DISSENT IN THE RANKS – AT 8:38 A.M. ET:  We're hearing more and more rumblings from professional military people who are dismayed by President Obama's Afghanistan strategy.  Can this come back to haunt the president during the 2012 election campaign?  From the Washington Times:

Former battlefield commanders are warning that President Obama’s accelerated troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in time for the 2012 presidential election risks reversing major gains made against the Taliban.

“It is not only too fast a withdrawal, but too large,” said retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, who was a top adviser to Afghanistan commander Gen. David H. Petraeus and an architect of the successful 2007 troop-reinforcement in Iraq.

Keane is a solid guy, and should be heard.

“Fundamentally, we will be asking the troops to do more with less, which, unfortunately, means an increase in casualties,” he told The Washington Times.

Mr. Obama last month ordered the Pentagon to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and an additional 23,000 by next summer. That will leave about 70,000 U.S. troops in the country.

The president ordered a surge of about 30,000 troops in December 2009 to increase the fight against a resurgent Taliban force.

Rep. Allen B. West, Florida Republican and a retired Army combat officer, complained that Mr. Obama has ordered the troop withdrawal without linking it to conditions on the ground.

“The president just put some type of timeline on there that was not conditions-based,” said Mr. West, who held the rank of lieutenant colonel and served in Iraq.

“You have to have conditions-based operations, which dictate how you transition from phase to phase. There is no strategy which the president brought forth.”

Obama has never had a strategy for victory in Afghanistan.  He's never even used the word.

He added that the Taliban, which imposed a brutal Islamist rule on Afghanistan and sheltered Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, already is trying to take political advantage of Mr. Obama’s withdrawal schedule. He said some tribal leaders in areas threatened by the Taliban are beginning to worry that the United States will abandon them.

Why shouldn't they worry?  There's a big chunk of elite opinion in America that doesn't care about abandoning friends and allies.  We abandoned the Vietnamese in 1975 by cutting off aid to the very people who'd been fighting with us, side by side.  President Ford called it an act of dishonor, and it was. 

There were plenty of people in Washington who wanted to abandon the Iraqis, but President Bush, a better man than Obama, made a politically courageous decision to enact the surge, which worked.  There are no guarantees in Iraq, but at least Bush's policy avoided a catastrophe.

I claim no expertise about Afghanistan.  There are readers who know far more than I do.  I am concerned, though, about a consistent image of weakness and retreat created by this administration.  Put yourself in the position of an enemy looking at this.  What would you do to take advantage of it?  I'm afraid we'll find out in Afghanistan.

July 6, 2011