President Obama’s Afghanistan speech confirms America’s decline

[steven johnson]

One of the most prominent features of the decline of a Great Power is the inability to project power abroad. In my opinion we are reaching the end of our ability to fund wars.

The American Century just ended. This was the phrase coined by Henry Luce, which so aptly described America as the modern-day colossus, more powerful than any nation had ever been. Wednesday night, President Obama said that power had reached its limit. He was bringing 10,000 troops home from Afghanistan. The war was not finished, but we are.

I have heard this speech before. I heard echoes of Richard Nixon explaining “Vietnamization.” Gonna turn the war over to our stolid allies. We put them on their feet. We trained them. We supplied them. We schooled them at our elite military academies. They looked splendid in their uniforms. But when the U.S. pulled out, South Vietnam collapsed. It will happen again in Afghanistan. I think Obama knows that. He fought this war -- authorized the West Point surge -- because he did not know how to get out. Now, he does. As any previous president could have told him, it’s by getting out.

Somewhere in the Obama speechwriting shop is someone with a tin ear. Having raised the specter of Vietnamization, Obama came close to mimicking Robert McNamara’s famous and klutzy line about the Vietnam war, “light at the end of the tunnel.” He said, “And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance.” I hope so. But this secure peace will not hold a day. Even George McGovern’s refrain from his 1972 acceptance speech at the Democratic convention -- “Come Home America” -- was echoed here as a call to turn inward.

Bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaeda has been riddled by drones. The job is done, or done enough, and we are broke and in need of some R&R. Obama surely knows his history and does not want it repeated -- neither as tragedy nor as farce. We are not Henry Luce’s America -- not because we no longer want to be, but because we no longer can be.




President Obama’s Afghanistan speech confirms America’s decline

[Poll_Blind]

1. Recced to 0. n/t

PB

[bemildred]

2. Well, reconfirms, it's been obvious for a while, outside Disneyland on the Potomac. nt

[The Big Vetolski]

3. I thought the same thing. Echoes of Vietnam. K&R

[azul]

4. We had better get the hell out of there

before the Russians figure out how to arm the rebels with anti-aircraft missiles to chase the US out and to get even.

We had the chance to stabilize Afghanistan after the Soviets left, but we just abandoned the country to chaos and to become a fanatical training ground. By design,or blunder?