PRESIDENT OBAMA BOLDLY HAILED AFGHANISTAN as “the necessary war” in 2009.[i] Based on his recent comments, or lack of them, it now appears Afghanistan is the shunned war—an elision followed by Republican challenger Mitt Romney and other U.S. political leaders.
At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, President Obama’s acceptance speech was notable for his fleeting reference to the still-raging war in Afghanistan: “We’ve blunted the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over.”[ii] One can only imagine the late-night speechwriting sessions that eventually yielded that tortured, far from candid sentence. With 77,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of American contractors still in harm’s way in Afghanistan, President Obama chose to cite the example of a young amputee sailor bravely recovering from an Iraqi grenade attack as his military “hope.”