A Firmly Applied Hammer

The White House has let it leak out that Bama has decided to give McChrystal his 40,000 troops, but will not do it quickly. The full buildup will take between one and two years, as opposed to the 60,000 men deployed to Iraq in less than 6 months under President Bush.

Bama's decision is not so much a surge as a gentle swell, and whereas the Iraq surge proved to be extremely effective, the results in Afghanistan I expect to be mixed. Try this analogy:

When you want to drive a nail with a hammer you have to swing the hammer, building up momentum and force and energy so when the hammer strikes the nail all that energy and force is communicated to the nail and the board below it. The nail is driven into the board in a decisive stroke. That's how Bush did it in Iraq. Now take the same hammer, the same nail, and the same board, and place the hammer gently on the head of the nail and gradually increase the downward force. Eventually you may be able to push the nail a short distance into the board, but force generated over time does not compare to the force applied to the nail in an instant.

The media will say Bama is being firm but measured, and will couch the decision as some kind of masterstroke and people will buy it because they don't understand anything about war or media, but this is really a political decision that makes Bama look tough on terror while giving him the opportunity to pull the plug at anytime.

He's clearly attempting to please everyone, and as always happens, he'll please no one. Imagine the message to the troops. A decisive build up says, "Here are the resources, here's the goal, now go get it done and come home safe." It establishes that there is a beginning and an end to the mission. A trickle of a build only says, "Get ready to be there for a while."

That was the mistake Bush made early on in Iraq, and it was the one he remedied with the surge. Bama is merely repeating old mistakes and doing it such a way that appears he is delivering dynamic solutions. It's all a charade.

Whatever happens, Afghanistan is Obama's war now. He owns it and everything that happens there going forward. I don't want to here him crying about some conflict he inherited or some mess he has to clean up. This mess is his doing now. If his gentle swell succeeds, I'll give him credit, otherwise he needs to get fired in 2012; we'll know the outcome by then.