National security strategists speak out about study groups. (Luke X. Martin/MNS)
WASHINGTON — A veteran Republican lawmaker is imploring President Barack Obama to establish a bipartisan study group to rethink the Afghanistan war strategy.
Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images
U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) speaks at a news conference in the Capitol on August 25, 2008 in Washington, DC.
Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf sent a letter to the president last week. His message was not subtle.
“We are nine years into our nation’s longest running war and the American people and their elected representatives do not have a clear sense of what we are aiming to achieve [in Afghanistan,]” the Republican wrote.
Wolf, who is serving his 15th term in Congress, urged Obama to sign an executive order that would create an Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group to assess the ongoing war strategy.
In March 2006, Wolf helped created the Iraq Study Group, which was co-sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Washington, as well as the Baker Public Policy Institute at Rice University in Houston. It was, by most accounts, a valuable endeavor; 10 defense and policy experts from both sides of the aisle thinking critically about a flailing war effort.
While the study group’s recommendations were never fully embraced by the Bush administration, they managed to change the debate, said Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic Indiana congressman and co-chair of the Iraq Study Group.
Thinking good thoughts in Washington about the war wasn’t enough to make the situation in Baghdad any better. Despite the President George W. Bush’s initial hesitation toward the group, “his statements became much more realistic about the situation in Iraq” after Hamilton’s group made their recommendations, he said.
The group’s recommendations were a wake-up call for Bush – and that’s the power of such study groups.
“It gave President Bush a sense of just how badly his policies were faring,” said Kori Schake, who was defense strategy director for the National Security Council during Bush’s first term and is now fellow at the Hoover Institution, a public policy think-tank at Stanford University. It opened up the debate.
“It seems to me that the more debate we have about why we’re fighting the war, what the way to win it is, and what the cost and consequences of [it] are, the better off we are,” she said.
In Washington, though, politics sometimes trump good ideas.
Lawrence Kolb, senior fellow at the American Center for Progress, thinks the timing is all wrong for an Afghanistan-Pakistan study group.
Kolb, a former assistant secretary of defense, noted that the 2006 study group formed before the troop surge idea gained momentum. Bush’s new strategy for Iraq had yet to coagulate around the idea of a troop surge. Conversely, Kolb said Obama’s strategy is clear: American troops will begin leaving Afghanistan by next summer. It’s not a question of when, but in what numbers.
If it happens that Obama reduces troops in Afghanistan in lower-than-expected numbers, “or it looks like we’re going to be there another couple of years, then you might see a [study] group,” he said. It’s simply too early to know whether the Obama administration’s strategy is working.
Nevertheless, something has to happen — fast. That much is clear to David Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, a non-partisan policy and education organization.
The breathing room Obama needs for his strategy to play out is just not there. “People on the right, left and center are now talking against the war, and this is happening when we have a commander at ISAF that is one of our most creative — David Petraeus,” said Abshire, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO.
Vice President Joe Biden has announced that a formal internal assessment of the strategy is scheduled for December.
Several national security strategists agree that an Afghanistan-Pakistan study group could be a good thing, but the results of such a group may or may not help.
Hamilton, who is director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, noted that just because a study group forms does not mean anyone is going to listen to it.
“A group of this sort does not instantly have credibility,” Hamilton said, “you establish that in part through its membership, but I think, even more important, you establish it by the seriousness and competence that you show in going about your work.”
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