Historian Garry Wills - Obama's Legacy: Afghanistan

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Obama's Legacy: Afghanistan
Garry Wills

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jul/27/obamas-legacy-afghanistan/



A US soldier at a base in the Dand district of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, July 23, 2010

Most presidents start wondering—or, more often, worrying—about their “legacy” well into their first term. Or, if they have a second term, they worry even more feverishly about what posterity will think of them. Obama need not wonder about his legacy, even this early. It is already fixed, and in one word: Afghanistan. He took on what he made America’s longest war and what may turn out to be its most disastrous one.

It is time for me to break a silence I have observed for over a year, against my better judgment. On June 30, 2009, I and eight other historians were invited to a dinner with President Obama and three of his staffers, to discuss what history could teach him about conducting the presidency. I was asked shortly after by several news media what went on there, and I replied that it was off the record. I have argued elsewhere that the imposition of secrecy to insure that the president gets “candid advice” is a cover for something else—making sure that what is said about the people’s business does not reach the people. But I went along this time, since the president said that he wanted this dinner to be a continuing thing, and I thought that revealing its first contents would jeopardize the continuation of a project that might be a source of information for him.

But there has been no follow up on the first dinner, and certainly no sign that he learned anything from it. The only thing achieved has been the silencing of the main point the dinner guests tried to make—that pursuit of war in Afghanistan would be for him what Vietnam was to Lyndon Johnson. At least four or five of the nine stressed this. Nothing else rose to this level of seriousness or repeated concern.

I will let others say what they want (some already have). But I will now reveal what I contributed that night. I told him that Richard Nixon had advised Ronald Reagan not to make too many public statements himself—let others speak on a daily basis, and save his appearances for big issues. Obama replied that he would speak less often in the future, but at the moment no one else in his administration could command the attention that he did. He added that Secretary Clinton had some ability to get the public’s ear, but she could not speak on domestic issues like the economy.

[Demeter]

1. Load of Tripe

If Obama is asking anyone besides GS for advice, we have yet to see the results.