In Afghanistan: Where Are We After Nobel?

Another in a series of imaginary conversations with Barack Obama. Actual quotations appear in quotation marks . . .

Yo Mr. President.

Hey. I see you're back with more questions.

Questions are my bag, Sir -- they just don't go away. Two principal areas today: the Nobel and Afghanistan. May we start with the Nobel?

Sure.

Members of the Nobel Committee have said they based their unanimous vote to give you their Peace Prize on your work in the realm of nuclear disarmament. Given (a) that the Feb. 1 deadline for nominations came just 12 days after your inauguration, and (b) that you haven't done much that is publicly known to reduce nuclear arms since you became president (in fact, the nuclear doings of North Korea and Iran might be construed as grit in your eye), will you accept the prize?

Of course. It is a magnificent honor. I am humbled to receive it.

But you have said you "do not feel" you "deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize." With such sentiments and with so few substantive accomplishments, wouldn't it render you a ridiculous figure to haul the prize home?

You're suggesting that I decline it?

The committee gave you not so much a prize as an ideological endorsement -- for being the un-Bush. It awarded you for your kumbaya, we-are-the-world apologies about American exceptionalism and, in matters foreign, for otherwise sitting on the bench. Would you accept the Heisman trophy -- were it awarded to you -- after merely watching a Notre Dame game?

Oh, c'mon. So you don't like my asking other countries' forgiveness for America's many transgressions. What do you have to ask me about Afghanistan?

Are you going to go wobbly?

That is hardly my intent -- and going wobbly is certainly not me. As you know, we now have our mission in Afghanistan under the highest-level review. I expect to make a decision by the end of the month.

Yet you already have changed your position about Afghanistan at least three times. During the campaign you advocated bombing Pakistan. On March 27 you authorized raising the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 68,000 -- saying the decision "marks the conclusion of a careful policy review." During the summer, you replaced the commander there with Gen. Stanley McChrystal -- our military's top expert on counterterrorism, who now has given you a report saying counterterrorism won't work there but Petraeus-like counterinsurgency might.

Oh, and on Aug. 17 you described Afghanistan as "a war of necessity."

My team is examining the links between al-Qaida and the Taliban. The former is a transnational threat, the latter is not.

That recalls, during Vietnam, leftist agonizing over whether the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were separate entities. Any seeming distinctions between them were of little consequence. They were essentially one and the same.

Hezbollah is not Hamas. The Taliban is not al-Qaida.

They're all terrorist entities whose followers would delight in nothing so much as seeing Israel and the U.S. -- indeed, the entirety of what used to be known variously as the Free World or the West -- in the toilet.

Our focus must remain on al-Qaida.

Sir, it needs to remain on both -- and on victory. As Robert Kaplan has written in 'The Atlantic':

"The public agony over [your] deliberations may already have done incalculable damage . . . . Watching a young and inexperienced American president appear to waiver on his commitment to their country, [the Afghan people] are deciding, at the level of the individual and the mass, whether to make their peace with the Taliban -- even as the Taliban itself can only take solace and encouragement from [your] public agonizing."

Still, I might well conclude that we have no dog in the hunt for the Taliban, and that we'll concentrate on al-Qaida.

Mr. President, there's a maxim that holds, First win the people, then win the war. To defeat al-Qaida, we must roll back the Taliban -- which currently has the initiative in Afghanistan -- and secure the countryside, thereby securing (and winning) the Afghan people. Only then will we be able to beat al-Qaieda. You have the added task of selling the Afghan enterprise to the American people (winning them), so they and Congress stay in the fight.

But I'm losing the backing of independent voters. At 29 percent of the American electorate, their support for me is down from 73 percent in February to just 45 percent today. To authorize more troops (Gen. McChrystal is urging anywhere from 10,000 to 80,000 more) might get us into a Vietnam-like quagmire.

Many on the White House staff -- including David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel and Vice President Biden, one of my top strategic thinkers -- oppose sending more troops. Besides, it's so -- you know -- warlike for this peacenik now certified as such by the Nobel Committee.

That's the fundamental question, Sir -- whether the Nobel gives you cover to pull the plug on Afghanistan?

You don't think I should do it?

Absolutely not. And if you do, your support among independent voters, who so helped to give you the White House, would plunge fast toward zero.

Remember the maxim, First win the people. And recall Obi-wan's frequent advice to Luke Skywalker: Use the force. You are in "a war of necessity" you have made your own. Nobel or no Nobel, make the case for it to the American people -- secure them on your side. Then let the nation's military forces fight it as only they can -- and win it.

Ross Mackenzie is the retired editor of the Editorial Pages. Contact him at .