In the wake of eight years of bumbling, catastrophe-spawning foreign policy, today’s Washington Post provides a read more refreshing than a Budweiser from Brussels. In a dramatic reversal from existing strategy, the Obama administration is showing encouraging signs over talks with Iran, cooperation with Europe, conflict resolution in Afghanistan and actually following Bin Laden to the gates of hell.
Détente with Iran would include a more regional approach to the conflict in Afghanistan. Interestingly, Iran offered the US assistance on this front after 9/11, and Bush, being Bush, turned them down. The election of President Khatami and the promise of reforms he brought to his office would have clued a thinking president into the fact that it’s time to get over 1979. But Bush was not a thinking president.
Even former Reagan official Lawrence Korb, in an Op-Ed appeasingly titled "The Contributions of Iran," agrees this is a good idea:
FEW COUNTRIES were as helpful to the United States in its early involvement in Afghanistan as Iran. Yet after the fall of the Taliban, the US failed to capitalize on the possibilities of that strategic relationship. Now coalition and Afghan troops are losing ground against the same insurgents they confronted in 2001, in a war that the United States is unlikely to win unless it rethinks its relationship with Iran.
(snip)
Furthermore, Iran demonstrated an impressive ability to work with and guide the nascent Afghan government. James Dobbins, the Bush administration's first special envoy to Afghanistan, recognized Iran's substantial contributions in training and equipping the Afghan army. He also praised their contributions at the Bonn Conference in 2001.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration bungled this successful relationship by continually isolating the Iranians, rather than drawing on their influence to create a relatively stable Afghanistan.
Of course, Obama’s change in direction faces the usual Bushophantic naysayers, including Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, who parroted the concern trolls over the danger of withdrawing our forces from Iraq. But many others, including senior military strategists who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being Sanchezed, viewed Obama’s policies in a grownup light:
But conversations with several Obama advisers and a number of senior military strategists both before and since last Tuesday's election reveal a shared sense that the Afghan effort under the Bush administration has been hampered by ideological and diplomatic constraints and an unrealistic commitment to the goal of building a modern democracy -- rather than a stable nation that rejects al-Qaeda and Islamist extremism and does not threaten U.S. interests. None of those who discussed the subject would speak on the record, citing sensitivities surrounding the presidential transition and the war itself.
Obama’s increased focus on Afghanistan is also welcomed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has "already planned for a "more overt and forceful U.S. leadership role in the war, as well as more direct involvement by U.S. forces in fighting the Taliban in southern and western Afghanistan."
In another sign of the times, military officials expressed confidence that Obama will have more success bringing European allies on board. According to one NATO official:
I think you'll find the new president would then be able to persuade a number of European nations who have not liked this administration's way of doing business to come in behind them.
On the heels of eight embarrassing years mucking up the globe, witnessing the foreshadowing of a grownup foreign policy bring an enormous smile to my face.