This Week's Excuse For Delaying A Decision On Troops To Afghanistan Is.....

If you had "Murky Election Results In Afghanistan" in the pool, you win!

"We would love the luxury of this debate to be reduced down to just one question -- additional troops, 40,000," Emanuel told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. "This is a much more complex decision."

"The question, though... does not come [down to] how many troops you send, but do you have a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need?" the chief of staff added.

Yes, the Afghanistan election was filled with fraud and there's talk that Karzi might not submit to a possible runoff after his provisional vote totals were lowered due to fraud.

The question for Mr. Emanuel is...so what?

Afghanistan, according to Obama,

"...(I)s not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity," Obama told the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars conference -- cautioning that the insurgency would not be defeated overnight. "Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."

Granted, all Obama statements come with an expiration date and the above is 2 months old, but winning a war of necessity has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the Afghan central government.

Yes, COIN Operations should be done in support of an indigenous government but it doesn't have to be a fully functioning and legitimate central government.
There are regional and traditional governing bodies we can work with to provide security and use as a means to funnel construction project money. The idea that our national security is being held hostage to the purity of the Afghan elections is a laughable as it is scary.

While Obama plays Hamlet on the Potomac, Al Qaeda continues to train terrorists who want to attack western targets.

Of course, what our national security is actually being held hostage to is Obama's desire to hold his left wing base together through the health care fight. Quite the profile in courage our Nobel Peace Laureate in Chief is.

More: I've heard Mark Steyn point out that we are doing things backwards with our national building efforts. The national level government is usually the last thing that a real nation has. Government should not be imposed from the top down but built from the bottom up.

Think of the US. We went from the towns and county government to state (colony), a loose federation to a more central national government (too much so in my opinion but that's another discussion).

This is isn't some crazy hope that Afghanistan will develop along US lines but simply a way to point out what works in the real world. We are developing a central government there because it is easier for us to work that way, not because the Afghans necessarily want of need it.

If we are going to have this 'strategic pause', I would hope that that's the kind of thing Obama and his team are considering and not how to simply get the hell out of Dodge without paying a political price.

posted by DrewM. at 12:03 PM

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