Steyn picks it out in bold colors:
“Our goal in war,” wrote Basil Liddell Hart, the great strategist of armored warfare, “can only be attained by the subjugation of the opposing will.” In other words, the object of war is not to destroy the enemy’s tanks but the enemy’s will. That goes treble if, like the Taliban and al-Qaeda, he hasn’t got any tanks in the first place. So what do you think Obama’s speech did for the enemy’s will? He basically told ’em: We can only stick another 19 months, so all you gotta do is hang in there for 20. And in an astonishingly vulgar line even by the standards of this White House’s crass speechwriters he justified his announcement of an exit date by saying it was “because the nation that I’m most interested in building is our own.” Or, as Frank Sinatra once observed, “It’s very nice to go trav’ling/But it’s so much nicer . . . to come home”:
“It’s very nice to just wander the camel route to Iraq . . . but it’s so much nicer, yes it’s oh so nice to wander back.”
It is to be hoped that a combination of circumstances will force Obama’s hand and not allow him to precipitously withdraw on his time line if victory isn’t yet secured. If we have a string of successes showing that we’re winning – thus building up public support for continued effort – coupled with a public wariness of a cut-and-run, Obama might not have the political power to scuttle Afghanistan right before the 2012 campaign opens. Ultimately, it will be up to the solders to pull Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire. I have confidence in them.
Much less confidence in Obama – and a great deal of worry that his left wing base, especially if not fed the socialist meat of socialized medicine – might start to insist upon an early withdrawal with the threat of backing a third party if not given the desired defeat of the United States in war. Ultimately, it comes down to this: can the military win the war before the liberals force us to lose it?
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