Obama suggests in press conference today that he will announce his Afghan decision next week, adding that he 'intends to finish the job' - which seems to imply that he will either be giving McChrystal roughly what he wants - or redefining what 'getting the job done' means. It's not impossible, with his poll numbers dipping and his presidency in something of a funk, it's not impossible that he could seek to transform the narrative and go with the former - I have a hard time believing it's anything but that latter though. That it was a rehearsed answer to a planted question that tried to imply victory but in ambiguous terms leads me to believe they're trying to aggressively sell the positives of an argument fraught with negatives. Still, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they entirely surprised me here.
[yes, but, c'mon - you'd be shocked if he committed to a robust effort to 'win' the war in a manner that conformed with what the generals thought winning to mean - true, and I don't know how exactly I'll account for it if he does make such a commitment - strike that: it will definitely indicate a backroom victory by Gates and Clinton over the skeptics - I've already speculated that such is the very reason Gates thought it important to stay on as SecDef, and that Clinton has fostered a close relationship with both Gates and Petraeus is common knowledge. Still, regardless, I will definitely be shocked if there's not some significant compromise built into the plan as means to mollify the uber left.
And I maintain that it is wrong to view his unending deliberation over the question as a good thing - there's a front page article in the Post this morning basically lionizing Obama as the 'Professor in Chief' - I think this is a naive and fundamentally flawed interpretation of what has happened here - this is a type of decision and responsibility completely outside of his ideological comfort zone - he tried to subdue it with reason but it is not the type of thing that reason can control - he only gets to where apparently he is with a lot of arm twisting from Gates and Clinton - because the answer to the question is pretty obvious: a 'loss' in Afghanistan will generate serious consequences for years down the road and therefore you have to try and 'win' - now, of course there is much to debate concerning how to go about it and I've certainly expressed much skepticism re COIN - but I don't think that's what he was debating, I think it's much more likely he was looking for some credible way to extricate himself from the mess and that Gates and Clinton eventually convinced him that there wasn't - remember, if six months from now things are going badly and the left is feeling betrayed and loudly expressing it, the lauding in the Post as 'Professor in Chief' will prove cold comfort indeed - reasoning and intellect can only take you so far here and it's utterly naive if not delusional to believe otherwise - if Obama has settled his own fears by imaging he's reasoned out the 'right' answer I would expect to see his confidence in the rightness of that answer to quickly fade and his commitment to the 'Afghan problem' to fade with it should things get ugly. I expect the Taliban is thinking the very same thing - ergo, watch for things to get ugly.
After all - he made very quick decisions on the stimulus plan and health care overhaul, both of which seem poorly constructed with the latter also being unpopular with a majority of voters - no endless deliberation there even though those things will have a much more immediate effect on the population's sense of well being - why? - because the emotional elements are already defined for him - he's on ideological terra firma there - but war requires the marshaling of much intellect because he has no ingrained instinct to rely on with such issues - people who see this as a good thing are fooling themselves because an intellectual commitment requires an emotional commitment to sustain it - without the re-enforcing component of faith in ones purpose the intellectual scaffolding will collapse under pressure]
