Obama’s Afghanistan Gamble
Obama, after months of deliberation, has finally announced his new Afghanistan policy. He will send 30,000 more troops to the region and impose a timeline of around 18 months to accomplish the seemingly impossible. Watching him on that stage at West Point, you could feel the strain of having to make this very difficult decision. There were never any good options for him to choose from. All of the good choices had been taken away by an incompetent Bush/Cheney administration several years earlier when they decided to focus on Iraq while letting Afghanistan twist in the wind. Sometimes, however you have to stop looking for the “good” choice and start concentrating on the correct one.
Imagine a hand of poker where you have replaced a very bad player half way through. You find yourself holding two cards you would have never played with too much money already invested in the pot. You are faced with a bet from your opponent that you do not want to call. The odds, however, are telling you that you have to call. Even though you have very little chance of winning the hand, if you fold, you will lose that hand 100% of the time. If you call, you at least have a chance to pick up that perfect card on the river to win the pot. The third choice is to “go all in” with a bluff. The secret to making the correct poker decision is to know your situation, know your opponent and know how much money you can justifiably put into the pot before the odds start to go against you.
I do not mean to cheapen the very real life and death struggles of our military in Afghanistan by comparing it to a hand of poker, but it does illustrate the three “bad” choices the President had to face. He could just declare defeat and leave Afghanistan to fend for itself. He could “move all in” with a massive troop buildup and an open ended commitment to send American men and women to fight and die there for the next 15 years. Or he could find a strategy that would still give him the best options to win the struggle without sacrificing too much blood and treasure.
I don’t particularly like President Obama’s decision to send more troops. However, I don’t think I would have liked either of his other options any better. If we were to leave Afghanistan tomorrow, the nightly news would be filled with horrible images of Taliban violence inflicted on an innocent Afghani population for months to come. Further, there would always be the problem of Al Qaida and an unstable Pakistan to deal with. If we decided to escalate the war without limits, then we would be counting the dead Americans in the tens of thousands and still have no guarantee that we could achieve “victory”. At least with this measured response we have the chance to succeed. It will not be bloodless. There will be casualties to be sure. But at least American soldiers will have a clear, practical mission statement and will not be wasted on ideological misadventures.
