Win the Swing Vote in '12

Christian Parenti argues that Obama's motives in Afghanistan are mainly political.  Don't know if it's true, but it makes as much sense to me as anything else:

The real goals of the Afghanistan escalation are domestic and electoral. Like Lyndon Johnson, who escalated in Vietnam, Obama lives in mortal fear of being called a wimp by Republicans.

Is it to get the job done? To rebuild Afghanistan? To kill Osama bin Laden and crush Al Qaeda? No, all those goals are nearly impossible. And Al Qaeda is too small and internationally defused to destroy.

The real purpose of these 30,000 soldiers is to make Obama look tough as he heads toward the next US presidential election.

The Bush administration discussed regime change in Iraq at one of its first cabinet meetings. Among other things, the administration wanted direct economic control, and indirect geostrategic control, over Iraq's vast oil wealth. That has been partially accomplished, as witnessed by the recent Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell deals there.

The only credible way into Iraq was via Afghanistan. On September 15, 2001, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz actually suggested that the United States skip an invasion of Afghanistan and go directly to Iraq. But that would have made coalition-building impossible. After all, Al Qaeda was in the Taliban's Afghanistan.

So, the Afghan invasion was done--but on the cheap, fast and light. And then for eight years Afghanistan festered as the forgotten other war.

Then came the US presidential elections of 2008. Obama promised to end the Iraq War. But living in fear of being called a wimp, he too used Afghanistan. It became a rhetorical charm, political mojo in his masculine war dance: he promised to lose Iraq (withdrawal, or redeployment if you prefer) but to do so while salvaging our national honor by winning the "necessary" war in Afghanistan. In short, he used Afghanistan to show that we was not the soft, meek, scared little Democrat portrayed in GOP spin.

Wait, you say, most Americans want out of Afghanistan! So what?

Presidential elections are not decided by the majority of voters but rather by swing voters, in swing states. By "Reagan Democrats" and "Clinton conservatives." By a sliver of older, whiter, middle- and working-class men and (less so) women, in rural and suburban Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Tennessee, Michigan, etc.

This demographic has a strong sense of national honor, a fondness for the military, a traditional sense of masculinity and the role of violence in ordering the world, and perhaps a too-simple view of international politics. Obama feels he must go to the polls able to tell them he was not afraid to fight, that he made a good effort in Afghanistan.