No surprises

I saw Mr Barack Hussein Obama's West Point speech last night and I wasn't in the least surprised when it turned out to be like biting into a sausage roll and discovering that they'd forgotten to include the filling. Or that the cadets showed so little enthusiasm for their lecturing commander in chief that they had to be reminded to applaud. It is, after all, an "enemy camp".

The only piece of meat in the whole thing: After months of dithering deliberation, Mr Obama has decided to send an extra 30,000 men to Afghanistan. Why 30,000 instead of the 40,000 his generals asked for remains a mystery; as does the 30 month time deployment schedule that makes this less a surge than a gentle slope.

What isn't a mystery is Mr Obama's promise to pull American forces out by July 2011. The war must end on that date by decree because he can't afford to be distracted by a triviality like war when the far more important job of his getting re-elected is at hand. What matters if it tells the Jihadists how long they need to lie low?

For all the head scratching surrounding the Obama presidency (how much is deliberate planning versus the result of incompetence) the one place where Mr Obama is as transparent as a see-through blouse is when it comes to waging war. He has absolutely no interest in it and he wants nothing to do with it. Indeed, during the 2008 campaign, Mr Obama seemed to have found the perfect way of disposing of both Afghanistan and Iraq with one blow: Declare the unwinnable war in Iraq the "bad" war and pull America out of that horrible quagmire and declare the already won war in Afghanistan the "good" war and pull America out while taking credit for the victory. The only problem was that he ended up with America winning the "bad" war and in danger of losing the "good" war as the Jihadists swarmed back from Iraq to Afghanistan to reinforce their Eastern Front. Worse, The One was stuck between the Scylla of a crumbling economy and the Charybdis of pretending that the way to fix it was to implement the tax and spend policies that he was going to do anyway. When Mr Obama discovered that being president with full control of Congress, academia, the news media, and most of the judiciary still didn't mean he could just go on making soaring speeches while Congress and his czars did the grunt work, Afghanistan became a real albatross for him. Not the thing for the Lightworker who thought it was his job, in his own words last night, to rebuild America.

In fact, Afghanistan had to be the oddest dead albatross ever to grace a neck because as time went on it got bigger and bigger. As The One went from messiah to the new president to the president to President Carter II, his stimulus package turned out to be a non-stimulus, his apology tours were exposed as, well, apology tours, his "cool" proved to be indifference if not outright disdain and, worst of all, instead of his breathing tax and nationalised healthcare bills breezing to his desk last spring they both stand a very good chance come January of not being passed at all. Mr Obama knew at his inauguration that if he fought or retreated in Afghanistan he'd still infuriate a large swatch of the voting public, so he was faced with the choice between being the man who lost the Afghanistan War or the 21st century Lyndon Johnson who saw his Great Society II crack on the rock of Vietnam II. Until he "rebuilt" America neither was an option. No surprise, Mr Obama "deliberated" and "studied" and "pondered", though to be fair, he was not "dithering". That implies that he intended to do something. He was rather hoping that if he did nothing long enough his precious Socialist programmes would become law and then he could let Afghanistan fall apart in a manner that he could blame on his predecessor. Now, however, he's faced with the nightmare scenario: A war that's an even greater political liability than ever, his agenda stillborn, and no more chances to kick the can down the road.

The disturbing thing about this slow-motion treacle surge is that it doesn't include the word that wasn't included in Mr Obama's speech. That word is "victory". This is not about defeating the enemy. This is about making a war that Mr Obama couldn't give tuppence for go away. His gamble is not between winning or losing in Afghanistan. It's whether or not he can make it quiet down until after his agenda is in place and he's re-elected. Then the Afghans, the Pakistanis, and anyone within missile range can learn to live under Jihadi nukes while The One goes for a Burton.

A while back I compared Mr Obama's ambition to that of a would-be Caesar. I still believe that. The question after last night is whether he's Julius Caesar or Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, who aspires to no higher military triumphs than to make war on the sea or perhaps Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus who cares more about his public performances and his Golden Palace.

Thing is, the enemy might turn out to be Atilla the Hun.

Update: Der Spiegel searches in vain for the Obama magic.