This committed political liberal and staunch Obama supporter was dismayed, but not surprised, at his announcement Tuesday that some 30,000 young men and women would be sent to Afghanistan to fight the “imminent threat” posed by Al-Qaeda forces — a threat that presumably will be completely dispatched and the kitchen tidied up by mid-2011, when families across the country, Obama says, will begin to welcome home their children, brother, sisters, and parents.
I’m not an expert on war. I’m not a student of geopolitics, and I’m not a pacifist, although I believe Jesus was; this is one of many evidences that I’m not yet fully conformed, either by grace or by my own nature, to the character of Christ. I hate war and I hate injustice, and they seem to be two sides of the same aggressive, imperialist coin. And so I’m wary of any plan that commits U.S. forces to a war that probably made sense right after September 11, 2001, but has devolved now, thanks to the gross mismanagement of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice team, into utter chaos that has Afghan tribal warriors fighting us pretty much, at least in their view, just because we’re fighting them.
I was impressed last month with the message of ground soldier and former State Department staffer Matthew Hoh, whose resignation letter described the U.S. presence in Afghanistan as destabilizing, warned that the real threat in Afghanistan was from pockets of Afghan fighters who would not be a threat if we stopped fighting them, and predicted that no amount of time nor increase in troops would bring victory, or anything close to it, to the United States. I assume his words were taken into consideration; I lament that they weren’t followed, and I grieve for the inevitable loss of both Afghani and American life.
Obama inherited a disaster. As underhanded as Bush’s 2000 election “victory” was pronounced, and as inconceivable as his re-election in 2004 remains, the self-professed Christian proved to be as inept a commander-in-chief as he was grievously, but insouciantly, flawed as a disciple of Jesus. Nonetheless, Obama, whose Christian faith has also been publicly expressed but not accepted as instantly, breathlessly, and undiscerningly as Bush’s, and who will always be thought of as a Muslim by those who believe “Muslim” to be nothing but a pejorative, has to clean up the mess. He’s not the first President, though, to inherit disaster, although history will note that the disaster inherited was in triplicate — a morass of security, economic, and healthcare stability left rotting for eight years that he now must fix.
The national security mess, however, is as much the tarnished image of the United States and its role as the world’s only superpower as it is a war, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, that appears less and less likely to be winnable. And what would a “win” look like, anyway? Any victory pronounced has to have the country’s image in mind; if it doesn’t result in the lessening of tensions with Muslim countries and a recovery of the esteem with which the U.S. has been viewed in previous decades, it’s not a victory. This is ultimately a moral imperative, even as it has its strategic benefits, and it speaks to the morality of the United States as a “Christian” nation and to the Christian commitment of both the one who got us into this and the one who hopes to get us out. I don’t see how national security can be enhanced nor esteem recaptured by the addition of 30,000 potential sacrifices on the altar of military aggression.
Obama is not solely responsible for rehabilitating the U.S.’ image as a self-described “Christian” nation. Enormous good would be accomplished — profound respect for this country would be regained — if its former President would rend his golf shirts and sprinkle some loamy Central Texas soil over his head in repentance. That won’t bring back the dead, but it would shake up geopolitics, and it might reshuffle the cards in a game that seems to require only heightened aggression to stay at the table. I can only pray for Obama, and pray for Bush. They are entirely different prayers, just as the two are entirely different in both their culpability and their opportunity.