Roman Around

235 British troops have been killed in Afghanistan to date – 98 this year alone. Support for the war in Afghanistan continues to drop among Brits, and according to British Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth, the reason can be summed up in two words: Barack Obama.

In ten-plus months of stunning, history-book rewriting governance, it has become clear that unless one is a tyrant, a totalitarian or a terrorist, President Obama really isn’t all that interested in diplomacy. In fact, it’s quite unlikely that even an Obama patented classic groveling bow before Gordon Brown (or Sir Paul McCartney) could make things better between the two long-time allies.

While President Obama continued, even this week, to valiantly blame every thing wrong with America – including the war in Afghanistan – on eight years of George W. Bush, Ainsworth pointed his finger at Obama.

James Kirkup, Thomas Harding and Toby Harnden of the UK Telegraph write: 

Bob Ainsworth

Mr Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising the US President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban.

A “period of hiatus” in Washington – and a lack of clear direction – had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said.

Senior British Government sources have become increasingly frustrated with Mr Obama’s “dithering” on Afghanistan, the Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this month, with several former British defence chiefs echoing the concerns.

…

The Defence Secretary’s blunt remarks about the US threaten to strain further a transatlantic relationship already under pressure over the British release of the Lockerbie bomber and Mr Obama’s decision to snub Mr Brown at the United Nations in September.

Some who have lauded Obama’s thoughtfulness and deliberateness in coming up with a plan of action for Afghanistan claim that those who criticize his “dithering” are ill-informed partisans hell-bent on finding fault with anything he does. Bammy supporters argue that additional troops would not have been available for deployment until January anyway (according to a “senior US defense official”) so the “dithering” issue is largely irrelevant and intellectually dishonest.

But it’s a silly argument.

Whether or not troops are ready to deploy today has nothing to do with whether or not a course of action can be devised. Troop availability today has no bearing on whether or not the Commander-in-Chief of the United States armed forces can formulate a war strategy.

The argument isn’t even logical.

For example, people regularly make plans and devise strategies for their futures by setting goals (buying a house, a car, saving for a child’s education, etc.), and almost always when the funds to make those goals a reality are not in hand.

Considering the speed with which the President embarked on his multi-trillion dollar spending sprees, it’s difficult to lend legitimacy to the “Obama is just being contemplative” argument. After all, the President is obviously more than willing to increase government spending to unprecedented levels without having the funds “in hand” to do so.

So, if troops were ready to deploy today, President Obama would have already come up with a plan?

Anyone who believes that, stand on his head.

All deployments take time to organize. All battle plans need preparation. Military commanders have already hinted that it could take several months to get new troops in the pipeline. But the plan must first exist.

There is nothing in waiting months and months to announce a strategy that bodes well for Obama on this score.

Nothing.

And if, for the sake of argument, Obama’s dithering actually was based on the fact that additional troops would not be available until January, wouldn’t he – or any of his dancing Obamacrats – have cited it endlessly it as a reason for the prolonged delay? Wouldn’t the mainstream media, ever quick to give the President the benefit of any doubt, have beaten that excuse to death by now?

Ten months in, and everything is still George W. Bush’s fault.

It isn’t as if Obama is averse to passing the buck … or bowing to it.

Next week, after more than three months of deliberation, the president is expected to announce that he will send around 34,000 more troops.

Mr Ainsworth, speaking to MPs at the defence committe in the House of Commons, welcomed that troop ‘surge’ decision, but lamented the time taken to reach it.

He said that the rising British death toll, the corruption of the Afghan government and the delay in Washington all hamper efforts to retain public backing for the deployment.

“We have suffered a lot of losses,” he said. “We have had a period of hiatus while McChrystal’s plan and his requested uplift has been looked at in the detail to which it has been looked at over a period of some months, and we have had the Afghan elections, which have been far from perfect let us say.

“All of those things have mitigated against our ability to show progress… put that on the other side of the scales when we are suffering the kind of losses that we are.”

The President is having a difficult time convincing anybody that he takes the war in Afghanistan seriously.

Ainsworth – the first British minister to publicly speak up against Obama’s turtle-paced approach to prosecuting the war - is clearly not happy.

A set of holiday DVDs presented in a festive gift case ought to put him straight.

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