Mona Charen
An excerpt from a post by Mona Charen:
President Obama doesn’t want us to notice, but he prosecuted his own war in Afghanistan. It was a “war of choice.” He “surged” 33,000 troops to the country to risk and sometimes lose their lives between 2009 and 2010, and then he looked the other way. Against common sense (and the advice of his generals), he accompanied his announcement of the surge with a date for its conclusion. It was an engraved invitation for the Taliban to wait us out and for our allies on the ground to make the best deal possible with the enemy. It was also an invitation for Americans to lose their lives in vain.
The president declined to send the number of troops his generals recommended. He explained that the surge was designed to “break the Taliban’s momentum” — hardly a rousing war aim. Lest anyone be in any doubt about his eagerness to escape his own war, he said in August of 2010, “Next July we will begin a transition to Afghan responsibility. . . . This transition will begin because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.” In 2012, the NATO command in Afghanistan reported that insurgent attacks were down by 5 percent over the previous year, but still well above 2009 levels. So much for even the tepid goal of halting momentum.
