Foreign policy dogmatism, not pragmatism.(Correction, Please!)

ITEM: A May 6 Reuters article, detailing President Obama meeting with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, described the president's approach as "pragmatic," "measured"--and of course "diplomatic," "After their meeting at the White House on Wednesday, Obama was careful to stick to diplomatic language in [getting] his message across that both the Afghan and Pakistani presidents need to do more to confront the threat posed by the Taliban and al Qaeda."

ITEM: an interview in the Atlantic Monthly with former Congressman Lee Hamilton about Obama's foreign policy included Hamilton's response that "the tone and rhetoric of American foreign policy is different. The President clearly supports diplomacy and engagement, and he has attempted to change the country's operating environment. His foreign policy is pragmatic, realistic, and visionary at the same time."

CORRECTION: Both the media and enthusiastic supporters of President Barack Obama have repeatedly described him as a pragmatic realist on foreign policy, which they contend is a huge departure from the ideologically driven Bush administration. Vice President Joe Biden described Obama as "a clear-eyed pragmatist" and the president himself stated that his national security team shares his pragmatism. Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines pragmatism as "a practical approach to problems and affairs."

Sadly, "practical" is not the word an unbiased observer would use to describe Obama's drastic escalation of America's land war in Central Asia. The two nations in which the United States is progressively intervening, Afghanistan and Pakistan, are collectively being referred to as "Af-Pak." A serious inspection of Obama's Af-Pak policy seems virtually indistinguishable from the neoconservative policy of the Bush administration. Instead of an exit strategy, our involvement appears open-ended with no clear-cut understanding of what is to be achieved by propping up the Afghan or Pakistani regimes. What's pragmatic about that?

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Obama's Iraq-style troop surge in Afghanistan aims to increase troop levels there up to 68,000. This is a sharp rise from around 38,000 in February. It's not just troop levels that Obama is boosting; the new commander in chief also is breaking records with bombing raids. The Navy Times reported on May 4:

 
   Air Force, Navy and other coalition 
   warplanes dropped a record number 
   of bombs in Afghanistan during 
   April, Air Forces Central figures 
   show. In the past month, warplanes 
   released 438 bombs, the most ever.... 
   The actual number of air strikes was 
   higher because the AFCENT [Air 
   Force Central] numbers don't include 
   attacks by helicopters and special operations 
   gun ships. The numbers also 
   don't include strafing runs or launches 
   of small missiles.