More on Obama and Waziristan
By Jesse Singal - Nov 19th, 2008 at 1:28 pmOver at Duck of Minerva, Rodger Payne responded to my post on the credulousness with which we’ve accepted the idea that the situation in Waziristan is critical to the national security of the United States:
Personally, I am hopeful that Obama’s team sees a GWOT [global war on terror] exit strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
First, don’t forget the big upside of refocusing the GWOT. By emphasizing the relative importance of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama can more readily extricate the US from Iraq with NIE-backed cover. Hawks fear an al Qaeda “safe haven” in Iraq’s future should the US withdraw, but the 2007 NIE already said al Qaeda has a safe haven in Pakistan. It makes sense to devote resources to the “real” threat, not some imagined future worst-case scenario.
Second, Afghanistan and Pakistan provide potential pathways by which the US could declare final victory in the GWOT and end it. The easiest means would be by capturing or killing Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, or by proving that he’s already dead.
A more subtle means would be via an effective “surge” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Frankly, this may well require some equivalent of the Anbar Awakening within the key target areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US needs to convince locals that “foreign fighters” are the invaders that must be resisted. The US could provide cash and maybe guns (like it did versus the Soviets) and minimize its own footprint. The US must not be seen as the foreign invaders (as it is now).
Obama emphasized the importance of Waziristan throughout his campaign, often arguing that we should shift our efforts from Iraq to there. As Payne implies, this could be in part because he sees this as the smoothest route to the war on terror’s EXIT sign.
If true, this would certainly be Obama-like. The President-elect has a tendency to express his opinions in a careful, pragmatic way, mindful of the rhetorical baggage surrounding them. Take gay marriage, for instance. He caught plenty of flack from progressives for refusing to support it and repeatedly defining marriage as between one man and one woman. But, now that he’s been elected, he has quickly given indications that he will be a gay-friendly president (though he doesn’t deserve any medals just yet), albeit one who still uses the “civil unions” formulation.
We could be seeing the same thing with his foreign policy. It may well be that Obama doesn’t believe in a long-term commitment to military action in Waziristan, but that he realizes that post-9/11 foreign policy rhetoric boxes him in here a bit and he thus can’t come out and say this. So, as with so many other things, he is taking the bipartisan-friendly, methodical route toward his eventual goal. Love it or hate it, this is classic Obama, and it’s part of what has made him such a succesful politician.
(I should note again that this is all speculation, and, surprisingly, I have not seen the view from the inside of Barack Obama’s head.)
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