Having answered the objection regarding Bin Laden, we now turn to Obama’s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here we need to concentrate on what Obama does, not on what he says. For one, what he says is garbled and makes little sense. Second, this incoherence seems quite deliberate, because Obama’s goals are not ones that he can openly disclose. So it is futile to argue against Obama solely on the basis of what he says. One gets the sense that for him language is usually a camouflage, a way of diverting attention from what is really going on.
Consider this statement from Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech, a speech that we know was prepared with particular care. “No system of government,” Obama declared “can or should be imposed by one nation on any other.”
7
Now what sense can we make of this remark? Of course it borders on idiocy to say that no nation
can
impose its system of government on others: throughout history, nations have done just that. It is almost as foolish to say that no nation
should
impose its system on another: America imposed its democratic system of government on Germany and Japan following World War II, and the results have been excellent.
Let’s go beyond this single remark and examine a central theme of Obama’s 2008 campaign. Obama basically argued that Iraq was the bad war and Afghanistan the good war. As we will soon see, Obama was saying that only for tactical reasons. He wanted to seem pro-defense, and therefore he used his supposed support for the Afghanistan war to credibly oppose the Iraq war. In reality, Obama from the outset opposed both wars.
But even as an argument, Obama’s claims made little sense. Obama’s core claim was that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 while Afghanistan was the node center for al-Qaeda. This, however, is questionable. Al-Qaeda is largely a Middle Eastern operation. Its leadership is largely Saudi (like Bin Laden) and Egyptian (like the current leader, al-Zawahiri), with a substantial number of Yemenis and Pakistanis. Bin Laden took al-Qaeda to Afghanistan because the Taliban regime gave them free access to terrorist training on the monkey bars there. Yes, 9/11 was launched from Afghanistan, but al-Qaeda’s roots are in the Middle East.
Obama’s real view of Iraq was probably most clearly stated in his 2002 speech opposing the war. Subsequently Obama acted like that speech was prophetic in predicting the absence of weapons of mass destruction. Yet Obama wrote in
The Audacity of Hope
that “I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear arms.” So Obama opposed the Iraq war despite his belief that Saddam had very dangerous weapons in his possession and was pursuing even more dangerous weapons. Why would Obama do that? In the 2002 speech, Obama gives the reason. The Iraq war, he says, had virtually nothing to do with terrorism or Saddam Hussein. Rather, the Bush administration launched the war to “distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.” Obama contends that America went to war in Iraq to shift attention from this domestic crisis; in a way, America sought to export the crisis to some other country. Obama’s argument tracks an anti-colonial thesis that was made famous by Lenin, who argued that imperialism avoids the contradictions of capitalism by shifting them from home territory to foreign countries through invasion and occupation.
8
Obama’s real view of Afghanistan seems to have emerged in a casual remark he made in 2007. Obama described America’s actions in Afghanistan as “just air raiding villages and killing civilians which is causing enormous problems there.” Think for a moment about this remark: never before has an American leader, not even during Vietnam, described the actions of the U.S. military in such a savage way. Obama’s portrayal of America as a merciless occupying power could easily have been uttered by Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers. Here in the context of American military action in Afghanistan, we see the full force of Obama’s ideological assault on his own country.
9
We can see from his actions that Obama has been working assiduously from the beginning to get America out of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that alone is not enough to prove Obama’s anti-colonial motivations. After all, Bush also planned to get America out of Iraq and Afghanistan. What matters is the way we are doing it. Obama inherited a situation in Iraq that was generally positive. The Bush “surge” had weakened the insurgency and helped to stabilize the country. National elections had given the Iraqi government a sense of legitimacy and popular support, at least among the Shia majority. What any president needed to do was to orchestrate a gradual draw-down of American forces and an orderly transfer or military authority to the Iraqis. America stands to benefit immeasurably from the existence, in the Middle East, of a democracy that is pro-American. Obama, however, went against the advice of his generals and ordered a rapid withdrawal of 30,000 American troops. Then Obama went further and announced a complete military exit by the end of 2011. Obama’s defense secretary asked that 14,000 to 18,000 troops remain, to continue intelligence operations and train Iraqi security forces. Obama said no. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pleaded for at least 10,000 troops to stay. Obama refused. In the end, he said, America would leave behind only 3,000 to 4,000 troops in Iraq.
10
Obama’s actions seemed calculated to destabilize an already fragile government. Moreover, Obama opted out of negotiations for a long-term military alliance with Iraq and blamed Iraqi intransigence. As a result of Obama’s actions, much of America’s investment of blood and treasure in Iraq is now jeopardized.
11
Instead of Iraq being an object lesson in how the U.S. can effectively intervene in and transform another country for the better, Iraq may turn out to be an object lesson in why the U.S. should not even try.
In Afghanistan, Obama and the American military faced two different problems. For the military, the problem was that the Karzai government controlled only the areas around Kabul, with the Taliban threatening large parts of the country. Obama’s quite different problem was that he was being pressured by his top general, Stanley McChrystal, to do an Iraq-style “surge.” As Bob Woodward documents in
Obama’s Wars
, the president had no intention of increasing the level of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But his defense secretary, secretary of state, CIA director, and senior military command in Afghanistan all insisted that he do so. In the words of CIA Director Leon Panetta, “No Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he asked for it. So just do it. Do what they say.”
12
Moreover, Obama had campaigned as if Afghanistan were the good war, the “war of necessity.” So Obama relented and granted a troop surge; but at the same time he announced that those troops would be withdrawn in a year. The
New York Times
headline was revealing: “Obama Adds Troops, but Maps Exit Plan.” Thus Obama effectively undercut the surge, because he was in effect telling the Taliban that if they held out for another twelve months, the new troops would be gone. The Taliban was quite willing to do this, the “surge” troops are now gone, and Obama has scheduled a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a speech announcing the pullback, Obama honestly gave his reason: “We stand not for empire but for self-determination.”
13
But of course Afghanistan held free elections, and the Karzai government was in power as a result of self-determination. Obama, however, seems from the outset to have viewed Karzai as a pawn of American empire. Over four years, the Obama administration has gone out of its way to antagonize the Karzai government. Karzai has been a reliable U.S. ally, and his relationship with President Bush was excellent. The two men regularly talked about the Afghan situation. A recent article in
Foreign Policy
describes Karzai as “intensely loyal” to America because of Bush. That same article is titled, “How Obama Lost Karzai.” First, Obama discontinued conversations with the Afghan leader. Then the Obama administration annoyed Karzai with a series of diplomatic insults. In 2010, for instance, Obama revoked an invitation to Karzai to visit the White House; Karzai retaliated by inviting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who delivered a fiery anti-American speech in Afghanistan’s presidential palace. Obama officials finalized the break with Karzai by publicly accusing his government of political and financial corruption. Corruption has been going on in Afghanistan since ancient times, and none of it is very surprising in the context of a tribal, warlord culture. What was surprising is for the United States to undermine the very government that it was supposedly working with to defeat the Taliban. Eventually Karzai became so frustrated with his treatment at the hands of the Obama administration that he said he was considering joining the Taliban! What a statement from a man whose own father had been gunned down by the Taliban only a few years earlier!
14
Had Karzai joined the Taliban, Obama probably would have treated him better. If our anti-colonial theory is right, then we know why Obama hates Karzai—he views him as a colonial puppet. By contrast, Obama views the Taliban as a group of intrepid Muslims who are, for all their religious fanaticism and antiquated social views, nevertheless fighting to free their country from American occupation. This anti-colonial perspective is consistent with Obama’s actions. The Obama administration began secret negotiations with the Taliban in early 2011, shortly after Obama approved the troop surge. The negotiations became public a year later, when the U.S. agreed in principle to release several high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantanamo Bay. Karzai was apparently excluded from these negotiations, so he hit back by beginning talks with Hezb-e-Islami, a militant group with ties to al-Qaeda. Karzai’s position toward America seems to have devolved to: If you can talk to the enemy, I can talk to the enemy.
15
Yet from Obama’s perspective, it’s not even clear that the Taliban is necessarily the enemy. When these negotiations became public, Obama officials said that the Taliban was not al-Qaeda, and that there were “good” Taliban and “bad” Taliban. Obama himself said he wanted to “open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens.”
16
The U.S. has been fighting this radical Muslim group since 9/11, and until Obama’s speech, the existence of non-violent Taliban who respect human rights was a closely guarded secret. Even now, Americans have yet to encounter these “good” Taliban guerillas that Obama keeps talking about. Obama wants to cut an Afghan power-sharing deal with the Taliban, and has removed as a precondition for these negotiations that the Taliban must renounce terrorism and accept democracy and the legitimacy of the Afghan constitution.
Afghanistan, it seems clear, is becoming a lost cause. America is getting out, and our European allies are trying to get out even faster. It may seem strange, therefore, to see Obama go to Afghanistan in May 2012 and declare victory. “We broke the Taliban’s momentum,” Obama asserted. “The tide has turned.” None of this was even remotely true. As if to disrupt Obama’s absurd declaration, the Taliban that very day launched a grenade attack in Kabul .
17
But in some ways Obama wasn’t lying. For him, the outcome in Afghanistan is a success. As Ryan Lizza recently noted in
The New Yorker
, “Obama spent his first years fighting his generals, who sought to maneuver him into sending more troops and prolonging the nation’s commitment there. He eventually gained the upper hand and won the policy he wanted: withdrawal.” As he did, the departing defense secretary Robert Gates drew the obvious lesson: “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.”
18
It’s hard to think of sweeter music to Obama’s ears. He always wanted America to get out in a way that would reduce future American influence in the region. He worked to produce an outcome that would discourage future U.S. interventions of any kind. Obama seems to view defeat in Afghanistan as a victory for the anti-colonial cause, just as Bill Ayers and other radical leftists had cheered for Ho Chi Minh, in Obama’s view a “nationalist,” in the Vietnam War.
Finally, Israel. As I show in
The Roots of Obama’s Rage
, Obama has a history of siding with the Palestinians over Israel. In his Cairo speech Obama said it was “undeniable that the Palestinian people ... have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they’ve endured the pain of dislocation.... They endure the daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation.” Pondering why Obama showed so much sympathy for the Palestinians, and so little for Israel, the writer Ian Buruma offered a telling comment: “Israel reminds people of the sins of Western imperialism. Israel is regarded in the Middle East, as well as by many people in the West, as a colony led by white people. The Palestinians are seen as colonial subjects.” And here we would do well to recall Obama’s mentor Edward Said, who said that Zionism was the last form of colonialism. “In joining the general Western enthusiasm for overseas territorial acquisition, Zionism never spoke of itself unambiguously as a Jewish liberation movement, but rather as a Jewish movement for colonial settlement in the Orient.”
19
From the time he became president, Obama demanded that Israel stop building new settlements, even within the city limits of Jerusalem. He made no reciprocal demands on the Palestinians. In fact, Obama has strong-armed Israel so much that the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, stated that U.S.-Israel relations were at their worst point since the 1970s. Partly as a reflection of this, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama have a barely concealed dislike for each other: the antagonism was evident on both men’s faces when Netanyahu visited in 2011. During that visit, Obama surprised Netanyahu by declaring publicly that the Arab-Israeli conflict should be resolved along the lines of the 1967 borders “with mutually agreed swaps.”
20
So in Obama’s view Israel must adopt as its starting point that all of the land acquired since 1967 actually belongs to the Palestinians. What would we think if someone recommended that the framework for future negotiations between America and Mexico should be that America give up all the land it acquired in the Mexican-American war? Of course the two situations aren’t precisely the same, but still the analogy is illuminating. Even if the Israelis are ultimately willing to relinquish the land, the fact that Israel’s critics think that the land doesn’t belong to Israel in the first place means that the land can’t be exchanged for peace or recognition of Israel’s right to exist; the land simply has to be given up, period.