Gore Vidal:
Obama and the Pentagon
Is it hopeless?
When Gore Vidal, now 84, measures the decline of the country we’ve known, it all seems quite hopeless.
Nevertheless there’s value — during these weeks when the Pakghanistan policy hangs in the balance — in his assessment of the President and the Pentagon.
When he compares Obama to his old friend Jack Kennedy, he shakes his head.
“He’s twice the intellectual that Jack was, but Jack knew the great world. Remember he spent a long time in the navy, losing ships. This kid [Obama] has never heard a gun fired in anger. He’s absolutely bowled over by generals, who tell him lies and he believes them.
He hasn’t done anything. … You have to go by what people tell you. He’s like that. He’s not ready for prime time and he’s getting a lot of prime time on his plate at once.”
Very much my worry during the interregnum last year, when it became clear that Obama would retain the Bush-Cheney Pentagon leadership in its entirety.
It’s been a slippery slope since the spring of 2008, when Obama, the apparent Democratic candidate, was briefed by the Apparat on Pakghanistan and (like McCain) responded, “Sure, anything you guys say.”
He might have said No then, rejecting the Briefers (which is hard to do and dangerous if done).
‘We’re getting out of Afghanistan if I’m elected!’ he might have told the crowds all summer. But it would have been harder to be elected. He chose to go along.
Next Opportunity: Post election. The best opportunity. And the way to seize it was to replace the uniformed leadership atop the Pentagon, perhaps retaining Gates as Secy of Defense.
Instead, he kept all the brass and hired even more.
Next Opportunity: The “thorough review” of the policy in January and February — out of which the President dashed cheerleading Petraeus’s Pakghanistan Surge like it was summertime 2008.
Even when Europe and NATO greeted the roadshow with lip service while setting Stausbourg aflame, the President would not be swayed from pledged loyalty.
As a result, 2009 has been the costliest year (in US lives) of the eight-year war.
AND YET:
Two and a half weeks ago, for the first time, the Prez said Woah, on a Sunday talk show.
Since then we’ve learned alot about divisions within the Beltway and the Administration on the policy.
NS Advisor James Jones, once a general, is against the Surge.
Secy of Defense Gates is not speaking in support of the Surge.
Former everything Colin Powell is agin it.
Joe Biden (whom I respect on foreign affairs and constitutional law) is agin it, even if he betrays Kennedy-like hope in focused “counterinsurgency” ops. Rahm Emanuel is agin it. And Biden has a lot of influential pals in the Senate agin it, starting with John Kerry atop the Foreign Relations committee.
The President should take Kerry’s words to heart, and then gird his loins like a wrestler:
“John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said after the meeting that “it would be irresponsible” to send more troops until it became clear “what is possible in Afghanistan.”
The Persians of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes. Alexander the Great. The early modern Brits. The Soviet Union. Everybody knows what’s possible in Afghanistan. Desultory defeat.
No one has voiced in public a coherent War Aim. Neither the various forces labelled Taliban nor the meeting of minds labelled Al Qaeda can be defeated with guns. The War on Terror is a propaganda war. Trying to win it with guns enhances the enemy’s power.
Obama in his heart knows this. The Cairo speech and his September UN speech.
What he has lacked is precisely what Gore Vidal points to: The wherewithal to get from what he knows in his heart to an effective policy.
This is the last opportunity to get out without losing a second term. Surge another 40,000 troops, tell the Pentagon to Go Get’m, and the resultant gorey mess will leave the next election to Romney.
The dice have been rolling about the table for two weeks now. If the current debate ends in a decision to send more troops, then Obama has backed down and the future is clear.
If it ends otherwise, then a turn has been accomplished, and the future’s a mist.
Mist is the best the President can hope for at the moment, after endorsing for eighteen months an Aimless war.
When in a hole, stop digging.
ed says:
Alexander Cockburn, like Vidal, is fed up with Obama’s callow fence-sitting:
QUOTE
It’s dawning even on those predisposed to like the guy that when it comes to burning issues the first black president of the United States truly hates to come down on one side or the other. He dreads making powerful people mad. He won’t stand up for his own people when they’re being savaged by the nutball right, edges them out, then has his press secretary claim that they jumped of their own accord. This may impress the peaceniks of Oslo, but from the American perspective he’s looking like a wimp.
END QUOTE
October 11th, 2009 at 12:18 am