So, let’s get back to that. What a stupid idea. Just because Gen. William Westmoreland Stanley McChrystal asks for 30,000 troops, doesn’t mean that Mr. Obama, as commander-in-chief, has to give them to him.

I’m not a general or politician, but even after the president’s speeches, I have unanswered questions:

- What are these troops supposed to do? If we’re going to run a classic counter-insurgency campaign, along the lines laid down by Gen. David Petraeus (Gen. McChrystal’s boss), we’ll need between 500,000-600,000 troops in Afghanistan, instead of the 100,000 we’ll have there at the height of the surge and we can’t plan on starting to pull them out in mid-2011.

- What’s with the whole “in and out” strategy anyhow? In the old neighborhood, we used to say, “Go big or stay home.” Mr. Obama does neither. If we start ramping up in January 2010 and ramping down in July 2011, what’s the point, other than to put on a political show to defend Mr. Obama from charges of being “soft on foreign policy”? Memo to the White House: you’re gonna get accused of that anyhow and waste lives, time and money in the process.

- What will all this cost? The first and foremost cost is to our fellow citizens who bear the burden of fighting needless wars. As Bob Herbert pointed out in Tuesday’s Times, it’s the same few soldiers and their families who have been asked to sacrifice more again and again and again for eight years.

- What will this cost in dollars? The cost of the war commonly bandied is one million dollars per year, per pair of boots on the ground. The Washington Post reported Monday that as we pull out of Iraq, the military is authorized to leave as much as $30 million worth of gear behind for the Iraqis at each post. We are leaving 280 posts in Iraq, so the total value of gear we leave behind may approach $8.4 billion. No worries that corrupt Iraqi officials will let any of that stuff fall into the wrong hands and American troops at the six large remaining bases will be killed with weapons purchased by US taxpayers. (“You there! Pay to kill your own kid!”) Of course, we’ll need the exact same gear in Afghanistan. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to buy all new stuff. Bet the defense contractors love this one.

- Are we really leaving Iraq? As I noted above, we’ll still have six large bases and Tuesday morning we woke to learn that over a hundred people died in a series of bombings in Baghdad. Could the terrorists be so uncooperative as to ratchet up the violence in Iraq, just as we’ve made a larger commitment in Afghanistan, thereby straining our overstressed forces even more? Could they be trying to pull us in two directions at once? Damn them! But how could anyone have foreseen this diabolical plot?

- What about the contractors? As of last March, there were 68,000 contractors in Afghanistan – outnumbering the troops at that time. There are 75,000 contractors in Iraq. Shifting the burden from soldiers to mercenaries might look good politically, but to whom are these people responsible? How many are taking drugs in opium-rich Afghanistan? (I’m sure it’s against the rules, but with the contracting companies making a big markup on every warm body they can locate, I’ll bet they’re pretty willing to overlook misbehavior.) Congress has been told we’ll hire local contractors in Afghanistan, but won’t that undermine our ostensible efforts to build up Afghan military and police forces?

- Where’s my war tax? If we accept, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Obama’s war plans need to be enacted, why is he following the George Bush strategy of lulling America into thinking that it all comes for free? Hamid “Where’s My Bribe?” Karzai told the BBC Afghanistan won’t be able to pay for any of its own security for 15 years. Why not ask the rest of us to share the sacrifice of the one in a hundred Americans who have to fight these wars? Why not at least tax the crap out of the bankers and Wall Streeters who party on with their ginormous bonuses?

And oh yeah…. What about Pakistan?

© Mark Floegel, 2009

Still, the world is not two-dimensional and those who pretend it is do an injustice to reality. I’m willing to give Barack Obama some limited benefit of the doubt on America’s two wars because he inherited them from George W. Bush.

Now that he is president, Mr. Obama has the duty to direct US war policy in ways that are sane and in keeping with America’s constitutional values. As Richard Nixon said about Vietnam when he assumed the presidency, “This is Johnson’s war, but in six months, it will be mine.” It was, and he didn’t do a good job with it.

War is rarely noble. If any war approaches nobility, it was World War II and because of that, I think Americans have been confused about war since. Because we were clearly the “good guys” in that war, we tend to reflexively think of ourselves as “good guys” in all subsequent wars.

We have not been the good guys in Iraq. That war is a brutal, stupid mistake. Mr. Obama gets partial credit for promising to draw down our troops in Iraq and for promising to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He’ll get full credit when he makes good on those promises.

Afghanistan is another story. I don’t think our cause there is noble, I do think it’s necessary.

We face a handful of unpalatable choices in Afghanistan. We don’t want the Taliban to take over and make the country a haven for terrorists nor do we want the country to descend into the warlordism and opium production that preceded the Taliban’s first takeover. The Karzai government we’ve supported is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent (very much like the disastrous Diem regime in South Vietnam).

What’s the solution? I don’t know. I do know Donald Rumsfeld’s massive bombing campaign that opened the Afghan war was stupid and brutal, like the Iraq mistake. Somehow, we have to find a way to make Afghanistan stable, governed by people who are a threat to neither Afghan citizens nor other countries. I know getting there from here will be a long process and will entail the goodwill of many nations, both in the region and around the world.

The Afghans have had poor to terrible governments as long as history can record. It is understandable, given their plight, that the Afghan people have little or no hope for a decent society (or would even know what one looks like), so we have to have that hope for them. If we are to have a policy – a war policy, a foreign policy – that is worthy of the United States of America, then we need to have as our goal the stability of Afghan nation and the well being of the Afghan people. We need to help them stand until they can stand on their own.

General David Petraeus was in Washington yesterday, asking for more troops. We will soon have 68,000 troops in Afghanistan and Gen. Petraeus would like another 10,000 on top of that. Many of these troops have been rotating on and off combat duty for seven and a half years. Stateside lives are in tatters; many suffer from post-traumatic stress. All of us owe these men and women a huge debt and we should not scant on paying it. They have sacrificed greatly and deserve our support.

President Obama seems intent on extracting us from a foolish and unnecessary war. The other war, the unwelcome but necessary war, he seems determined to fight as wars should be fought, with sadness and determination.

© Mark Floegel, 2009