Optics
Posted by Lex, on December 16, 2010
The New York Times, perspicacious readers will remember, was dead set against George W. Bush’s Iraqi surge strategy, continuing to insist that the higher casualties involved with greater troop presence was an indication of its failure long after the security situation there had begun to improve.
So it might surprise to learn that the paper is finding good news in Barack Obama’s comparable surge in Afghanistan:
As the Obama administration reviews its strategy in Afghanistan, residents and even a Taliban commander say the surge of American troops this year has begun to set back the Taliban in parts of their southern heartland and to turn people against the insurgency — at least for now.
The stepped-up operations in Kandahar Province have left many in the Taliban demoralized, reluctant to fight and struggling to recruit, a Taliban commander said in an interview this week. Afghans with contacts in the Taliban confirmed his description. They pointed out that this was the first time in four years that the Taliban had given up their hold of all the districts around the city of Kandahar, an important staging ground for the insurgency and the focus of the 30,000 American troops whom President Obama ordered to be sent to Afghanistan last December.
“To tell you the truth, the government has the upper hand now” in and around Kandahar, the Taliban member said. A midlevel commander who has been with the movement since its founding in 1994 and knows it well, he was interviewed by telephone on the condition that his name not be used…
The local residents and the Taliban commander said the strength of the American offensive had already shifted the public mood. Winning the war of perceptions is something the military considers critical to the success of the counterinsurgency strategy being pursued by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the coalition commander.
It might surprise, until you consider the politics of the matter. In the Washington Post we learn that administration critics of the surge have decided to hold their tongues during the ongoing National Security Council review of progress in the Af:
Although the skeptics question how much progress has been achieved and how sustainable it is, some of them now see an opportunity in the military’s claims of success.
One tack they may take, some officials said, is to argue that those claims justify a significant reduction of U.S. forces starting in the summer and a greater reliance on counterterrorism elements of the strategy, including Special Forces operations, drone strikes and enhanced intelligence capabilities to keep al-Qaeda under pressure.
“We want to move, over time, to a more targeted approach and [to] counterterrorism more broadly,” said another senior administration official involved in the Afghanistan policy debate. “There’s no question that that’s the direction we’re moving.”
For those who want to see a significant drawdown occur next year, pressing for that outcome on claims of success could be less politically dangerous for Obama than arguing that counterinsurgency backed by extra troops has not worked as promised. “It’s always better to call it success as opposed to failure,” the first official said.
Men and women at war, fighting and dying, and always it’s the politics with these people.