“Amateur Hour at the White House”

posted at 12:53 pm on November 23, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ National Defense ]    printer-friendly

Is it really that obvious? I guess it is. Even Leslie Gelb, former New York Times columnist and Assistant Secretary of State during the Carter years, finds Obama’s boundless naivete inescapable. Gelb, whose article in The Daily Beast carries the above headline, writes:

President Obama’s nine-day trip to Asia is worth a look back to fix two potent problems, past and future. First, the trip’s limited value per day of presidential effort suggests a disturbing amateurishness in managing America’s power. On top of the inexcusably clumsy review of Afghan policy and the fumbling of Mideast negotiations, the message for Mr. Obama should be clear: He should stare hard at the skills of his foreign-policy team and, more so, at his own dominant role in decision-making. Something is awry somewhere, and he’s got to fix it.

Better idea: Obama should abandon the fantasy of being leader of the free world — a job way, way above his pay grade — and go back to doing what he does well (assuming there is something he does well: community organizing mayhaps?). In any case, for the good of the country, he should get out of Dodge (aka Washington), where he is stinking up the works big time.

Again, it is hard not to be struck by how often he appears to make decisions based on one and only one factor: his personal popularity. How else to explain his utterly off-the-wall declaration this past weekend that he needs to find a viable exit strategy from Afghanistan because he doesn’t want to leave this “burden” for the next president. Let’s do Obama and ourselves a gigantic favor. Let’s get Obama out, elect the next president, and get the guy sworn in. We can all worry about Obama’s burden then.

How idiotic is it for a president to make decisions on a war the advocacy for which was part of his campaign platform (“the real war on terror,” “a war of necessity”) on the basis of what others will think about him, including his successor? I think he is already on a course to wrest away from the aforementioned Carter the dubious title of Worst President in History. I think he’s overly concerned at this juncture about how “worst” he’s going to be.

I know that Arlen Specter and other great minds in DC are advocating an immediate troop withdrawal. That has been the Democrats’ prescription for every war we’ve been in since World War II. Surrender is hard-wired into them. That doesn’t mean that Obama needs to listen to them or to follow his own worst instincts on this matter. He should proceed with the plan he began with. He started out advocating a counterinsurgency strategy, and he should continue that course by sending Gen. McChrystal the troops he requested. Doing so might enable the general and his troops not just to leave Afghanistan at some point but to leave victorious. By agreeing to that, Obama can actually alter for the better his all-important legacy. No, he won’t escape being Worst President in History. That’s already carved in stone. But he might at least avoid going down in history as the president whose inexperience and ego helped bring another 9/11-style attack to the homeland.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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