What We Did

The president began to tighten the noose around Osama bin Laden's neck in August. He managed the operation personally in a series of secret meetings. Nothing leaked. According to CNN, it was during last Friday's royal wedding that he gave the order for today's breathtaking raid. As he and his family were wandering around the Kennedy Space Center, young American volunteers under his command in Afghanistan were preparing to extend and flex the arm of justice.

Last week, it briefly appeared that Barack Obama had permitted Donald Trump a moment of parity by appearing in the White House to talk about his birth certificate as the bumptious tycoon gave a press conference in New Hampshire. How wrong I was. Tonight, as grateful crowds gathered at the White House and ground zero, as CNN replayed Obama's carefully nuanced address, words we'll remember every May Day for many years, Trump was starring with Meat Loaf on "Celebrity Apprentice."

Great live-blogging here by Andrew Sullivan.

Well done, Mr. President.

Wolfie's Overture

Maureen Dowd ridicules ex-Bush official Paul Wolfowitz's suggestion that the U.S. make it a three-fer:

Even now, with our deficit and military groaning from two wars in Muslim countries, interventionists on the left and the right insist it’s our duty to join the battle in a third Muslim country.

“It is both morally right and in America’s strategic interest to enable the Libyans to fight for themselves,” Wolfowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece.

You would think that a major architect of the disastrous wars and interminable occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq would have the good manners to shut up and take up horticulture. But the neo-con naif has no shame.

After all, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates told West Point cadets last month, “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it."

Congress Asks; Do Tell

I haven't blogged much about DADT because I lack expertise about the military life. Strictly as a civil rights issue, it was unjust to impose such strictures on gay and lesbian people so that the United States could enjoy the privilege of their volunteering to fight and die for our freedom. Practically speaking, I wonder how it will all work. For instance, I was struck by this sentence in today's New York Times article:

[A] comprehensive review by the Pentagon...found a low risk to military effectiveness despite greater concerns among some combat units and the Marine Corps.

In other words, among those doing the preponderance of the fighting, bleeding, and dying. I suppose we can put any opposition down to homophobia. In this case, tempting as that may be to those who are tired of others making them second-class citizens, name-calling probably isn't helpful. Instead, those soldiers and Marines -- also courageous, also volunteers -- are entitled to have their views taken into account as the Pentagon begins the process of putting the new policy into effect. From what I've seen of the secretary of defense, Robert Gates, he'll do his due diligence, and things will work out fine.

If the main problem is that some straight soldiers don't like openly gay ones, they'll just have to get over that, as I'm sure some had to get over not wanting to serve alongside African-Americans when President Truman integrated the military. As this analysis notes, grownups have to work with people they don't like all the time. I think the military phrase is "suck it up." Besides, once people get to know one another as people instead of categories, prejudice doesn't have a chance.

Here's the part I wonder about. Say I'm 19 and my girlfriend and I enlist. Say someone's waved a magic pace stick and decided that women can serve on the front lines. Would she and I end up in the same company or battalion? I'd have to think not, for the sake of ensuring that our priorities would be correct in a combat situation. Even stateside, would they want us in the same barracks? Another bad idea, for obvious reasons. Same thing if we met and fell in love once we were serving. Take this hypothetical dilemma involving openly straight people, think about openly gay men who really will be allowed to serve side-by-side in combat, and you see one of the issues that I imagine the Pentagon has been chewing on.

They'll solve it as they solve all problems: By writing a bunch of rules. The men and women will follow them most of the time. In the end, our military will be stronger, because its will better represent the nearly-miraculous evolving-toward-perfection American ideal for which it fights. God bless them all when so many are so far from those they love during this season of joy and peace.

Slowly But Surely

The secretary of defense on the implementation of yesterday's historic DADT repeal.

"Come Home, America" Watch, Day 65

On Afghanistan, is President Obama displaying indecision, as his partisan critics proclaim, or taking the appropriate amount of time to make the right decision? I'm still inclined to think the latter. I'd be more certain if there weren't so many leaks, which do tend to make him look weak, as he and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates obviously realize, hence their threats to fire the leakers.

As for judging the outcome of his deliberations, we may not know until he's long out of office. Same with George W. Bush's Iraq intervention. Sometimes blink decisions are the best ones, though if the repercussions will last for decades or more, and if hundreds or thousands of lives are at stake, it's wise to take as much time as you have. Imagine if Kennedy and Johnson had done the same thing in Vietnam.

"Everybody Ought To Shut Up"

Though the Obama campaign was famous for its imperturbability and also its discipline when it came to dealings with the media, the Obama White House's private deliberations about an important national security question are essentially being conducted in public as weekly and sometimes daily stories are leaked purporting to represent the mind of the President and his advisers. If this is by design as far as the White House is concerned, it doesn't appeal to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former director of the CIA and a former NSC adviser in his own right. On a flight to Wisconsin yesterday, Gates said he was appalled by the leaking and hinted he would fire Pentagon leakers if he finds them (Who you gonna call?: The Plumbers). He added, "Everybody ought to just shut up."

The New York Times, which reported Gates' outburst, is also carrying this story, in which we learn that the ambassador to Afghanistan, retired Army Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, sent a cable to Washington opposing sending more U.S. troops, as requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for fear that the Afghan regime will become too dependent on the U.S. for security. It seems likely that Eikenberry, who has advanced degrees from Stanford and Harvard, is remembering the deepening of South Vietnam's dependency on the U.S. that occurred after President Ngo Dinh Diem was murdered with our acquiescence in 1962 and President Johnson massively escalated our military involvement in 1965.

As we already know, Vietnam is also on the mind of the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. The Times article hints that McChrystal took Eikenberry to the woodshed, getting him to soften his stance in subsequent cables. During a meeting in Kabul, according to the Times:

General McChrystal did not refer to the cable directly, but specifically challenged General Eikenberry’s conclusions, according to one official familiar with the meeting. General McChrystal, he said, said that no alternatives had been offered besides “the helicopter on the roof of the embassy,” a reference to the hasty American withdrawal from Saigon in 1975.

It's a pregnant analogy. It suggests that McChrystal fears another U.S. humiliation if we withdraw hastily and also, knowing the ruthlessness of the Taliban, that he has a pretty good idea of the fate that would likely befall anyone in Afghanistan associated with the U.S. intervention. Obviously Obama wants to avoid both that outcome as well as the kind of lavish, open-ended commitment that would essentially turn Afghanistan into a U.S. protectorate. All the news accounts make clear that this is the line he's trying to walk.

It's a fascinating challenge for a President: Believing he has the opportunity to make a discerning decision that takes Vietnam's lessons into account without being obsessed with them. One lesson he should not neglect is Lyndon Johnson's own unavailing efforts to control a fluid and unpredictable military and political environment by his daily micromanagement of the Vietnam war. Once Obama finishes agonizing, he had better get out of the way.

As I've said before, I'm glad Obama is taking his time on the policy reappraisal. But Gates is right about the leaks. They are beginning to make the President look silly and even weak. For instance:

At a National Security Council meeting on Wednesday...Mr. Obama picked up on General Eikenberry’s arguments about growing Afghan dependence, according to a senior official. The president, he said, was far more assertive than in previous sessions, pressing his advisers about the wisdom of four proposals for adding troops. The change in his tone, from listening to challenging, was palpable, officials said.

Next they'll be counting the number of times he arches his eyebrows. This sounds like a Biden dove trying to demonstrate to the press and public that the Clinton hawks are losing favor with the prince. Once I would've thought that someone authoritative was trying to signal what the President was really thinking, but it appears that the White House may just be incompetent, at least in this area. While Obama takes his responsibilities in this weightiest of matters seriously, those around him may not take them seriously enough to enable him to do his deciding, undeciding, and redeciding (as Ray Price used to say about RN) in private. For Presidents, Hamlet is not a good paradigm.

Drama Obama

When the defense secretary has to publicly chide generals for failing to zip their lips, you wonder if the commander-in-chief's shop is quite as disciplined as the candidate's.