336 e lusive v ictories
to make. The president instead settled for a lesser goal: the United
States would seek merely to degrade the Taliban. In concrete terms, this
meant the insurgents would not be in a position to defeat the Kabul
government and its military when the United States and other external
participants withdrew their combat forces.
Th e timetable that the president established refl ected this new war
goal. Obama insisted on a schedule for the troop surge diff erent from the
one the military proposed. Where the military had recommended a
gradual deployment that would not be completed until well into 2011 and
that would then extend into a potential Obama second term, he chose to
“move the curve” by putting all the additional troops in place by mid-2010
and beginning the drawdown in summer 2011. Although the pace of
withdrawals would depend on conditions in Afghanistan, he made clear
that the starting date for disengagement would not be negotiated with
the military and the duration of the American commitment was bounded.
Th e tight time limit also meant that this troop surge, unlike the one in
Iraq, precluded any serious counterinsurgency program.
By deciding to eschew defeating the Taliban, Obama adopted a bold
and very risky political objective. He gave up on winning the war in
favor of managing it. When the United States and NATO disengaged
from the confl ict, it was hoped, the government in Kabul should have
suffi cient trained forces to preserve its grip on power. But Obama did
not expect the violence to end by that point. What he proposed
might be seen as the Afghan equivalent of Nixon’s Vietnamization
program. In one vital respect, though, the two policies diff ered: where
Nixon failed to set in place the political foundation for ongoing
support for South Vietnamese security after the American departure,
Obama intended a long-term security commitment to both the Afghan
and Pakistani governments. He hoped that, despite rising war wea-
riness in the public and on Capitol Hill, invoking 9/11 would continue
to resonate at home, and Americans would agree to maintain a reduced
yet still signifi cant economic, military, and political presence in the
region. As in South Korea, some American troops might remain indef-
initely. But with no truce agreement in the offi ng in Afghanistan they
would remain targets for extremist attacks.
Obama understood that it would be hard to sell a war that aimed for
something less than victory. Th is became evident when he explained his