So ends our war in Afghanistan, not with a bang or a whimper but a snark: President Obama’s snipe that “it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them.”
In the run-up to the president’s Rose Garden remarks Tuesday, attention was on one figure: 9,800. This was the number of troops he would leave behind in Afghanistan to lock down our achievements there.
The figure has a political virtue: It is less than the 10,000 troops the commander on the ground, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, had said he needed. But it’s in the ballpark.
But 9,800 is not a real number. The real number is zero. The president made clear this zero signifies the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016 — regardless of conditions on the ground.
How different this Obama is from the candidate in 2008, who told us Afghanistan “is a war that we must win.” Then again, this is a man whose most hawkish promises frequently come with dovish details.
So it was in 2008, when his vows to win in Afghanistan were meant to signify resolve against the backdrop of his calls to retreat from Iraq.
So it was in 2012, when he declared a red line over use of chemical weapons in Syria, a way of explaining why he’d remained on the sidelines in that clash.
So it was, too, in 2009, when he came to West Point to announce a surge he defined as “in our vital national interest” but in the next breath told us the troops would come home after 18 months.
If his former secretary of defense is right that Obama did not believe in his own strategy, it’s not hard to see why.
In his remarks this week, the president said the troops who remain will have but two missions: “training Afghan forces and supporting counter-terrorism operations against the remnants of al Qaeda.”
Question: Does anyone believe Afghanistan will no longer need such help little more than two years from now?
By profession, the president is a lawyer. And on Tuesday, he again confirmed to friend and foe that the way to read him is to look past the surface statement of resolve to the inevitable loophole underneath.