Obama’s Last-Lap Kick

America’s president will hand the war off to the Afghans; but first, he wants to win a little. Barack Obama will “begin” withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan in 18 months. In 2012, he’ll run for re-election. When the troop withdrawal will end is anyone’s guess. But first, the president plans to intensify military operations in the southern part of the country over the next eight months.

The Taliban is expected to bide its time. They might seem to be simple guerrillas, but they know the internal pressures being put on their opponent; the Americans were, after all, their not-so-secret allies in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The European contingent’s role in a risky game – more political than strategic – is, as yet, unclear. Obama’s decision to augment the 70,000 United States Army troops already in the country, with an additional 30,000 soldiers for a final sprint to the finish line, however, looks a bit like military failure. But Obama inherited these consequences from his predecessor. He doesn’t intend to win this war; he wants to hand the ball off to an Afghan army he hopes, in some way, to strengthen, as well as to traditional warlords and regional tribal chieftains. It’s no longer about a conventional victory in a very unconventional war; it’s now about gaining political breathing room. Parallels to the final phase of the Vietnamv War are very apparent.

Taliban fundamentalists have returned to much of the country. The Afghan people are, by no means, welcoming them with open arms, but the most corrupt government in modern times holds power in Kabul. President Karzai responded to Western pleas to root out the corruption of his officials and his own family with rigged elections. Even beyond 2011, the West will still lack the money and the national, cultural and linguistic knowledge necessary to bring peace to the nation, much less make a functioning democracy out of it; the country will inwardly collapse.

Political debate in the U.S. next year will be dominated by Congressional elections. The rhetoric of power politics – and not the depressing realities of America’s ability to intervene in foreign lands – will determine electoral outcomes. If Obama’s tactical dash to the finish line shows signs of succeeding early enough, his party will benefit. But a complete withdrawal of troops after 2011 won’t happen as precipitously as it did in Vietnam in any case. In the politically almost-cynical military chess game, one fact remains indisputable: Completely withdrawing all U.S. troops from the region could easily result in delivering the Pakistani government, with its nuclear arsenal, into the hands of Taliban sympathizers in the military and secret service. The possibility that al-Qaida couldn’t get its hands on a nuclear weapon could no longer be assured. At least, that’s the view of some of Obama’s advisers, as well as that of his special envoy to Afghanistan-Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke. Their concerns should be taken seriously.

The war in Afghanistan came about in response to the September 11 attacks on the U.S. Backed by a U.N. mandate and the solidarity of its NATO partners, American troops began their pursuit of al-Qaida and its Taliban host. But there was never a convincing strategy for civilian development. Osama bin Laden and his murderous high-level cadre were able to escape into Pakistan, and there they remain in inaccessible border regions, undisturbed by the Pakistani military. The fact that they are able to lure European Islamists into their training camps exposes their sinister intentions for “the West.”

The idiotic decision made by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to attack Iraq in retaliation has driven the superpower nearly to the limits of its military and financial capabilities. Since the bloody aerial attack on hijacked tanker trucks, the special role played by the Bundeswehr [German Army] as an armed technical assistance force in northern Afghanistan has also reached its end – something the soldiers in the Kundus area already realized. They knew they were in a war, despite all the efforts of German politicians to camouflage that fact with their “war-like conflict” semantic hair-splitting.

The German Parliament in Berlin will have to extend the Bundeswehr’s mandate in Afghanistan before Christmas. A majority of the German people is against doing so. Angela Merkel wants to delay any decision as to what kind and how big Germany’s contribution to that effort might be until the Afghanistan Conference in London in January. Meanwhile, Karzai will be praised for making improvements. Nobody will believe a word of it. If the government decides to send more troops to the Hindu Kush, Parliament will want to vote on whether Germany really has a dog in this fight.

The German government had no say in Obama’s Afghanistan deliberations, but Chancellor Angela Merkel and her defense minister will be the ones who will now have to explain to the German people where the country’s security policy interests lie. The American president gave himself nearly a whole year to do likewise to the American people.