E-mail a friendPeter Baker
airdate September 2, 2009
Before becoming The New York Times' White House correspondent in '08, Peter Baker spent two decades at The Washington Post, where he had several beats, including covering Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush and as Moscow bureau chief. His book on the Clinton impeachment, The Breach, was a best seller, and he also co-wrote Kremlin Rising. Baker has covered events in the Middle East and was embedded with the Marines at the start of the Iraq War. His work has appeared in various publications, including The New Republic.
NYT journalist explains how a continued presence in Afghanistan will affect President Obama's ability to move his domestic agenda forward. (1:31)
Full interview. (11:51)
Peter Baker
Tavis: Peter Baker is the White House correspondent for "The New York Times" following two decades at "The Washington Post." One of his recent pieces in the "Times" asked this provocative question - could Afghanistan become Obama's Vietnam? Baker joins us tonight from Washington. Peter, nice to have you on the program.
Peter Baker: Thanks for having me.
Tavis: The answer to that question that you posed is?
Baker: (Laughs) Well, I think we're going to have to wait a little while to get the answer. It's something, though, that's on the president's mind. I think that this is a president who studied history, who understands coming in that Afghanistan is a big, big problem and one not only for the country but also for his presidency in terms of other things he wants to do.
The LBJ example was something that was on his mind when he had a group of historians to the White House for dinner earlier this summer and they talked about how not only was Vietnam a cost to Johnson's presidency in the foreign policy arena but also in the domestic arena. A lot of people have thought that the Great Society never was fully implemented as far as it could have gone, partly because of the damage done to Johnson's presidency by Vietnam. So that's something that this president, President Obama, is thinking a lot about these days.
Tavis: For you to even pose, though, as a headline that kind of comparative question means that there are some parallels somewhere. What are the parallels?
Baker: Well, certainly, of course there are. In this case, we've seen with this election in Afghanistan that you've got a central government that's not seen as legitimate by its own people, that's widely viewed as corrupt. That's a parallel, unfortunately, with Vietnam. You don't have a partner that you'd like to have there as an American military and civilian force.
The other parallel obviously is an entrenched nationalistic insurgency that has proved very resilient despite eight years now of American military force backed up by coalition allies.
So in the politics back at home there are differences, obviously. In Vietnam we had an at least partly drafty army; 500,000 troops there. Today we only have about 62,000. We'll get up to 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan, and all of those are volunteers. That's a different dynamic, obviously, but the patience is running out here in the American public, and that's something of concern to anybody who's watched history.
Tavis: What are the president's choices, really?
Baker: Well, General Stanley McChrystal, who's the chief commander in Afghanistan, has turned over to the Pentagon his review of the situation. McChrystal is the person that was just put in by the Obama administration in June to take over that situation there, and his strategy assessment, while still classified, is known to thought - to basically advocate a broader commitment to protecting the civilian population rather than just hunting down Taliban.
For that, most people think he's going to need more troops. He didn't include a troop request in this latest report, but that's something most people expect to happen in the next couple weeks, and that's going to be a real pivot point for President Obama - is he willing to deepen American involvement at this time. As you mentioned in your opening, a lot of people want to begin getting out.
Tavis: There's always, Peter, an intersection, as you well know, covering this stuff between policy and politics.
Baker: Absolutely.
Tavis: It's not just that progressives are on the president's back about getting out of Afghanistan; now you got folk like George Will who are saying conservatives, it's time to get out. Talk to me about the intersection on this issue of policy and politics.
Baker: Sure. No, there's a very, very interesting dynamic here. You have a president whose policy on Afghanistan right now is supported by I think roughly 70 percent of Republicans and only something like 30 percent of Democrats. So it's not his party that's behind him on Afghanistan right now; it's Republicans who residually support the Afghanistan policy, in part because that was something that was started under the last president, President Bush.
As those conservatives begin to lose patience themselves, there's less incentive for them to remain behind this president than they might have the last one. So you see people like George Will and other conservatives beginning to say, "Well, I'm not so sure this is going to end well for us. Maybe it's time to begin disengaging."
Tavis: How much of what President Obama is dealing with has to do with the previous administration, to your earlier point, taking its eye off the ball in Afghanistan, so to speak?
Baker: Right. That's certainly the argument that President Obama made as a candidate last year. In large part, as a juxtaposition from Iraq, you remember, of course, the Democratic position was President Bush messed up in Afghanistan because he was so focused on Iraq he let Osama bin Laden get away. He didn't pay enough attention to what people often call the "good war" as opposed to the "bad war" in Iraq.
But Iraq has now faded, beginning to fade. We've got a withdrawal plan that President Obama has put in, and so the violence has gone down and so more attention has begun to focus on Afghanistan and I think therefore this notion that that's the good war has begun to fade for a lot of particularly Democrats who use that as a way of saying we're not against all wars, just the Iraq war.
Tavis: There's been some debate, Peter, as you know, that's kicking up, quite frankly, more aggressively as to whether or not Afghanistan is for the U.S. now a war of necessity or a war of choice. Your thought on that debate?
Baker: Right, exactly. President Obama in his speech recently to the Veterans of Foreign Wars described it as exactly that - he said it was a war of necessity, something that we have to do in order to prevent some sort of another haven for terrorists like al Qaeda to form in Afghanistan. That could be dangerous to America, given what we saw on September 11th.
Other people, like Richard Haas, for instance, he was a State Department official in President Bush's administration, became a critic of a lot of Bush's foreign policy. He wrote a book recently on this question of wars of necessity versus wars of choice, and he wrote in "The New York Times" op-ed page recently that in fact the president was wrong in his view. That Afghanistan may have been a war of necessity just after 9/11, but it's become a war of choice, that there are other options, such as for instance accelerating these Predator strikes against terrorist havens and doing more to build up the Afghan forces to do their own fighting, that sort of thing.
Tavis: So then what should the American people make of the fact, Peter, that the White House has signaled, at least, its willingness to send even more troops than it did earlier this year into Afghanistan, these poll numbers notwithstanding?
Baker: Right, exactly. Well, when President Obama earlier this year sent 21,000 more troops, he sent 17,000 combat troops and 4,000 more support personnel, that was really sort of the minimal, the most - the smallest possible option that people were considering at that time because he wanted to hold out for more information before committing a larger deployment. He's now getting that information in the form of this review from General McChrystal, but I think there's a lot of skepticism inside this administration about whether they should do this.
They've left open the door that they might; on the other hand, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a holdover from President Bush's administration, he said this week, look, he's afraid that more troops make us look more like an occupier rather than a partner.
He's very aware of the fact that we have about 68,000 - we will have 68,000 American troops by the end of the year. If you add NATO troops, that's around 100 and some thousand. The Soviets, when they were there, had around 120,000. So we're getting up to the kind of level that the Soviets had when they were in Afghanistan - not a precedent that anybody wants to embrace.
Tavis: How does the news coming out of Afghanistan every day, Peter, about violence, certainly of late, ongoing violence in the country, push or pull the president in his decision-making process about what to do in the future one way or the other?
Baker: Well, I think it's like with any president. I think the hardest thing you do is to send young men and young women into a war zone, recognizing that some of them are not going to come home to their families. President Obama just this Sunday, as he left his vacation in Martha's Vineyard, met with the family of a young Marine, a 21-year-old Marine who died last month or died in July, excuse me, in Afghanistan, and it was a Marine he had met himself during a visit to Camp Lejeune back in February.
So I think that kind of thing weighs on him. He said that the hardest decision he's made so far in his seven, eight months in office was the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. So watching that violence come back in the form of television pictures and reports to the president clearly weighs on him, as it did, I think, President Bush.
Tavis: Let's circle back to a point you raised earlier in the comparison to LBJ. How does this, in the coming weeks, in the coming months, handicap him with regard to trying to push through a strong domestic policy agenda like healthcare? We're talking about getting to - the White House at least is talking about getting to immigration after the first of the year.
How does this handicap him, cripple him, with regard to pushing through his domestic agenda now?
Baker: Well, I think it doesn't help. Obviously, to the extent that he is making decisions that might further alienate his progressive base, his liberal base, at a time when he needs them to help push through healthcare in particular, that's not helpful.
If he makes another decision, if he decides to resist what the general in Afghanistan has requested, he might obviously turn off Republicans. That may not be such a cost in the sense that they're not on board with the healthcare agenda as it is, but these things have a way of bleeding over. President Bush's advisers felt very strongly that the drum-drum of violence and reports of trouble in Iraq really hurt his domestic agenda in the second term. Now, you can argue about that, but he never got through some of the big things that he wanted to do at home in his second term, like Social Security, like tax reform, like immigration.
And you could argue, obviously, that there are issues on the merits of those individual proposals but the Iraq war pulled down at his credibility and pulled down at his political capital. That's something that President Obama I think is aware of, doesn't want to see repeated here.
Tavis: For a guy who was elected in part because he is the 21st century version of the great communicator - Barack Obama, we're speaking of now here - how much of the drama that he's enduring right now, the trouble he's having right now, has to do with the fact that he's not, great communicator that he is, doing a good job of selling to the American people what he wants them to buy, be it healthcare or Afghanistan?
Baker: Right. Well, look - at some point, you have to question whether in fact it's not a communication problem but a product problem. Is this a product at some point that the public wants to buy? At some point, obviously, the best salesmanship in the world may not be able to sell it.
Having said that, they don't yet believe at the White House that that's the case, that they still have an opportunity here to make up for what they have failed to do in terms of communicating to the public. He's going to give an address to both houses of Congress next Wednesday. That will be a dramatic moment. Whether he can shift the momentum is, I think, up in the air.
This is a White House that's relied very strongly on the idea of the president's great communicator skills, as you put it, but sometimes a good speech is still a good speech that has to be backed up by policy and by political maneuvering and horse-trading and all the things that go on here in Washington.
So they understand that giving a speech next Wednesday won't be enough; that part of what they're going to have to do is to probably trim back their sails on some of the things they'd like to do on healthcare and begin to put out a more specific idea of exactly what it is he wants Congress to do.
Tavis: We shall see. "The New York Times" White House correspondent, Peter Baker. Peter, nice to have you on the program. All the best to you.
Baker: Thank you. Appreciate it, have a great evening.
Tavis: You too.
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