President Obama’s priorities are dangerously mixed up. With American troops in harm’s way, his first priority should be carrying out the duties of a Commander in Chief. It’s part of the job he asked for. He’s putting off making a tough decision on increasing troop levels in Afghanistan because his left wing base is against the war, and he’s fighting a domestic war on freedom here at home. He’s putting politics ahead of our troops.
He has time for golf, he has time for infomercials interviews, he has time to play basketball, and he has time to carp about global warming. But he doesn’t have time to make a decision about the direction of the war in Afghanistan. What a disgrace. His inaction may cost him.
Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal’s team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn’t given sufficient resources (read “troops”) to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan:
Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn’t ready for it. In the last two weeks, top administration leaders have suggested that more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan, and then called that suggestion “premature.” Earlier this month, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “time is not on our side”; on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the public “to take a deep breath.”
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In Kabul, some members of McChrystal’s staff said they don’t understand why Obama called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” but still hasn’t given them the resources they need to turn things around quickly.
Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy that the McChrystal they know would resign before he’d stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy.
“Yes, he’ll be a good soldier, but he will only go so far,” a senior official in Kabul said. “He’ll hold his ground. He’s not going to bend to political pressure.”
On Thursday, Gates danced around the question of when the administration would be ready to receive McChrystal’s request, which was completed in late August. “We’re working through the process by which we want that submitted,” he said.
While the Commander in Chief fiddles, American casualties continue. As of the 17th, Fort Drum alone lost three soldiers in the month of September. They lost six in August. US troops deserve a decisive Commander in Chief who takes that role seriously. If McChrystal quits I wouldn’t blame him a bit.
