Mitt Romney claims he would produce a better
policy in Afghanistan by having better relations
with this guy. (Dina Rudick/Pool)
Mitt Romney would like to, needs to, distinguish himself from President Obama in foreign policy and, in particular, on Afghanistan. But his views on the war there just don't add up. While he would no doubt love to have a simple bomb-bomb-bomb message to display his tough-guy credentials to the right wing of the Republican base, not only is such a policy utterly useless in Afghanistan, but it also cuts against the grain of the rest of the American electorate, which,
the polls say, wants to bring the troops home as soon as possible.
Even Romney says that. But he also says President Obama was wrong to give the generals fewer troops than they asked for when he escalated the war in 2009. And Romney opposed the setting of target dates for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, both the 2014 date for pulling out most combat troops and the 2011 date for bringing home 23,000 troops by the end of summer. With the 10,000 already removed, that would reduce U.S. troop strength there to 68,000, about twice what it was when Obama took the oath of office in 2009. Romney said in a townhall meeting in Maryland a month ago:
"It's unthinkable that you say: 'Here's the date we're gonna leave, regardless of the circumstances.' Because that only communicates ... to the enemy, that at some point certain you're leaving. ... They make their plans based upon knowing your plans, when we don't know theirs."
That seems clear enough.
But Rich Williamson, a senior foreign policy adviser to the candidate, says,
"Gov. Romney is committed to success of the mission, but he absolutely wants to get the American troops home as soon as possible. [...]
"We will have a better strategy, better leadership, more firm commitment, and that will result in American troops able to return home sooner," says Williamson.
Campaign chatter. Shades of the secret plan. We-can't-tell-you-the-details-but-we'll-do-it-better. Promise.
The time for doing things better in Afghanistan passed long before President Obama came to office. And Romney's view that the generals should be listened to conveniently ignores the fact that Gen. David Petraeus, now head of the CIA, crafted the counter-insurgency plan that originally underpinned the surge. A successful counter-insurgency plan, the general pointed out many times, would take far more than even the maximum number troops that were proposed for the surge and take as long as a decade to complete their mission. A decade added to the decade in which the United States has already been at war in Afghanistan.
Not only has Romney said he would have paid more attention to the generals, but he says he would also have worked better with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has had, let us say, bumpy relations with the Obama administration. Uh-huh. And no doubt Romney believes he could smooth relations with Pakistan, too.
Whatever a President Romney might do to tweak current Afghanistan policy, it's clear there's no stomach among most Americans for hanging around one minute longer than necessary to get U.S. troops out. Were he able to defeat Obama in November, Romney would likely handle things about the same way as they have been handled.
The big questions being wrestled with are how to cover the costs of a large Afghan National Army that Kabul cannot come close to affording and how many residual U.S. troops would remain there, either as special operations units under Pentagon control or reassigned to CIA supervisors. The latter gives both Kabul and Washington the ability to say to their constituents that there are no U.S. combat troops remaining, a transparent lie. Sad to say, the answers to those questions will likely be pretty much the same whoever is president come January 21, 2013.