“Dithering” is certainly one way to put it, but it is a particularly ironic way to put it when considering that it comes from Cheney, the vice president of an administration that time and time again fell victim to myopic certitude. The Bush administration professed to hold a number of facile solutions to the world’s precarious 21st century developments, with its simplistic view of the world most gravely manifesting itself in a Wilsonian Middle East agenda. Starting with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the administration believed it could spread democracy throughout the region, liberating the world’s oppressed. The spectacular failure of that rash, hubristic approach should be a surprise to no one.
At the very least, President Obama’s delay in arriving at a decision demonstrates to us that he refuses to ignore the complexities of the difficult situation in Afghanistan. He does not view the United States as a master of history, but rather acknowledges that we are all its slaves — subject to the twists and turns of factors outside of our control. Indeed, the Vietnam War is often invoked as a reminder of the tension between our desire to shape the world and our capacity to do so. And while those in support of an escalation in Afghanistan never cease to point out that the facts on the ground make the two situations vastly different — and undoubtedly they are — one cannot neglect the broad mandate under which both of these wars were conceived: the necessity of confronting an ideological threat via a war in a treacherous region against insurgents who vastly outnumber us.
Perhaps President Obama has been “dithering” because the link between the means and the ends is not yet clear to him. Sometimes we hear about the need to eliminate safe havens for Al-Qaeda. Other days we hear about an “obligation” to the Afghan people. We hear about the ripple effect of Islamic extremism if we leave Afghanistan in defeat, but why there is not such an effect while we are there right now is not immediately obvious. We hear about the need to keep terrorists’ hands off of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and about the regional stability a peaceful Afghanistan will bring, but what we don’t hear, and what President Obama has desperately been searching for as he prods his War Council for answers, is an explicit link from point A to point B — how, given our limited resources, we will be able to achieve these abstract, idealistic goals that we’re made to believe are inextricably intertwined.
In the fantasy world that many neoconservatives in the Cheney camp seem to be living in, political realities did not force General McChrystal to settle for 40,000 troops even though he actually needs 200,000, the average cost of deploying an additional soldier to Afghanistan is not one million dollars, Afghanistan is not host to the second most corrupt government in the world, and Pakistan does not have a schizophrenic foreign policy that directly undermines our goals in the region. Alas, the conditions in this fantasy world make it painless for neoconservatives to hastily assert with conviction that a rapid escalation is the way to go. They seem to believe that the hand that we are dealt at point A is irrelevant — point B is all that matters and we can just snap our fingers and the world will change.
President Obama is not being indecisive. He is giving due consideration to the subtle nuances that come into play with a foreign policy decision of this magnitude. As Cheney surely knows, it is easy to wax poetic about visions of a new world order and whimsically exercise the might of the United States military, but we must never forget, as Obama certainly has not, that at the end of the day American lives are at stake. The intellectual nature of the debate we have at home falls in stark contrast to the visceral game of life and death played out by our fathers, sons and brothers in the mountains of Afghanistan. Decisions — both good and bad — have consequences.
Whatever President Obama’s final troop announcement turns out to be, his “dithering” should assure us that Tuesday evening’s decision was not borne of haste or ideological purism. It was instead the product of comprehensive, sober deliberation. It was the product of a commander-in-chief relentlessly poking holes in arguments, probing the vast complexities of a multi-dimensional problem, unwilling to be tempted by the easy answer.
It is about time that America valued contemplation. Far too many of our modern perils are the result of men and women neglecting to think before they act, from financiers succumbing to greed to administration officials chasing political expedience. So “dither” away, Mr. President. Our nation will be better off for it.