Senator Obama, General Petraeus, Senator Hagel (Baghdad, 2008)From The Atlantic Council:
The other night I watched the film "The Deer Hunter." Afterward, I remembered why it took me so many years to be able to watch Vietnam movies.
It all came tumbling back -- the tragedy, the innocent victims, the waste. Too often in Washington we tend to see foreign policy as an abstraction, with little understanding of what we are committing our country to: the complications and consequences of endeavors. It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out. Vietnam lasted more than 10 years; soon, we will slip into our ninth year in Afghanistan. We have been in Iraq for almost seven years.
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My Comment: When I read this commentary, I said to myself that this is something that a Washington politician would write (as a rule, I always try my best to read the article first, check the author later).
No surprise, this commentary is written by Senator Chuck Hagel.
His prose and his thinking comes from a man who has been in the circle of power for a long time. His mindset is focused on history, tough decisions to make, consequences and responsibility. A man in government who once had to make tough decisions.
Sighhhh ..... and this is what is so wrong with Washington today.
The people who are best positioned to give people like Sen. Hagel the guidance and directions that they are looking for are from the American people themselves. With Vietnam .... which Sen. Hagel brings up on numerous occasions from the "men in power" point of view .... he should focus more on what the American people were thinking at the time .... and more importantly .... what they wanted.
But he does not .... his focus is on President Johnson .... and others like him. Limits of power .... consequences of actions .... responsibility for decisions .... limits for force .... legacy and ego all into play while denying that it is the case.
Senator Hagel is looking and searching for the making of a new world order, but what he should look and search for is what the American people want.
In a case like Afghanistan .... the direction that we should take is ridiculously simple. After 8 years of strong support for the Afghan war .... the American people (in six months) have lost confidence and trust in the war policy of this President .... and this support is dropping fast. They know that the time is to get out now .... that we tried our best but the Afghan conflict is a conflict that is best sorted by the Afghans themselves. President Obama is not going to deliver the silver bullet that will end this conflict .... the American people are coming to accept that .... time to move on.
Unfortunately .... Sen. Hagel is not listening .... and neither is President Obama. President Obama is positioning himself to be stuck in a conflict that has no strategic importance to the United States. It has now become political, and his ego will not accept the criticism that would come from his opponents if he becomes the President that lost Afghanistan to the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies.
Hence .... because our politicians are not listening to us .... we are stuck in a region that has been a crossroads for man since the beginning of time .... fighting and dying for a piece of rock that many others throughout history have fought for and finally left when they realized that it had no value or importance to anyone but themselves.
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