Both And And And And And And…. Thinking
But let’s be honest, there are limits.
It doesn’t strike me that you can credibly talk about deploying an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, but make the focus of your speech how you plan to wrap things up by turning the bulk of fighting over to Kabul. It seems like a rhetorical bridge too far to say that the focus will now shift to the end game in Afghanistan, while at the same time acknowledging that, “a significant American presence in Afghanistan [will] remain for a long while”.
Obama is a smart guy and a very nuanced and careful thinker, but the spin on his announcement just comes off as the worst of rhetorical hair-splitting, a fundamental unwillingness to take a position and defend it. No matter what he did on Afghanistan, Obama was going to draw criticism — welcome to politics. But this kind of “everything-to-everyone-at-all-times” game that results in flaccid, DOA decision making is precisely what has deflated every corner of Obama’s base and is going to kill his presidency, in the end.
I appreciate the desire to take all perspectives into consideration when charting a course of action for the country, I think that is not just the right thing to do, but, frankly, vital to good decision making. And as far as that front end work goes, Obama is unsurpassed. But the back end, and arguably the most important component of decision making, is to then wade through all that information and analysis, sift the options and opinions, make a determination about what seems to be the right (or at least best) course of action, and then make a firm decision to follow that course.
Increasingly, it seems like Obama’s back nine is lacking in direct correlation to the impressive and charismatic appeal of his front nine. In short, the man ain’t got no follow through. But this Afghanistan announcement just stinks of the most obvious and blatant attempt to dress a half-finished process up and call it strategic wizardry. I’ll be heartily surprised if it flies very far.
Besides, what does it say when George Will and Michael Moore are on the same page and it’s a different page than you’re on? Yeah, might be something to think about.
November 30, 2009 15 Comments
