[StBernard] Hamlet as War President

[Westley Annis]

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - December 4, 2009

Hamlet as War President
by Pat Buchanan

Led by a conflicted president of a divided party and 
nation, America is deepening her involvement in a war 
in its ninth year with no end in sight. 

Only one parallel to Barack Obama's troop decision comes 
to mind: the 2007 decision by George W. Bush to ignore 
the Baker Commission and put Gen. David Petraeus in 
command of a "surge" of 30,000 troops into Iraq. 

That surge succeeded. Baghdad was largely pacified. The 
Sunni of Anbar, heart of the resistance, accepted Petraeus' 
offer of cash and a role in the new Iraq. Together, 
Americans and Sunni began to eradicate al-Qaida. In July, 
the surge ended and U.S. troops withdrew from the cities. 

In August and October, however, the Finance, Justice and 
Foreign ministries were bombed. The Sons of Iraq now say 
the Shia government reneged on its pledge to pay their 
wages and bring them into the army. 

Jockeying in parliament for the inside track to power 
in January's elections may force a postponement of the 
elections, and of the U.S. timetable for withdrawal. Kurds 
and Arabs are battling over Kirkuk. Iraqis seem to be 
going back to fighting one another. 

What hope can there be then for a U.S. troop surge in 
Afghanistan, a larger, wilder, less accessible, more 
backward country, whose regime is less competent and more 
corrupt than that in Iraq? 

Conservative columnist Tony Blankley, who supported the 
Iraq war and surge, has come out against more troops in 
Afghanistan. His reasoning: Obama will be sending many 
hundreds of young Americans to their deaths and thousands 
to be wounded in a war about which he himself has doubts. 

While it may speak well of Obama as a man that he has 
reflected, agonized, debated within himself and conducted 
nine war counsels with scores of advisers before acceding 
to Gen. McChrystal's request, what does this say of him as 
commander in chief? 

Whatever one may say against George W. Bush, he was 
decisive. As was James K. Polk when he sent Winfield Scott 
to take Mexico City. As was Abraham Lincoln when he 
congratulated Gen. Sherman on his barbarous March to the 
Sea. As was Harry Truman, who ordered the dropping of an 
atom bomb to jolt Tokyo into accepting unconditional 
surrender. 

One may condemn the wars these president fought. One may 
deplore their tactics. But they and the most successful 
American generals -- Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, 
Douglas MacArthur, George Patton -- were not Hamlets. They 
did not agonize over why they were fighting or whether it 
was worth it. 

How does a president lead a nation into a war where he is 
not wholly and heartily committed to victory and from 
which, say his aides, he is even now planning the earliest 
possible exit? 

When Dwight Eisenhower took office, he concluded that the 
price of uniting Korea under a pro-U.S. government meant 
years more of war and scores of thousands more U.S. dead. 
He decided on an armistice. In six months, the war was 
over. 

Ike was as decisive as Obama is diffident.


>From tapes of his conversations with Sen. Richard Russell, 

LBJ agonized over Vietnam as early as 1964. He worried 
about the U.S. casualties and whether we could prevail 
in a country of little interest to him and of no vital 
strategic interest to the United States. 

Out of fear that Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater would 
call him the first president to lose a war, Johnson plunged 
in. And rather than win swiftly and brutally as we had 
with a mighty Japanese Empire, LBJ fought Vietnam as the 
conflicted war president he was, babbling on about building 
"a Great Society on the Mekong." 

One senses Obama is escalating for the same reason: He is 
not so much exhilarated by the prospect of victory and what 
it will mean as he is fearful of what a Taliban triumph 
and U.S. defeat would mean for America -- and him. 

And he is right to be. A U.S. withdrawal leading to a 
Taliban triumph would electrify jihadists from Marrakech 
to Mindanao and mark a milestone in the long retreat of 
American power. Pakistan, having cast its lot with us, 
would be in mortal peril. NATO, humiliated in its first 
war, would become more of a hollow shell than it already 
is. 

To prevent this, Obama plans to send tens of thousands 
more U.S. troops to hold off a resurgent Taliban, even 
as he plans for their eventual withdrawal. 

The United States is today led by a commander in chief who 
does not believe military victory is possible, who is not 
sure this war should be fought and who has a timetable in 
his own mind as to when to draw down our troops. And we 
face a Taliban that, after eight years of pounding, is 
stronger than ever, and believes God is on its side and 
its victory is assured. 

Who do we think is ultimately going to prevail?