Hey, Mr. Taliban
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
After presiding for six years over a war in which
over 1,600 Americans were killed fighting the
Taliban, Obama did not mention the enemy during his
West Point Commencement Address.
That wasn't unusual. Obama has a curious habit of
avoiding the "T-word" in his official speeches.
Even when delivering his Rose Garden speech about
Bergdahl's return, the Taliban were never mentioned.
Obama's mentions of the Taliban vary by context.
When speaking to the military he will sometimes say
that the United States is at war with the Taliban.
In international diplomatic settings however there
is a subtle shift in his language that emphasizes
that the conflict is really a civil war between the
Taliban and the Afghan government with the United
States there to act as a stabilizing force.
When discussing the Qatar process, his language
suggested that the United States was only there to
facilitate an understanding between the Taliban and
the Afghan government.
The President of Afghanistan claimed that Obama had
told him, "The Taliban are not our enemies and we
don’t want to fight them."
Vice President Joe Biden had expressed similar
thoughts, stating, "The Taliban per se is not our
enemy. That's critical." White House spokesman Jay
Carney awkwardly defended Biden by arguing that the
United States was fighting the Taliban, but was
there to defeat Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda in Afghanistan however had already been
defeated by Bush.
During the campaign and once in office, Obama had
proposed outreach to the "moderate" Taliban. Biden
estimated that only 5% of the Taliban were
incorrigible while 70% and then another 25% could be
reasoned with.
According to Biden, these Taliban were expected to
end all ties with Al Qaeda, accept the Afghan
constitution and offer equal treatment to women.
Obama issued the same demand last year. The Taliban
who hold strict religious beliefs about the evils of
democracy and the inferiority of women did not rush
to take Obama and Biden up on their offer.
Obama's dual views of the Taliban made for an
incompatible policy. When playing the role of
commander, he delivers applause lines about "pushing
the Taliban back" and large numbers of American
soldiers were sent to Afghanistan. But the rest of
the time he views the Taliban not as an enemy, but
like Boko Haram or Hamas, as a group that is acting
violently only because their legitimate political
needs are not being met.
Some might say that it was as a commander that Obama
sent Bowe Bergdahl to Afghanistan, but that it was
as an appeaser that he brought him back. And yet
both Obamas are the same man. Obama sent Bowe
Bergdahl to Afghanistan for the same reason that he
brought him back.
This is the discontinuity that bedevils modern
liberal foreign policy which fights wars it does not
believe in, rejecting war, while still attempting to
use force as an instrument of diplomacy.
When Bush sent American soldiers off to war, it was
because he believed that there was a real enemy to
fight. Obama, as we have seen, never believed that
the Taliban were our enemy and his own intelligence
people had told him that Al Qaeda had a handful of
fighters in Afghanistan.
If so, why did he send thousands of American
soldiers to die or be maimed fighting the Taliban?
He did it to reconcile with the Taliban.
The Afghan Surge had never been meant to defeat the
Taliban. It was the 'stick' part of a 'carrot and
stick' offer. Obama's new 'smart' approach to
Islamic terrorism depended on isolating that
proverbial tiny handful of extremists by empowering
the moderate extremists. Drone strikes and outreach
to the Muslim Brotherhood were both meant as
precision tools for isolating disruptive terrorists.
Obama was aware that the difference between the
moderates and extremists was not in beliefs, but in
tactics. Like many on the left, he rejected the War
on Terror as a war against a tactic, but he was
willing to deal with it by isolating the Islamist
tactic and rewarding the Islamist ideology.
Americans still upset over September 11 would see
terrorism decline while Islamic terrorists would be
able to achieve their goals through political means.
This was the balance that his foreign policy was
built on.
He was trying to win the War on Terror, not by
defeating the terrorists, but by helping them win,
isolating the terrorist tactic and rewarding the
Islamist ideology
Drone strikes and the Arab Spring were not
contradictions. They were part of the same policy.
The policy of fighting terrorism by empowering
terrorists was not a new one. That same policy had
led to the Peace Process in Israel. But it appealed
to an administration that had very little real world
experience, a great deal of contempt for its own
country and a high opinion of its own cleverness.
Despite all the cleverness, dismantling the War on
Terror by pairing strategic violence and appeasement
never actually worked. Typical of such efforts was
the pursuit of Bin Laden which Obama had meant to
use to shut down Gitmo, but instead became an
unintentional trophy. Violent means could be used to
achieve violent ends, but not diplomatic ones.
Diplomacy however only dragged the US deeper into
more military involvements as the Arab Spring led to
the Libyan War.
And the Syrian Civil War.
Obama cultivated the image of a peacemaker who ends
wars, forever talking about his plans to get out of
Iraq and Afghanistan, but his policies were creating
new wars instead.
Obama had been dismissive of the Iraq Surge long
after it was proven to have worked. Why then did he
decide on an Afghan Surge? Obama misread the Iraq
Surge as COIN and conflated it with the Sunni
Awakening. The Afghan Surge implemented that
disastrous misreading as a disastrous policy.
It wasn't entirely his fault. The perception that
the United States had finally won hearts and minds
in Iraq was a crucial political defense at home. But
the United States had not won over the Sunnis who
took part in the Awakening. Instead it provided them
with leverage against the Shiites and Al Qaeda. It
had worked so well not because for once their goals
had become aligned with ours, not through empty talk
or diplomatic manipulation, but because of the
changing situation on the ground.
The United States had not defeated an insurgency.
Instead it had found itself on the same side as it.
COIN had not been the answer in Iraq. It would not
be the answer in Afghanistan. Instead it turned the
land into a graveyard for American soldiers.
Obama's talk of "pushing back the Taliban" was
political theater. The American soldiers were there
for political leverage while Hillary, Biden and
Obama figured out how to seduce the Taliban into
political participation while demonstrating to them
that the United States was stronger and more popular
than them.
The military would batter away at the incorrigible
5% of the Taliban while a deal would be cut with the
other 95%. But the numbers didn't hold up.
Obama had claimed that withdrawing from Iraq would
force the Iraqis to work out their differences. It
didn't work in Iraq. By putting clear deadlines on
the US presence in Afghanistan, he hoped to pressure
the Afghan government into becoming desperate enough
to cut a deal with the Taliban. Instead he only made
the Taliban aware that they had no reason to cut a
deal because they could wait him out.
Like so many peace initiatives with terrorists, the
pressure used to convince another government to
negotiate with the terrorists only succeeded in
convincing the terrorists not to negotiate. Obama
was recreating the Israeli-PLO Peace Process
disaster, except that he was doing it using
American, instead of Israeli, lives.
Obama and Hillary's talk of an Afghan-led approach
to reconciling with the Taliban completed the breach
between the Afghan government and the US. By trying
to play the middle man in a deal that no one wanted,
Obama alienated the rest of the country. The US no
longer had allies in Afghanistan. It only had
enemies. The Green-on-Blue attacks increased
dramatically. Even the people we were fighting
alongside now saw Americans as the enemy.
Not only had Obama failed to turn the Taliban into
friends, but he had turned friends into enemies.
Despite all the carnage, Obama had not won over the
Taliban. Nor could he have. Alliances in the region
are always in flux. Momentary deals could be made
with small groups, but anything bigger than that
would have required significant and sustained
pressure. COIN precluded any real pressure and the
Taliban lacked an outside threat that would have
given them a reason to ally with the US.
Despite all the setbacks, Obama's people continued
to cling to the idea that trading Bowe Bergdahl for
top Taliban commanders would open up the peace
process. The idea was floated in 2011 and 2012 and
set aside because of Republican opposition.
Proponents of Taliban appeasement blamed the GOP for
sabotaging the Qatar talks. They even suggested that
Republicans wanted the war to drag on to damage
Obama's popularity rating.
By 2014, Obama had firmly embraced a philosophy of
unilateral governance at home. He was no longer
accountable to anyone and this time the deal went
through.
Obama is determined to shut down the War on
Terror, close Gitmo and end the War in Afghanistan
before his term in office ends. He can do two out of
three of those, but terrorism is in the hands of the
enemy. His policies have put the initiative more
firmly in the hands of a rising network of Islamist
groups, some openly associated with Al Qaeda, others
more ambigiously aligned with its ideas.
Meanwhile the American people have been lied to
about the war and the Bergdahl deal threatens to
unravel some of those lies. Obama did not recommit
to Afghanistan to defeat Al Qaeda, as he has
claimed, but to engage the Taliban. The Bergdahl
deal was a last ditch effort to revive a Taliban
peace process that Obama believes will finally
disprove the Bush approach to terrorism.
When Obama authorized the Bin Laden operation, he
did so to arrest him and put him through a civilian
trial in order to dismantle Gitmo. This perverse
duality characterizes his entire approach to the War
on Terror. A military tactic is joined to an
anti-war aim. Force is used to prove that violence
doesn't work nearly as well as diplomacy and
appeasement.
This is the disastrous policy that led to everything
from the Bergdahl deal to the collapse of the US
effort in Afghanistan.
Obama has spent far more time thinking how to win
over the Taliban than how to beat them. It's no
wonder that the Taliban have beaten him instead.