On the President’s Afghanistan Speech

The most curious part of the president’s roughly thirteen-minute speech last night on his plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan was not, in fact, his discussion of his plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. We’ve known from the beginning that President Obama’s commitment to the “surge” was not open-ended. What was more surprising — and more unsettling — were the president’s comments on next May’s “summit,” in Chicago, which will be co-hosted by the United States and its NATO allies. “We do know that peace cannot come to a land that has known so much war without a political settlement,” the president said. Actually, that’s not the way peace is usually achieved. Usually, peace, real peace, is imposed, not settled on. One side wins, forcing its will on the other side. (Some wars end when one side simply tires of fighting, as in the case of the American Revolution; we might call this a “passive victory.”) The president, and especially this president, should know that by now. What is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if not a series of battles and uprisings punctuated by outside efforts to import an inorganic peace? The president’s plan to orchestrate a similar settlement in Afghanistan will spell, in the long run, more bloodshed and chaos. It is hard to see how this will secure Afghanistan against a future Taliban (or Taliban-like) regime or the United States against future terrorist attacks hatched in Kabul. Chicago will simply be the first in an endless cavalcade of talks, accords, settlements and summits intended to forge a peace that cannot, for now, be forged.