Obama’s War: how the Audacity of Hope now faces its gravest test

Richard Robinson‘s Speech Bubble

The stakes could not be higher for President Obama. After pledging an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, the new President now faces the sternest test of his presidency, on which is set to run relentlessly and remorselessly for the next 18 months. It can have only one of two brutally stark results:

* Either an emboldened Taleban will result in countless additional body bags arriving on shores in the US and its NATO allies;

* Or, deft political and military startegies will converge and result in their defeat.

Crucially, Obama refused to oblige with an open-ended cheque, and gave the clearest indication yet that there are limits to his munificence. “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home”, he proclaimed.

Whatever the outcome, this is now without question Obama’s War. Either he will face the opprobrium of the US nation, or he will be heralded as the leader who showed the world how he was prepared to pursue his aims in such a way which finally yields a “successful conclusion”; bringing the end to the conflict that now seems a thousand years away.

Acutely aware of the gravity of his decision to send extra troops, Obama also recognised that this conflict is already seen in some quarters as a modern day Vietnam. Comparisons with a traumatised American society and a landslide victory for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 will remain a poignant reminder for Obama of just how dreadfully wrong things can go in a relatively short space of time. Johnson could never have envisaged what he had started; by the time of the next presidential election in 1968, America had become embroiled in a war that was to take on far greater dimensions than anyone could have believed at the time of his election.

If his strategy fails, Obama will stand ridiculed for committing more troops to Afghanistan than his predecessor did with the surge in Iraq, and with worse results. For the next 18 months, he will have to find a way to carry his Democratic Party, and the American people, with him. The Audacity of Hope is facing its first grave test.