According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain.I realize that's just a snap shot. But it's the most recent snap shot. And it indicates Matthews wasn't just an ass. He was flat out wrong.
And as long as we're on Afghanistan, I need to make a few broader points. After Obama's speech, Dan Senor, former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and general war fanboy, said with a touch of glee: “If you had told me Obama would have doubled the number of troops in Afghan and not significantly reduced our presence in Iraq, I would have had a hard time believing it.” Throw that together with Bill Kristol's ebullient reaction and it's enough to ask how different our Middle East policy is today than it would have been under a third Bush term.
Now, the fundamental problem I have with Obama's Afghanistan plan is that a) there is no achievable mission (other than temporarily delaying a Taliban resurgence) and b) the initial objective of kicking out al Qaeda has morphed (predictably) into reinventing Afghanistan as a “modern state.” That gets us back to Colin Powell's Pottery Barn maxim on invading Iraq: we broke it, now we own it. And if we're to learn anything from history it's that nation-building is a fool’s errand. The idea that Afghans will be ready to assume control of the country in 18 months would be hilarious if it wasn't the actual stated policy goal. The upshot is that Obama's plan has almost no chance of fundamentally changing the country's long-term prospects. I suppose one could argue that's better than a zero chance. And so in an effort to pacify the military and the GOP, Obama is sending in more troops while using the time line for withdrawal to appease his own party and foreign allies, who wouldn't sign on for an indefinite occupation.
As for the GOP's sad attempts to paint Obama as soft, it's Obama who is doubling the troop levels in Afghanistan while the right neglected the country for years. Earlier this week Dick Cheney attacked Obama’s "weakness" for ordering more troops into Afghanistan—despite being presented with the same request from Gen. David D. McKiernan a year earlier and leaving the decision to be made by the next administration. More worrisome is that the GOP establishment thought we had Afghanistan taken care of years ago. In 2005, John McCain declared victory when he said: “The facts on the ground are we went to Afghanistan and we prevailed there.” It was assumed Afghanistan had been locked down. It wasn't. What confidence should we have that this time will be any different?
