Terms Of The Term

by digby

Gary Wills has written a very thought provoking article about the Afghanistan question. It begins like this:
I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate.

These are the arguments that have kept us in losing efforts before. They are the ones that made presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon pass on to their successors in the presidency the draining and self-lacerating Vietnam War. They are the arguments that made President George W. Bush pass on two wars to his successor.

One of the strongest arguments for continued firing up of these wars is that none of these presidents wanted to serve only one term (even Lyndon Johnson, who chose not to run for a second full term). But what justification is there for buying a second presidential term with the lives of hundreds or thousands of young American men and women in the military?

Intriguing question, no?

I think there is no doubt that this is a concern. But I also think both Democratic candidates knew it was a concern during the election and made Afghanistan into "the good war" in order that they didn't need to make that decision. (Clinton, after all, is now one of the hawks in the administration.) Therefore, the question now facing us is not whether they will withdraw but whether they will escalate. Our problem is that in making Afghanistan "the good war" they also made it a moral decision to "win" it, something that is as unlikely as it ever has been historically, particularly if these guys, who are insisting on a one from column A and one from column B approach, are the brain trusts.

There's no way that Obama is going to withdraw from Afghanistan and it's almost a sure thing that he's going to escalate in some fashion. I suspect they are hoping they can master the PR enough to sell it like a successful "surge" and take it off the table for 2012. Maybe they can. But if Obama's second term depends upon his staying in Afghanistan, I think it's a 100% probability that he will do it.

Unless, of course, the political reality looks as it did to Johnson in 1968. I don't see that happening, but you never know. Certainly one way to make that more likely would be to copy Johnson's Vietnam escalation strategy.


.