The best reason to support Obama's Afghanistan policy, for me, is the same reason I was enthusiastic about Obama during the campaign: he employed REASON in reaching the decision.
To be clear, I still would have preferred a total withdrawal from Afghanistan, simply because I am strongly predisposed to the view that our presence inflames hatred against us and I doubt that we are particularly threatened by the Taliban controlling Afghanistan.
But as the NYT makes clear in its excellent article today, the process by which Obama arrived at his decision completely vindicates my faith in how he would generally arrive at major decisions.
Today's article is entitled How Obama Came to Plan for "Surge" in Afghanistan.
Granted, these types of articles are often puff pieces, meant to justify presidential decisions. But everything in the article is consistent with what we have seen first-hand.
The article notes at the outset:
But his advisers say he was haunted by the human toll as he wrestled with what to do about the eight-year-old war. Just a month earlier, he had mentioned to them his visits to wounded soldiers at the Army hospital in Washington. "I don’t want to be going to Walter Reed for another eight years," he said then.
The economic cost was troubling him as well after he received a private budget memo estimating that an expanded presence would cost $1 trillion over 10 years, roughly the same as his health care plan.
Thus, unlike prior presidents, economic and human cost was certainly considered from the outset.
Further, the decision-making process was thorough, and earnestly directed by Obama:
The three-month review that led to the escalate-then-exit strategy is a case study in decision making in the Obama White House — intense, methodical, rigorous, earnest and at times deeply frustrating for nearly all involved. It was a virtual seminar in Afghanistan and Pakistan, led by a president described by one participant as something "between a college professor and a gentle cross-examiner."
Mr. Obama peppered advisers with questions and showed an insatiable demand for information, taxing analysts who prepared three dozen intelligence reports for him and Pentagon staff members who churned out thousands of pages of documents.
Moreover, it seems that Obama began the process as many of us did, wary of a buildup:
The decision represents a complicated evolution in Mr. Obama’s thinking. He began the process clearly skeptical of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops, but the more he learned about the consequences of failure, and the more he narrowed the mission, the more he gravitated toward a robust if temporary buildup, guided in particular by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
Fuurther,
The first meeting with the president took place on Sept. 13, a Sunday, and was not disclosed to the public that day. For hours, Mr. Obama and his top advisers pored through intelligence reports.
Unsatisfied, the president posed a series of questions: Does America need to defeat the Taliban to defeat Al Qaeda? Can a counterinsurgency strategy work in Afghanistan given the problems with its government? If the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, would nuclear-armed Pakistan be next?
The lengthy article is replete with similar statements, but rather than continue quoting, I recommend that you read it yourself. For the article satisfies me that Obama and his team, at a minimum, were fully cognizant of all the salient factors that any of us would want to be discussed in the White House.
I remain proud that we have a president able, willing and eager to make decisions after an honest assessment of facts, rather than blindly rely on ideology. Even if I disagree with the ultimate policy - as I do here - such qualities continue to give me faith.