How do you ask [fill in the blank] to be the last [fill in the blank] to die for [fill in the blank]

Tuesday morning.  Revised, updated, and done.

In the days since President Obama delivered his speech to the cadets at West Point announcing his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan I’ve seen more than a few blog posts and comments critical of the President’s plan that glibly alluded to the young John Kerry’s famous rhetorical question about the Vietnam War, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

The posts themselves weren’t glib.  They all had the same serious point.  That the President is making a terrible mistake, that his reasons justifying the mistake don’t wash, that in fact there is only one thing to do in Afghanistan and that is Get the hell out now, that it is wrong, very wrong, for the President to be asking any more American soldiers and Marines to die over there.

David Sirota’s post, How Do You Ask Someone to Be the Last to Die for President Obama's Political Image? can serve as the best example.  Nothing glib about this one but the title. Sirota concludes that the President is keeping us in Afghanistan and increasing the number of troops because to do the opposite, draw down and pull out, would risk the wrath of the War Party and earn him a reputation for weakness, which would mean that this adventure is something worse than a mistake.

Others asked their version of the question to come to different conclusions about why the President’s making a big mistake. However they varied it, though, they were still putting Kerry’s original question out there to be answered.

“How do you ask someone to be the last one to die for a mistake?”

The expected correct answer is, “You don’t.”

But there’s a literal-minded answer.

How do you ask someone to be the last one to die for a mistake?

You do it the way President Obama did.

You go to some place like the United States Military Academy at West Point and you stand before some of the young men and women who will die at your command, the soon-to-be young officers who will lead other young men and women to their deaths in Afghanistan, and you ask them.

I’m sort of perplexed by criticism of the President’s speech as a speech that doesn’t take into account where it was delivered and who was in the audience.  Instead, the criticism has been along the lines of “The speech failed because the President didn’t lay out point by point and in detail his long term goals and policies” and “It was a failure because I, your humble pundit, didn’t feel my heart leap, my notebook isn’t full of memorable quotes, and at no point did the President remind me of George C. Scott as General Patton,” criticisms entirely irrelevant to a speech by the Commander-in-Chief to the troops on the eve of sending them into combat.

George Packer’s post, War in a Minor Key, in the New Yorker is a fair example of the former.

One of the disappointments of last night’s speech is that Obama didn’t share enough of those details with the rest of us. He emphasized why but not how. He didn’t, for example, lay out a political strategy that stands a chance of succeeding alongside the military strategy of counterinsurgency and more troops. He didn’t say much about what the thirty thousand additional troops will do, other than train Afghans. His promise to begin a withdrawal in July of 2011 has everything to do with our realities and nothing to do with Afghanistan’s, where nothing happens on other people’s timetables. Pakistan was the subtext for most of the speech, the essential and barely mentionable piece of this complex puzzle.

Frank Rich’s op-ed piece in the New York Times, Obama’s Logic Is No Match for Afghanistan, includes major elements of the former slightly contradicted by refrains from the latter, with the added criticism that the President failed to ask anybody except the cadets to make sacrifices to continue this war.

As L.B.J. learned the hard way, we can’t have both guns and the butter of big domestic projects, from health care to desperately needed jobs programs. We have to make choices. Obama paid lip service to that point, but the only sacrifice he cited in the entire speech was addressed to his audience at West Point, not the general public — the burden borne by the military and military families. While the president didn’t tell American civilians to revel in tax cuts and go shopping, as his predecessor did after 9/11, that may be a distinction without a difference. Obama’s promises to accomplish his ambitious plans for nation building at home while pursuing an expanded war sounded just as empty.

Both Packer and Rich think the President failed to make his case, likely because there isn’t a good case to be made.

My impression is that among the usual crowd of TV bobbleheads and op-ed throat-clearers the consensus was simply that the speech was boring.

The President did not go to West Point to cheerlead for himself or his policies.  He went to West Point to deliver the heart-wrenching news in person to some of the people it most immediately concerns, after the people of Afghanistan.  Beltway Insiders seem to think he went there to talk to them.

The President’s tone, demeanor, and choice of words were appropriate to the moment.  He has a habit of doing this.  And the Media has a habit of missing this about him.  You might remember criticism of his Inaugural Address on the grounds that like the speech at West Point it was too somber and lacking in soaring rhetoric and quotable lines, which was true but also besides the point.

Again, this was a case of Village Insiders thinking that Obama was talking to them and that his first and foremost job when giving a speech was to entertain them.

But the new President was talking to the crowd who had come out to see him sworn in and through them to the American people and his point was to let us know that he understood what a mess the country was in and how hard it was going to be to clean up that mess.

The Insiders expected and wanted a speech like JFK’s inaugural address or Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.  What they got was one more like Lincoln’s First, but since generally they are poor students of history they probably aren’t even aware of what Lincoln said then and how somberly he said it even when they quote the one quotable passage from it.

The President spoke to the cadets and judging by their reaction, the cadets respected him for doing that.

It certainly doesn’t make a mistake not a mistake because the brave young volunteers who are being asked to die for it are willing to do the jobs they signed up to do and think they can succeed at it. 

And the fact that the President thought long and hard about the problem, considered many options, and rejected the advice of various advisors of the sort whose advice it is politically difficult to reject doesn’t mean that he didn’t come to the wrong conclusions.

There are compelling arguments that escalating rather then bugging out immediately may be a mistake.  Juan Cole lays out the top ten things that could derail the President’s plan.  Tony Karon is does it in five.

Frankly, I’m not at all happy about the President’s plan.  But every time I hear myself asking, “How do you ask someone to be the last to die for a mistake?” I answer myself with another question.

“How do you tell the women and children of Kabul and Kandahar that after eight years we’ve decided to leave them to the mercies of the Taliban?”

Complete text of the speech here.

Photo of cadets listening to President Obama last Wednesday night at West Point by Chet Gordon of the Times Herald-Record.

Comments

[Cass]

“How do you tell the women and children of Kabul and Kandahar that after eight years we’ve decided to leave them to the mercies of the Taliban?”

I'm sure the Soviets were asking themselves the same question, but it turned out they couldn't postpone that date for eternity.

Also: http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2009/12/not-all-feminists-love-escalation-in-afghanistan.html

[Dutch]

Well whatever you do, absolutely do not consider even for a moment that your premise is false and it's not a mistake at all.

"War of necessity" - PBO (when made was a nice campaign soundbite to sound tough.)

I know progressives forfeited any semblance of shame for their hypocrisies, but it cracks my cuss up to hear the same people who clucked their tongues at Reagan for abandoning the Afghans after "Charlie Wilson's War" (You remember: We helped give them back their country and somehow it's our fault we didn't colonize them into a protectorate and keep them from cussing up their country again), these are now the same people shouting "Ruuuun! Run! Drop your weapons and ruuuuuuuun!"

Just as a point of curiosity... What IS worth fighting for?

And Cass, your implication that liberation forces currently being shot to Holy Cuss under ridiculous rules of engagement equate to invading Soviet forces who mowed down millions of Afghans indiscriminantly like rabbits... it's misguided at best.

[Ian Welsh]

“How do you tell the women and children of Kabul and Kandahar that after eight years we’ve decided to leave them to the mercies of the Taliban?”

Well, maybe you do a poll, and find out if the majority want to be left to the mercies of the Taliban, since the Taliban kill less of them than NATO and the warlords supported by NATO.

Please don't pretend we're doing this for the Afghanis own good.

[piny]

I respect the President's willingness to expose himself to actual soldiers. But I think that the pundits are right. This idea of respect for sacrifice only applies to a worthwhile sacrifice. Grave or cavalier, humble or vainglorious, he still has no right to ask soldiers to die without a good reason. And if that orator can't write a convincing speech about staying the course, he probably doesn't have a good reason.

If West Point cadets feel differently, that is their right--but we civilians are also implicated in their commander's decision. You also have to remember that soldiers are not asked to participate in any war. They follow orders, even mistaken ones.

The Taliban controls most of Afghanistan right now. The army displaces them to the same degree that your body displaces water as you cross a river. The problem isn't just that we have no exit strategy, but that we are not a firebrake now. We aren't really standing between the people of Afghanistan and any enemy or eventuality.

[Cathie from Canada]

I am no fan of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan, but I liked it that Obama finally FINALLY defined the reason why NATO and the United States are there -- to protect the interests of the United States.
Seems simple, but Bush could never define the goal for this war, and as a result the US military and everybody else have spent 8 years just fumbling around in that benighted country.
Now Obama has defined your mission so you can actually figure out when that mission has been accomplished. Now other nations, like ours, can decide whether we support that mission and for how long. Its a breath of fresh air.

[actor212]

it cracks my cuss up to hear the same people who clucked their tongues at Reagan for abandoning the Afghans after "Charlie Wilson's War" (You remember: We helped give them back their country and somehow it's our fault we didn't colonize them into a protectorate and keep them from cussing up their country again), these are now the same people shouting "Ruuuun! Run! Drop your weapons and ruuuuuuuun!"

There's a difference here. I'm going to put it in caps, so that even a kindergartner lcan understand me.

WE STARTED THIS FUCKING WAR, JUST LIKE THE SOVIETS DID. We did not start "Charlie Wilson's War," and had we stuck in there and provided the aid and assistance to start schools and give farmers something other than the opium you seem to be rather fond of to grow, the Taliban wouldn't have had a foothold and we wouldn't be mourning three thousand innocent Americans.