Hamlet as War President

Led by a conflicted president of a
divided party and nation, America is deepening her
involvement in a war in its ninth year with no end in
sight.

Only one parallel to Barack Obama`s
troop decision comes to mind: the 2007 decision by
George W. Bush to ignore the

Baker Commission and put Gen. David Petraeus in
command of a
"surge" of 30,000 troops into Iraq.

That surge succeeded. Baghdad was
largely pacified. The Sunni of Anbar,

heart of the resistance, accepted Petraeus` offer of
cash and a role in the new Iraq. Together, Americans and
Sunni began to eradicate al-Qaida. In July, the surge
ended and U.S. troops withdrew from the cities.

In August and October, however, the
Finance, Justice and Foreign ministries were bombed. The
Sons of Iraq now say the Shia government reneged on its
pledge to pay their wages and bring them into the army.

Jockeying in parliament for the
inside track to power in January`s elections may force a
postponement of the elections, and of the U.S. timetable
for withdrawal. Kurds and Arabs are battling over
Kirkuk. Iraqis seem to be going back to fighting one
another.

What hope can there be then for a
U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan, a larger, wilder, less
accessible, more backward country, whose regime is less
competent and more corrupt than that in Iraq?

Conservative columnist Tony
Blankley, who supported the Iraq war and surge, has

come out against more troops in Afghanistan. His
reasoning: Obama will be sending many hundreds of young
Americans to their deaths and thousands to be wounded in
a war about which he himself has doubts.

While it may speak well of Obama as
a man that he has reflected, agonized, debated within
himself and conducted nine war counsels with scores of
advisers before acceding to Gen. McChrystal`s request,
what does this say of him as commander in chief?

Whatever one may say against George
W. Bush, he was decisive. As was
James K. Polk when he sent

Winfield Scott to take Mexico City. As was

Abraham Lincoln when he congratulated Gen. Sherman
on his barbarous March to the Sea. As was
Harry Truman, who ordered the dropping of an atom
bomb to jolt Tokyo into accepting unconditional
surrender.

One may condemn the wars these
president fought. One may deplore their tactics. But
they and the most successful American generals—Stonewall
Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur, George
Patton—were not Hamlets. They did not agonize over why
they were fighting or whether it was worth it.

How does a president lead a nation
into a war where he is not wholly and heartily committed
to victory and from which, say his aides, he is even now
planning the earliest possible exit?

When Dwight Eisenhower took office,
he concluded that the price of uniting Korea under a
pro-U.S. government meant years more of war and scores
of thousands more U.S. dead. He decided on an armistice.
In six months, the war was over.

Ike was as decisive as Obama is
diffident.

From
tapes of
his conversations with Sen. Richard Russell, LBJ
agonized over

Vietnam as early as 1964. He worried about the U.S.
casualties and whether we could prevail in a country of
little interest to him and of no vital strategic
interest to the United States.

Out of fear that Richard Nixon and
Barry Goldwater would call him the first president to
lose a war, Johnson plunged in. And rather than win
swiftly and brutally as we had with a mighty Japanese
Empire, LBJ fought Vietnam as the

conflicted war president he was, babbling on about
building

"a Great Society
on the Mekong."

One senses Obama is escalating for
the same reason: He is not so much exhilarated by the
prospect of victory and what it will mean as he is
fearful of what a Taliban triumph and U.S. defeat would
mean for America—and him.

And he is right to be. A U.S.
withdrawal leading to a Taliban triumph would electrify
jihadists from Marrakech to Mindanao and mark a
milestone in the long retreat of American power.
Pakistan, having cast its lot with us, would be in
mortal peril. NATO, humiliated in its first war, would
become more of a hollow shell than it already is.

To prevent this, Obama plans to
send tens of thousands more U.S. troops to hold off a
resurgent Taliban, even as he plans for their eventual
withdrawal.

The United States is today led by a
commander in chief who does not believe military victory
is possible, who is not sure this war should be fought
and who has a timetable in his own mind as to when to
draw down our troops. And we face a Taliban that, after
eight years of pounding, is stronger than ever, and
believes
God
is on its side and its victory is assured.

Who do we think is ultimately going
to prevail?

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan
needs

no introduction to
VDARE.COM readers; his book State
of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America, can
be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How
Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost
the World,
reviewed

here by

Paul Craig Roberts.