Democrats show ignorance of counterinsurgency warfare, strategic patience

NY Times:

Congressional Democrats are voicing growing unease over the Obama administration’s national security policies, including the seemingly open-ended commitment in Afghanistan and the nettlesome question of what to do with prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

House leaders have yanked from an emergency military spending bill the $80 million that President Obama requested to close the detention center, saying he had not provided a plan for the more than 200 detainees there. The White House has said the center will close by Jan. 22, 2010.

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The unease, particularly over the war in Afghanistan, is greatest right now in the more liberal ranks of the Democratic caucus and is more evident in the House than in the Senate.

But American troop levels and war costs in Afghanistan will soar in the coming year, and party leaders, including Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, have warned that Democrats will most likely give the administration just one more year to get a handle on the military situation there before they start losing patience.

Mr. Obey said he would give the White House a year to demonstrate progress, just as he gave the Nixon administration a year to show progress in the Vietnam War inherited from the Johnson administration.

“With respect to Afghanistan and Pakistan, I am extremely dubious that the administration will be able to accomplish what it wants to accomplish,” Mr. Obey said last week. “The problem is not the administration’s policy or its goals. The problem is that I doubt that we have the tools there that we need to implement virtually any policy in that region.”

Mr. Obey, who entered Congress in 1969, added: “At the end of the year, Nixon had not moved the policy, and so I began to oppose the war. I am following that same approach here.”

The House spending bill requires that the Obama administration deliver a report early next year on progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, though it does not set any benchmarks for American military performance.

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The Gitmo wrangling is mainly an Obama screw up where he put PR with other liberals ahead of common sense. He is quickly finding himself in a no win situation where even if he gets the money for closing the place he has no where to send them other than possibly Bagram.

The Obey discussion of the Afghan and Iraq wars shows the continuing ignorance of liberals to the reality of counterinsurgency warfare. I bet Obey and the other opponents of winning, have no clue as to the average length, historically of counterinsurgencies. It is 11 years. Some like the one in Colombia have lasted over 40 years and the one winding down in Sri Lanka has lasted about 25 years.

They last that long because insurgents attempt to exhaust the strategic patience of the government and their allies. What Obey is demonstrating is a lack of strategic patience. His rush to defeat will have huge cost for the US that will be far greater than the continued cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It will mean challenges from more insurgencies instead of fewer if we continue to win. It will cost the US more in both blood and treasure in the future than paying the price to defeat the Islamic religious bigots.

Giving the administration or the military only a year to defeat the Taliban is like telling the enemy they only have to hang on for another year and they will get a gift from Obey and the liberal, Henry Wallace wing of the Democrat party. They will also destroy the Democrats credibility on national security and lead to their political defeat. As much as I would like to see the Democrats defeated, I don't want the country to suffer a military defeat to get it.