Bush’s Third Term?

November 9, 2009

Throughout the campaign Barack Obama argued that a vote for John McCain was a vote for a Bush third term and thus he stood for something different. In many ways this stance was legitimate, since becoming president, Obama has campaigned for universal health care, cap and trade, and a foreign policy based on direct diplomacy, positions which have been a drastic change from the ideas and ideology of the Bush administration. Yet in Afghanistan, Obama is in danger of repeating the mistakes George W. Bush made in Iraq. In the most chaotic days of the War in Iraq, Sunni and Shia militia and terrorist groups were on the verge of civil war and American soldiers were coming home in body bags every day. Yet the Bush administrations attempts to stabilize the country and train an Iraqi army were failing due to a flawed strategy and a lack of troops and recourses. At home, the conflict was becoming extremely unpopular and Democrats in Congress began pushing the President for a timeline to bring the troops home. Out of desperation, the Bush administration tried to maintain support for the war by calling Iraq “the central front in the War on terror,” and by exaggerating the progress in the training of Iraqi soldiers. His Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield warned military commanders not to request for more troops and therefore undermine the current strategy. The administration even went as far to fire four star and well respected General Erik Shinseki for stating that the United States needed “something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” to be successful in their mission. This continued until Bush decided to make one of the boldest decisions of his presidency. He deployed 20,000 more troops to Iraq and shifted to a strategy of protecting Iraqi neighborhoods, even though this move made him more unpopular. Yet the plan worked. Iraq has become a much more stabile country and violence has decreased significantly. U.S forces have already withdrawn from major Iraqi cities and plan to be mostly out of the country by 2011 under the status of forces agreement. Today, Barack Obama is mirroring many of George W. Bush’s mistakes in one of the biggest challenges of his presidency, the War in Afghanistan. NATO forces have too little soldiers and recourses to defeat Al- Quaeda and the Taliban; this has caused an enormous amount of violence throughout the country and fears the Taliban could overthrow the Afghan government. Once again the American public has become weary of the war and pressure is already mounting on the Obama administration to withdrawal all troops from the country. In response to this Obama has pursued many similar tactics to the Bush administration. He has called the war, “ a war of necessity” and has pressured military commanders to not criticize the current strategy. He even sent his national security advisor James Jones and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to warn the top commander in Afghanistan General McCrystal to not ask for more troops. This pattern inside the Obama administration is very troubling but fortunately not all hope is lost. President Obama is scheduled to meet with his military advisors to discuss his Afghan strategy. He now has a similar choice to Bush. He can cut and run leaving Afghanistan in chaos and giving Al- Queada the resources and moral victory it needs to become more powerful and thus orchestrate another attack on American soil. Or he can make a bold decision similar to Bush to send more soldiers and money in order to defeat the Taliban, and help Afghanistan develop a stronger economy, infrastructure and stabile government. Only time will tell but his decision will not impact the legacy of the Obama administration but world conflict for decades to come.