Kerry wary of sending more troops to Afghanistan

"Kerry is among a group of people Obama is consulting as he makes perhaps the most important foreign policy choice of his presidency, whether to commit more troops to an eight-year-long war where victory appears increasingly elusive.

He said he just got off the phone to Obama. "I said, 'I'm leaving to Afghanistan tomorrow night and he said, 'I'm really looking forward to your download when you get back.'"


Obama said on Tuesday he hoped to complete a review of his Afghan strategy in the coming weeks. Kerry said if he disagreed with the president's final decision, he would not hesitate to say so publicly.

"This is war, this is life and death, it is not a party issue, this is an American issue."

The thesis of Tuesday's NYT story is that this pattern may obscure her real influence. Secretary Clinton's power may come by way of serving as an amen corner for Secretary Gates, the most powerful member of President Obama's cabinet. By endorsing Gates's view on Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and other issues, Secretary Clinton guarantees that the issue will not be framed internally as an us vs. him issue, where the "us" is Team Obama and the "him" is the holdover appointee from the Bush administration. She has thus played a crucial role in forging the most important, if most often misunderstood (cf. the curious convergence of views between former Vice President Dick Cheney and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee) fact about President Obama's national security policy thus far: its dramatic continuity with President Bush's national-security policy.

Ironically, however, that continuity may have played out its course. As the NYT story also suggests, Clinton and Gates appear to be teaming up to do something that Bush did not do: Stick with an incremental policy rather than embrace a surge. The reporters seem confident that Clinton and Gates favor a middle course between Biden's abrupt shift in mission and McChrystal's Iraq-like (Bush-like) surge in military and civilian resources.

Even without Clinton and Gates recommending it, most observers probably would bet that President Obama is going to split the difference in this fashion. The politics of the Afghanistan decision are such that a split-the-difference option is almost inescapable. Having the two most important cabinet principals endorsing it would make it virtually a foregone conclusion.

It would also do one more thing, which thus far has not happened: It would put Secretary Clinton's imprimatur on an important policy. The war in Afghanistan has already become President Obama's war. If he adopts Secretary Clinton's recommendation, it will also become her war. What comes of that war may well determine a key part of how history rates both of these political leaders in the foreign-policy arena.