PrintNovember 8, 2009
Obama's Unnecessary War
Before it became his cross to bear, President Barack Obama redefined the war in Afghanistan as a war of necessity. In contrast, he also preemptively labeled the other, less popular war which was grandfathered into his term as a war of choice.
Presumably, a war of necessity confronts us with an imperative that leaves no reasonable option but to engage. To wit, the war in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and The Taliban is a conflict in which we must be engaged. By contrast, Iraq is a war that we really do not need to be engaged in, which suggests that as a free nation, we were once afforded the opportunity to weigh our options on whether or not we should commit to this struggle.
But when Obama concocted this curious dichotomy, it was more of a politically expedient maneuver. He was attempting to vindicate the Afghan war as the more honorable endeavor of the two in order to ease the apprehension of independents who feared that he was radically opposed to war. At the same time, he could help his dovish followers digest the cold and unpalatable truth that after all, Iraq and Afghanistan are both wars, and like all wars, both are subject to the "inconstancy of fortune."
This well-calibrated, fork-tongued ruse affirmed that choosing a war, rather than being compelled to engage in it, signals that the motives lurking behind that choice must be less than altruistic. This judgment aligns with Obama's general appraisal of the United States of America as a malignant force in the world, a nation which -- as he once put so eloquently -- has always played the role of dictating rather than listening to others.
Additionally, Obama's ruse posited that in a war of necessity, we are obliged to engage in combat regardless of how we feel. There is not much time to ruminate on the benefits we may accrue or losses we may incur when we are literally compelled by necessity to fight a war we would not have chosen otherwise.
But one could argue that "choosing" to engage in war is ultimately the nobler endeavor of the two, since by Obama's own logic, we are not obliged in a war of choice to make the personal sacrifice that would be involved. This is what's typically referred to as an offensive war.
Conversely, a so-called war of necessity implies that we are engaged primarily as a defensive measure, where safeguarding our interests, rather than attaining a more comprehensive victory, is at the forefront of our expectations.
But Obama's lone rubric of "necessity" does not the higher moral ground impart. In fact it could be argued that to engage in war because we are motivated only by protecting our interests -- that is, a war of necessity -- is more unethical than to engage in a war where we are selflessly protecting the interests of other nations as well as ours -- that is, globally speaking, a war of choice.
The very question of choice predicates that one is furnished with more than one alternative. This means that countries first have an opportunity to carefully weigh their options before they settle on the one most likely to yield the best result. Those options may hinge on whether or not there is a pressing need to get involved in the conflict, meaning that wars are ultimately chosen out of necessity. And once the choice to engage is made, those countries continue to be bound by necessity until the desired outcome is achieved, which for any reasonable Commander in Chief should be nothing less than victory.
Yet time and again, President Obama has made it clear that he is more inclined towards appeasement, and that in his estimation, all wars are fundamentally unnecessary. Furthermore, he is also deeply averse to chartering a defensive course, even when the vicissitudes of global relations unequivocally elicit the call of "necessity."
Consequently, an offensive on Obama's part at any future juncture would not only be very much out of character, but it would also constitute a major setback to his naïve aspirations of creating a peace-loving global utopia -- a goal toward which he has rather unsuccessfully tried to charm our sworn enemies with conciliatory overtures couched in a mutual disdain for the very country he has been given the solemn duty to protect.
Contrary to President Obama's rosy view of the world in which we live, terrorists are generally emboldened when they smell the scent of trepidation from a leader who is not particularly interested in engaging in wars of either choice or necessity. Any such signs are perceived as weakness, not to mention a golden opportunity for rogue leaders to engage in aggressive incursions onto foreign soil, which incidentally -- as far as they're concerned -- count as matters of the utmost necessity.
