Obama plans for failure in Afghansitan

Doyle McManus:

Barack Obama is in danger of giving deliberation a bad name.

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Three weeks ago, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused Obama of "dithering." At the time, the charge sounded premature and partisan -- but now some of Obama's own supporters have begun to wonder whether Cheney was right.

Last week, the president's indecision became even more apparent after White House aides let it be known that he was asking the military for more "exit strategies" -- what one official called "off-ramps" -- in case things go badly.

Those questions came after Obama's ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, sent two eleventh-hour memos questioning one of the basic premises of the war: whether the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai could ever reform itself enough to make success feasible.

At the end of the week, officials said the president and his advisors weren't seriously considering reducing U.S. troop strength; they are still converging on a narrow range of options that would send tens of thousands of additional troops. The debate, instead, is over how to define the mission -- and how to build those "exit ramps" without undercutting it.

Those are hard questions to answer -- harder still when a policy debate lasts for months and becomes public. These aren't just style points; the battle in Washington is causing real problems for U.S. foreign policy, beginning with mixed messages to both allies and adversaries.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates described the dilemma succinctly last week: "How do we signal resolve -- and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this isn't an open-ended commitment?"

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It is one or the other, and the "exit ramps" certainly signal a lack of resolve. They look like a group planning for failure. Failure is certainly the easy choice when it comes to warfare. Nothing is easier although the results are not desirable.

The way to win is to increase the force to space ratio so that you can control the movement of the enemy and destroy his operations and protect the people. While there have been complaints about the cost of doing that, those complaints sound hollow from an administration that has spent more than anyone in the history of mankind. Perhaps their spending priorities do not include defeating the enemy.