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”.

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.