Being the president is a thankless job. Take Barack Obama's administration. The guy walks into office with his country mired in two wars and suffering through the worst recession in memory, then he's lambasted for running up a giant deficit while trying to fix it, and for taking too long, then making a decision about how to proceed in a quagmire he did not even start. All this in the first 10 months of the job.
But Obama knew what he was getting himself into, running on the platform of "change." He probably didn't expect, however, that both liberals and conservatives would take him to task for his decision to follow his general's request to increase troop strength by 30,000 in Afghanistan.
Lefties are stunned that such a decision was made by the guy who won the Nobel Peace Prize (as if he asked for that award). Righties fume that he's guaranteeing defeat by setting a date for troop withdrawal.
Obama can't win, for several reasons. He can't "win" the war in Afghanistan, since there's no clear-cut way to declare victory. He can't pull out, since that will open up a growing vacuum of terrorism that's been simmering since America ill-advisedly opened up a second front against no one in particular in Iraq.
And Obama can't actually win the overall "war on terrorism," whatever that means, since even bombing Afghanistan back to whatever came before the Stone Age won't guarantee that al-Qaeda will cease to operate elsewhere. Unless the West placates al-Qaeda by adopting its fundamentalist Muslim lifestyle, these terrorists will never give up. Obviously, that will never happen.
By these standards, any decision Obama made would ultimately lead to failure, but that's a reality the world must start to accept. We can't win, but we can limit our losses. Terrorism is an idea, and it doesn't have a home country. At best, disabling it in its two most popular hang outs, Afghanistan and Pakistan, will help somewhat. But like a pesky brush fire, once you tamp out one hot spot, another flares up.
I heard an analyst this morning suggest that America divert its resources away from fighting a losing battle and into an international police force that can act ruthlessly to quash terrorist acts before they occur. That's a nice idea, but logistically, it's unrealistic. More importantly, it's entirely reactive and not at all proactive.
The best solution -- and it's admittedly not a particularly good one -- is to play good offense and defense. Disable the terrorists as best as resources allow, then mount a strong intelligence effort to stop the remaining ones from acting.
Will this playbook prevent the next 9-11? Hopefully, but not necessarily. Is it a good gamble? Do we have any other choice?
Believe me, I'm more pacifistic than most, and frivolous wars like Iraq turn my stomach. But I'm also a realist. We can't invade every country that shelters terrorism, but we can keep a contingent in the one that invented the Taliban. As for the rest of the world, we can play some hardball, through special forces and other covert operations that, once upon a time, would never even be considered. I'm talking about assassinations, cruise missles, espionage and even -- yes, I'll say it -- some heavy handed tactics when it comes to interrogating some very, very bad people. Like always, our country should use the utmost discretion even outside its borders, but the terrorists don't follow the Geneva Convention against us, why should we against them? (No, I'm not advocating for torture; rather something in between asking politely and waterboarding.)
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I'd sooner see Obama apologize to Algeria for violating its airspace with a Tomahawk cruise missle, for example, than to give the next hijacker a free pass. This next phase in the war on terrorism will be expensive, bloody and generally messy -- but absolutely necessary.
So liberals, give Obama a chance to do his best to defend America. And conservatives, don't use a few words about planned withdrawals as an opportunity to play partisan politics. We're between a rock and a hard place here, and we've seen what happens when a president tries to make this issue into a black and white issue. Unfortunately, the war on terrorism is all sorts of ugly shades of gray.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
