Talking Libya, Afghanistan, and Other Happy Issues with KT McFarland

The girl with the red dress on today, KT McFarland, looks far too young to have been working for the White House in 1973 when the War Powers Act, which states the President must have the consent of Congress before entering the country into an armed conflict, was passed. Even so, the national security expert told Imus every single president since Nixon has abided by the resolution…until now.
 
President Obama “sneaked out of it on a legal technicality” pertaining to Libya, McFarland observed, by claiming that the U.S. is “leading from behind,” since it’s a NATO operation. “In effect,” McFarland began. “He’s going to make sure it never applies to anybody ever again, and I think that’s a big mistake.”
 
In return, Congress could cut off funding for the mission, but McFarland does not think that’s a great way to deal with the situation either. “What are we trying to do here in Libya?” she wondered. “Are we trying to get Qaddafi? Obama’s said Qadaffi’s got to go, but here we are, three months into this thing, and the tin-horned dictator is still there.”
 
She continued, “It makes us look impotent, and it questions America’s ability to get anybody.” Additionally, it sends a signal to every other dictator in the region that it’s A-OK to defy the United States; stay in power; and kill your own people.
 
If it’s up to the Republicans seeking the 2012 nomination for President, isolationism will be the word of the day on American foreign policy, whether Imus can pronounce it or not (he can’t). McFarland disagreed with Sen. McCain, who over the weekend professed his belief that an isolationist tack would have dire consequences.
 
“The United States has military commitments, and we’re having to borrow money to pay for the military commitments, and the military commitments are not necessarily leading to any decisive victory,” she said, and praised President Ronald Reagan’s for not bombing or invading Iran when they held American diplomatic personnel hostage in Tehran for more than a year.
 
“He kept his mind and his eye on the main event,” McFarland said. “And the main event was to rebuild the American economy; build up America’s defenses, and take down the Soviet Union.”
 
She acknowledged there has been some success in Iraq, as McCain likes to tout, but questioned whether the Iraqis will be able to sustain it once the U.S. departs, and whether Iran will subsequently take advantage of the withdrawal by causing trouble in the region. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is best thought of as “a three-legged stool,” McFarland said, with one leg representing the military, another the safe havens in Pakistan, and the last standing for the Karzai government.
 
“We are, in fact, succeeding militarily,” she insisted. As for the other legs, she believes the U.S. has failed to clean out the terrorist safe havens in Pakistan, and that President Hamid Karzai is unlikely to hold Afghanistan together once the U.S. skips town. The Pakistanis, she added, must be presented with a choice: get the Taliban to renounce Al-Qaeda and form an accommodation with the Karzai government, or help the U.S. in earnest to dispose of the safe havens.
 
If they are unable and unwilling to do either, McFarland said, “I think we need to admit that we’ve already lost Pakistan.”
 
As she sees it, the U.S. is suffering from “mission creep” in Afghanistan, where even though the defined goal of killing Osama Bin Laden has been achieved, but the mission creeps on, and eventually more closely resemble nation building than anything else.
 
Happily, McFarland’s marriage has been creeping on for something like 27 years. She seemed horrified when Imus questioned if she was “a fanatic” about it, but replied, “My husband and I tell everybody, ‘We have five kids—no one wants either one of us.’”
 
-Julie Kanfer