Has Obama Got What It Takes To Say No To The Military-Industrial Complex Eisenhower Warned Us About?

Last month 25% of Brits polled wanted their troops out of Afghanistan asap. Last week it was 63% who had figured out this war was useless. And now the figure is 71%. This weekend the U.S. media was trumpeting the decision by Germany to send another 100 troops to give a hand to the 30-40,000 Obama is about to announce he's sending to that hellhole. A report from Oxfam has soured the British public on the whole mess.

The powerful dossier by the aid agency reveals how women and children in Afghanistan are bearing the brunt of the ongoing conflict, undermining the international community's claims that they are the very people being helped by the West's activities.

Its contents will add to mounting concerns among the public, and in some quarters of the military and the House of Commons, that the US and the UK are fighting an ill-conceived and ill-judged war that has left as many as 32,000 Afghans dead and 235,000 displaced.

As if by clockwork, the increasingly less popular British prime minister, Gordon Brown, may have found a way to turn the opinion polls around for himself. Today's he's calling for a summit of NATO leaders to discuss an end to the occupation of Afghanistan... eventually. Still, as Steve Hynd pointed out, Brown certainly wouldn't have made that call without first consulting with Obama, possibly an indication that Obama is realizing he has to end this mess-- and soon.

Reading about Obama's horrible dilemma in Afghanistan keeps making me think about how the Vietnam War destroyed LBJ's presidency-- if not his life. I recall a description I read in Rick Perlstein's brilliant and startling predictive Nixonland:

While Americans read in Time about the light at the end of the tunnel, in Saigon women secreted guns, ammunitions, land mines, and grenades in flower baskets and laundry bundles, and spies set up as taxi drivers and noodle sellers prepared to breach the U.S. embassy. They succeeded-- as 85,000 troops of the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese army overran thirty-nine of forty-four South Vietnamese provincial capitals. The Tet Offensive: the tidal wave dousing the light at the end of the tunnel.

I've spent time in Afghanistan and Vietnam. If I had to pick between the two to fight, I'd pick the Vietnamese... hands down. I think Rudyard Kipling would agree:

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier."

Sounds worse than the grenades in the flower basket. Kipling also said: "Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old." And yesterday's L.A. Times reiterated what this unwinnable war is costing, something the Republicans and Blue Dogs never seem to mind quite as much as they do when one discusses passing healthcare reform.

The White House Budget Office estimates that it will cost about $1 million for each additional soldier sent to Afghanistan. So, a surge of 30,000 to 40,000 troops -- which is what Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal is recommending -- would add $30 billion to $40 billion a year to the deficit.

At the Pentagon, the comptroller disagrees, estimating the cost of deploying and maintaining one soldier in Afghanistan for a full year  at $500,000. So, bottom line would be $15 billion to $20 billion... An escalation in military spending could put Obama in the awkward position of winning Republican votes for the budget while losing Democratic ones for the policy. And a drain on the nation's bottom line also could imperil domestic programs favored by the White House.

A new surge, said Wisconsin Democrat David Obey, would "drain the spirit of the country ... as well as drain the U.S. Treasury, it would devour virtually any other priorities that the president or anyone in Congress had."

Obey, the powerful chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has promised that June's supplemental war budget was the last one. I can't imagine Obama allowing himself to be in the position of having to use pay-as-you-go for spending $30-40 billion. And the only way a substantial number of Democrats are going to agree to any money for Afghanistan is if it comes with a well-conceieved strategy and timeline for exiting. Now restive conservative Republicans are starting to desert Obama on Afghanistan, something that was inevitable: