Obama's Ebb & Flow

The surge in troops is to be followed immediately by the drawdown in troops.

Even while we make it clear that we’re not planning to stick around, we will somehow persuade Afghan Muslims to carry on the fight on our behalf against their fellow Afghan Muslims.

And in that 18-month bat of an eye, we will do what we haven’t been able to do in seven years, namely, turn Afghan security forces into competent soldiers and police who are motivated to do what we’re telling them it’s not worth our effort to do: battle the Taliban (who are not leaving in 18 months, by the way).

And, in that same blink of an eye, we’ll also do what no one’s been able to do in history: Turn Afghanistan into a functioning country.

This would be preposterous if it were actually a national-security strategy. But it’s not. It’s a political strategy. It’s incoherent, but it’s working: The Right is snowed, the Left is appeased.

We’re coming, but we’re leaving.

We’re sending thousands of warriors, but they won’t be making war. We’re nation building in a place we’d have to occupy for a century to build a nation, but we’re not occupiers, and we’ll be calling it a wrap in 18 months.

In the interim, Afghanistan can go off the radar while we socialize medicine, save the planet from the contrived heat death, and get ACORN busy on the midterms.

We can deal with Afghanistan again in July 2011, when we’ll have a better read on the landscape for Obama’s 2012 reelection bid.

Saul Alinsky would be proud.