Mother of all decisions: If Obama escalates in Afghanistan, he'll set back progress on other fronts

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Mother of all decisions: If Obama escalates in Afghanistan, he'll set back progress on other fronts

BY Michael Cohen

Monday, November 30th 2009, 4:00 AM


During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama famously remarked that he was running for President not just to end the war in Iraq, but to change the mind-set that got the nation mired in that conflict in the first place.

That goal will be severely impaired by a significant increase in troop levels for Afghanistan, which Obama seems all but certain to announce tomorrow.

Sending from 30,000 to 40,000 troops to that tumultuous nation will likely wreak havoc on Obama's broader first-term foreign policy agenda - consuming resources, sucking up time and attention, and ultimately subverting his larger foreign policy goals.

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Finally, Obama and his advisers will be pressed in devoting their attention and political capital to other foreign policy matters, whether it's pushing for a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, organizing an international coalition to confront the Iranian nuclear program or hammering out international agreements on climate change and trade. It's never easy for Presidents and their advisers to proverbially "walk and chew gum at the same time," and having 100,000 troops in Afghanistan will make it that much harder.

But above all, Obama's goal of changing America's mind-set from the belief that there is a military solution to every national security challenge will be dealt a defining and perhaps fatal blow - and in the end, that is probably the most important reason why troop levels in Afghanistan matter and why the President should think twice. The opportunity costs will be profound, and Obama will risk becoming the one thing he likely did not want to be: a war President.

As he prepares to announce a decision that will define his presidency, Obama would be wise to consider the words of one of his predecessors in the Oval Office, Lyndon Johnson, who after leaving office told a biographer, "History provided too many cases where the sound of the bugle put an immediate end to the hopes and dreams of the best reformers." No doubt Obama knows what ultimately happened to Johnson's policy agenda - and his presidency.

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http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/11/30/2009-11-30_the_mother_of_all_decisions.html

(Michael Cohen is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation.)