By escalating the war in Afghanistan - sending an additional 34,000 US reinforcements in order to 'finish the job' that President Bush began but left undone - Barack Obama has implicitly endorsed Bush's conviction that war provides an antidote to violent anti-Western jihadism. By extension, Obama is perpetuating the effort begun in 1980 to establish American dominion over the Middle East, hoping through the vigorous exercise of hard power to prolong the postwar Pax Americana. In ways that Obama himself may only dimly appreciate, his decision on Afghanistan affirms the pre-existing character of US foreign policy. But by advocating 'counter-insurgency', the McChrystal report also represents a tacit acknowledgment that a decades-long military reform project has definitively failed.

LRB 17 December 2009 | PDF Download