Obama’s War: Same as the Old War

President Barack Obama speaks in Eisenhower Hall at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Photo: Roger L. Wollenberg-Pool/Getty Images

The text of President Obama’s West Point address is here. I didn’t watch the speech, but having read it I think it can be summarised, broadly, as “More of the Same, Only More So”. It’s an intensification, I think, of the existing strategy rather than a radical new approach to a series of interlocking, intractable problems.

Increasingly the Afghan campaign reminds me of that old Irish joke: “Can you tell me the way to Limerick?” “Well, you wouldn’t want to start from here.” But here is where we are. And that means, I think, that avoiding defeat is a more urgent priority than defining, let alone achieving, “victory”.

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And while much of this speech was broadly similar to and consistent with what the President has said before, large chunks of it could have been delivered by his predecessor.