Too busy being fabulous

by Gordon Cooper

From Broader View Weekly, December 10, 2009

“You were just too busy being fabulous…
Too busy to think about us”
-Don Henley & Glenn Frey

The above words come from the song: “Busy Being Fabulous” performed by The Eagles on their latest album, Long Road Out of Eden. It is sad to say that our brave men and women struggling against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan could rightfully sing that chorus to Barack Obama. While they watch their leader travel the globe and as they watched him campaign in state governor races, they could justifiably wonder if he was just too busy being fabulous to think about them.

Our president appointed General McChrystal to take the leading role in the conflict in Afghanistan, who called upon Obama to provide him with the additional troops to carry out his mission. That request was made over 90 days ago.

Now, I am sure his supporters will look at his indecision as “careful deliberation”, and they will claim that Haste makes waste. I suspect that many of our fighting men and women would quickly counter with the opposite proverb that states He who hesitates is lost. Hesitation on the battlefield is a deadly and costly attribute.

What has Obama’s hesitancy cost us? The recent months have seen a rise in U.S. and British casualties and a loss of confidence among our allies. Growing frustration with Obama’s indecisiveness has surfaced in the foreign news media outlets, as British and French leaders expressed concern that the lack of determined leadership will harm the overall mission.

“What is the goal? Where is the road? And in the name of what? Where are the Americans?” Mr. Kouchner, French Foreign Minister, is quoted as asking in The Daily Telegraph. His words echo the same apprehension that caused Bob Ainsworth, the British Defense Secretary, to criticize Obama publicly for a “lack of clear direction” which has made it difficult for ministers to maintain troop morale and public approval for the mission.

The cost of “being fabulous” cannot be measured when one considers that, had McChrystal’s measured request for more troops been honored more swiftly, one single soldier’s death could have been prevented. As commander in chief of the sole superpower of the world, Obama must be aware that his decisions – or lack thereof – have far-reaching ramifications.
I am not suggesting a shoot from the hip approach to these heavy, policy-forming resolutions. I am, however, advocating a rapid, reasoned response that demonstrates a prioritized determination that lives are imperiled by protracted procrastination.

Now that his decision has finally been made, we can make the following observations: First of all, we can see that he really had no choice but to at least send some of the reinforcements requested by McChrystal. After all, he had repeatedly claimed during his campaign that Afghanistan was the necessary war, not that he really believed it, but merely because he had to oppose the Iraqi liberation that Bush had directed.

I almost felt sympathy for Obama as I read his words. This was a speech made by a man who was made by politics and a hungry media. He lacked both the executive experience and the definitive leadership qualities that are necessary to lead a nation or a battalion into battle, much less into a full-fledged war. Therefore, he was confined to trying to please the conservatives who would criticize him for “dithering” or being too dove-like, while at the same time, he had to keep one foot wiggling in the tents of the left-wing by offering up a “cost-vs.-reward” paragraph and then throwing them the bone of a totally unrealistic and unattainable exit date.

His procrastination has cost him the luxury of setting a real exit date as well as a valid cost analysis. By losing those precious 90 days, we have pushed the actual deployment dates of the 30,000 troops to, at best, late 2010 and, most likely, early 2011. So, to have them arrive in early 2011 and leave by July 2011 is not feasible, and you could see that he knew it wasn’t when he said it.

I agree with the overall goal of dismantling Al Qaeda and the Taliban, because I recognize the threat they represent to liberty. And I agree with the need to involve Pakistan in our strategy. I do not agree, however, with the assumption that we can work with the Karzai administration in any realistic form of nation-building from a central seat of power. The nations of Afghanistan and Pakistan are both bound by centuries of tribal alliances and rivalries. It is a very complex situation, and it cannot be solved in 18 short months.

We must, I believe, limit our approach to destroying the Islamic extremists while leaving the political future of the region to the vagaries of their populace. We should not be seen as propping up one party or tribe or sect.

I did applaud Obama, however, for finally acknowledging that America was not all bad and that we had “underwritten global security for six decades” and he even went as far as admitting that we were responsible for bringing walls down, opening markets, lifting billions from poverty and advancing the frontiers of human liberty. Hopefully, we can add the destruction of Al Qaeda to that list.