Obama Flip-Flops on Afghanistan

From the Financial Times - Feb 28, 2009:

Afghanistan yesterday warned Barack Obama's administration not to downgrade its goals for the country or jettison the idea of Afghan democracy, in comments that highlighted the intensifying debate over international strategy in the region...

Afghanistan's foreign minister, said it would be "very, very dangerous" to adopt "reductionist" goals that gave up on the idea of a democratic Afghanistan.

Mr Spanta's remarks are the latest sign of tension between Afghanistan and the Obama administration...

Mr Obama has already set out the clear direction of his new administration. "We are not going to be able to rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy," the president told NBC News this month.

"What we can do is make sure that Afghanistan is not a safe haven for al-Qaeda. What we can do is make sure that it is not destabilizing neighboring Pakistan."

Mr Spanta argued against any suggestion that "we have to reduce our expectations [in Afghanistan or that] we have to remove only al-Qaeda." Insisting such a policy would not bring long term stability, he said that he and his colleagues had used "every occasion here in Washington" and elsewhere "to defend ourselves, to articulate our claim for democracy for us and our children".

And CNN reported likewise on Feb. 7, 2009:

When U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks, then-President Bush said the goal in Afghanistan was "to build a flourishing democracy as an alternative to a hateful ideology."

Seven years, billions of dollars and hundreds of U.S. casualties later, the goals are more pragmatic and modest....

Defense Secretary Robert Gates cautions that goals have been too broad and need to be need to be more "realistic and limited," or the U.S. risks failure.

"If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose, because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience and money, to be honest," Gates told senators...

Obama [also] seemed to signal a more modest approach, defining the mission as limited solely to stabilizing Afghanistan.

"What we can do is make sure that Afghanistan is not a safe haven for al Qaeda...," Obama told NBC News. "We are not going to be able to rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy."

Well, that was then, but now the president has decided to change his philosophy and adapt Mr. Bush's strategy. In an interview with Newsweek Magazine on Saturday, Obama stated that a Democratically elected government in Afghanistan was indeed necessary to prevent the Taliban from taking over:

We are not going to succeed simply [in Afghanistan] by piling on more and more troops....," [Obama said]. "We have to see our military action in the context of a broader effort to stabilize security..., allow national elections to take place in Afghanistan and then provide the space for the vital development work that's needed so that a tolerant and open, democratically elected government is considered far more legitimate than a Taliban alternative....

Hmmm....

Let's read the first couple of paragraphs from CNN again:

When U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks, then-President Bush said the goal in Afghanistan was "to build a flourishing democracy as an alternative to a hateful ideology."

Seven years, billions of dollars and hundreds of U.S. casualties later, the goals are more pragmatic and modest....

But lets read Obama's revised strategy again and see if those goals have really changed:

We have to... stabilize security in the country..., allow national elections to take place...and then provide the space for the vital development work that's needed so that a tolerant and open, democratically elected government is considered far more legitimate than a Taliban alternative...."

Exactly what President Bush had said.

Another Flip flop from Obama?

Sure looks like it........