Three Key Challenges for Obama He must succeed on Afghanistan, Iraq or the Israeli-Palestinian issue to remain relevant overseas

Three Key Challenges for Obama
He must succeed on Afghanistan, Iraq or the Israeli-Palestinian issue to remain relevant overseas
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Last week the foreign policy of President Barack Obama suffered three major body blows -- in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is now in the corner, patching up its cuts. One situation has improved slightly, but, if it does not now come out counterpunching effectively, it may well be dead meat for the rest of his term. No one -- our enemies, allies and those watching the affair unwind with relative equanimity -- will end up with much respect for Mr. Obama.

Getting hurt in the crucial first rounds of these frays would make it more difficult for America to be taken seriously in the world and for Mr. Obama to be seen as much more than an engaging speechmaker who does not know how to put his promises into effect. Whether these shortfalls would cost him politically on the home front -- in Congress and next year at the polls -- would remain to be seen.

In none of these cases is the battle truly over. There is still room and time to turn these setbacks into wins. But each will require fast, strong, decisive action. Even one turn-around would make a difference. Three would show the world that Mr. Obama and the United States under his leadership must be taken seriously. It can be done. But time is wasting.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and other Afghans basically made fools of the United States and Mr. Obama over the past few weeks. They took our naive attachment to the supposed sanctity of democratic elections to roll us. Millions of dollars were spent to hold elections. Mr. Obama surged U.S. troops in the country by 21,000 to try to assure security.

Mr. Karzai then directed massive fraud to assure his victory. He was caught doing it, which anyone with half a brain would have known would occur. Mr. Obama then astonishingly tied his own decision to increase, keep level or reduce U.S. troops there to successful completion of the elections through a runoff. Mr. Karzai's tame opponent then turned that ploy into farce by saying he saw no point in proceeding with the runoff because its result was already determined.

So who was left holding the bag? Who was left looking like he thought the elections were a serious effort to put a government with an electoral mandate in place in Afghanistan?

It was the dopey Americans, and there is still the awful possibility that they might put thousands more troops into the country to fight and die to maintain the Karzai government in power.

How to fix this? How to regain control of our own role in Afghanistan? Mr. Obama should announce that he has completed his review of the situation and that a phased withdrawal of all 68,000 U.S. forces there will begin Dec. 1, with the process to be completed by June 1 of next year.

What is turning rapidly into a second bad joke in U.S. foreign policy is our troop withdrawal from Iraq. We have 120,000 troops there. As of now the withdrawal of 70,000 of those to the level of 50,000 by August cannot begin until after the Iraqi national elections, scheduled for Jan. 16. The idea, again, is that 120,000 U.S. troops need to be there to assure safe, democratic elections. Those elections are supposed to put into place a government with a mandate to rule the place happily ever after, or at least until we get all our troops out by 2011.

So what were the Iraqis doing? To have an election Jan. 16 it was necessary for the Iraqi parliament to pass an elections law. It finally did so Sunday. Its members wrangled among themselves over it at length, with Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and smaller groups pitted against each other over oil money. There are signs that Mr. Obama might let them get away with torpedoing our troop withdrawal schedule while they postpone the January elections.

What to do about this one? To keep the pressure on, Mr. Obama should announce that U.S. troop withdrawal will proceed on schedule, starting Jan. 17. He could announce for good measure that he was advancing withdrawal of the first 10,000 to Dec. 15, to have them home for Christmas.

Last week's third debacle was the virtual collapse of the Middle East peace process -- the negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians to result in two states, living side by side, legally recognized, in peace.

Hopes launched by Mr. Obama of a revival of the peace process collapsed during last week's disastrous visit to the region by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has successfully stiffed Mr. Obama on the critical issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Mrs. Clinton signed onto his ploy, rather than stiffing him right back, which would have been consistent with longtime U.S. opposition to the settlements. (There can be no agreement while Israeli settlers remain in what would be the Palestinian state.)

In response, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he wouldn't run in elections scheduled for January because there wasn't any point, given Mrs. Clinton's praise of Mr. Netanyahu's position on the West Bank settlements. On that basis, the key Middle East peace process is dead, failing major resuscitative action, for Mr. Obama's term.

How to fix it? Mr. Obama should inform the Israelis privately, through a top-secret senior envoy, that U.S. aid of $3 billion a year to Israel will be cut by $100 million each month until all settlement construction is stopped, and the demolition of the current settlements begins.

Decisive action on these three issues would put Mr. Obama and America firmly back in the world-affairs game. Otherwise, we will have to simply resign ourselves to increasing irrelevance.


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