that we forget about Afghanistan. We should continue to very closely monitor the situation. If the bad guys act up, we can launch airstrikes, we can launch special forces raids, preemptively, and, like I say, we can always move back in with a major force if the situation calls for it.

So I say on matters military. But then, I’m not the commander-in-chief. What will Obama do? That is the question. I’d say if he continues to burn American lives and American treasure in Afghanistan for the remainder of his first term, he won’t have a rat’s ass chance of getting a second.

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