The Death of a Poet

Our President spoke last night about his troop surge in Afghanistan, and what struck me first was the lack of poetry in his words. I think we saw the death of a poet live on primetime.

The first ten minutes of his speech was essentially a history lesson on the Afghan and Iraq wars, with a much needed emphasis on the fact that we want nothing to do with occupying these nations, but rather to simply to remove a common enemy. His retelling of the history of our wars in that region was very kind to our former cowboy president. And it was very clear that, as most already knew, Afghanistan is the proverbial ground zero. Although, as Chris Matthews pointed out, his logic in this situation was slightly more a domino effect than an all out assault on Al-Qaeda.

Afghanistan, as the president pointed out, can not be lost because if we lose, the Taliban will set up shop, and give safe haven to Al-Qaeda. Winning in Afghanistan will help to keep pressure on Al-Qaeda, and show Pakistan that they have a partner, which will help to further drown out Al-Qaeda’s power.

His plan is fairly simple; increase troops by as much as 30,000 in Afghanistan as early as January, 2010, spend 18 months helping to train Afghan soldiers, combat the Taliban-which has grown in strength while we wasted time over in Iraq chasing imaginary weapons and such-and try to suppress the presence of border region militias that operate with, as Obama himself put it, “impunity”, who send terrorist to America to execute various nefarious plots to disrupt western life, while preparing Afghanistan to take over and hold the fort down themselves.

Dennis Kucinich would rather not send more troops to Afghanistan; he would prefer to bring the troops home, and focus solely on “nation building” here at home. Several other well known democrats have joined him, including Rep. Maxine Waters, and they are poised to disrupt funding for the task. Unfortunately, Obama does not have the luxury of focusing on one problem, a point that he stressed in his speech.

Now one point that can be made is the concern over whether we should be fighting a war for a country steeped in corruption, but this holds onto a mistaken belief that corruption is unfixable. I will concede that “60 percent of the population said Karzai's government was the most corrupt in 40 years” as is stated in a report by Integrity Watch Afghanistan . And it is somewhat disturbing that Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, is himself incredibly tainted with both of his two elections to office marred by fraud and the fact that his brother is one of the most powerful drug lords in the area-as well as his well known tendency to keep incompetent generals in power for political reasons-but this assumption that going only through the President is the only way to stabilize the region and push Taliban forces away, is historically wrong.

Mark Moyar, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Marine Corps University, points out that the U.S. has, on occasion, effected political change through convincing leaders to designate particular cabinets posts to effective leaders, and to shift certain power to those posts. And this can happen in Afghanistan.

Another point that the President made in his speech, was that he was not dithering, as former Vice President Dick Cheney has recently been claiming, but that he took the amount of time allowed him by his Generals to think this decision through. He correctly pointed out that in no way has he stalled any assistance to our troops over in Afghanistan. I like that, a President that actually thinks the problem through, not just some gung-ho cowboy looking to shoot from the hip. He made it very clear that he does not take this lightly, that it weighs heavily on his mind. I like that.

But the one thing about his speech that struck me was the pragmatic perspective. As Rachel Maddow pointed out, there was a lack of poetry in his speech, it was more prose. But I like this approach, old fashioned pragmatism, a realistic look at matters. There was no sloganeering, he gave us the facts, laid out in a very precise manner. And I believe he stated his goals very clearly. I, for one, never truly understood the goal of the Afghan war, nor the war in Iraq, but in his speech, not only did our President very clearly spell out his goals, he has assured us that they can be met.

Last night, on prime time, we might have seen the death of a poet but at least we saw the birth of a true President.

Eric Pabon