Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
This past weekend, The Daily Beast published an article arguing that those on the right have no business supporting the war in Afghanistan. The author asks:
Why should Republicans tolerate waste of our tax money, merely because it happens in Afghanistan? Exactly which Republican values do the Karzai brothers—merchants in drugs and explosives, skimmers of contracts and runners of protection rackets—exemplify? Why is it honorable for Republicans to sacrifice the best of our young people for a miserable kleptocracy?
Our original aims in Afghanistan were twofold and rather simple: deny Islamic terrorists the sort of bases from which Bin Laden et al. attacked us on 9/11, and to create the sort of climate in Afghanistan which might ensure that after we leave (as opposed to the more rubble, less trouble purely punitive strategy) there would not be a return of the Taliban/al Qaeda nexus. Of course, there is rampant corruption, two-faced duplicity, drug dealing and all the other sordid things one associates with that part of the world. But at this point, there are several million Afghans, women especially, who are not cynical or corrupt, and who are working for some sort of better society. Our sudden departure will doom them to terrible retaliation; our stabilization of the country gives it a shot at something better that is in both of our interests. That is not ipso facto the reason we are there, but it is an issue, when the sort of calls arise, as they do now, and as they did in 2006 in Iraq, to get out without delay. And leaving Afghanistan does not occur in a vacuum, but will ripple through the region, with both friends and enemies making the necessary adjustments to our abject defeat, the likes of which we have not experienced since Vietnam.
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May '10
Re: Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
I feel you do this statement too much honor, Professor, by trying to engage it on it's own terms. The "Republican value" that has our forces in Afghanistan is "defense of the United States". Just that. That we might find the local government troublesome is not unexpected. "Miserable kleptocracy" describes much of the world, alas. But to imply that Republicans, or anyone, would send us into war because we liked the leaders, or disliked the other guys, is absurd. It makes America the over-sized bully in a high-school gang.
Ms. Marlowe seems to have spent some time in the country and has, perhaps, some interesting points to make on an important issue, but that one paragraph of partisan sniping cheapens the article.
At least she recognized that Republicans are natural enemies of a "miserable kleptocracy" (at home or abroad).
Jul '10
Re: Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
It is difficult to defend a war fought primarily for strategic reasons without clear immediate tactical benefit. Although there are ancillary benefits to the Afghans for our being there, that's not why we fight. What was true in 2003 remains true today: it is better to fight and defeat our implacable enemies there than to do so here. That's not a Republican or a Democrat position. Or ought not be.
If we want to argue whether the War on Islamic Terror as currently configured is in our best strategic interest, well by golly let's have that debate. But the Daily Beast and others should stop the unserious sniping. That does nobody any good.
May '10
Re: Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
As with so many anti-war articles, the author's complaints strike me as a shell game: liberalize a society and loosen the shackles of oppression from millions of citizens during the course of a war effort, and there are ceaseless complaints about our allies' corruption. Who wants to bet the rights of women in Afghanistan would be "the" issue, if Karzai & Co. were a little more honest and a little more Wahhabist?
Not to say Karzai's a wonderful partner, by any stretch, but as others have noted this comes across as partisan sniping.
May '10
Re: Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
I am a conservative Republican and supporter of the war in Iraq through it all. I confess to having deep doubts as to the wisdom of our involvement in Afghanistan. While I understand and agree with the points VDH makes, I don't think our CIC is in this to win. If he was, we would have a close knit diplomatic team to compliment the military as we did in Iraq. To date the relationship has been dysfunctional and appears to require more than finger wagging stern words to behave and work together, to make it functional.
If we are not in this to win, I would prefer to pull our troops out now - regardless of the downside. An unserious effort is not worth one American life.
Jun '10
Re: Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
If we can't stay for a decade, we can't succeed. If the Afghanis don't feel secure, over a significant period of time, they're not going to plan beyond the next harvest. To have faith that your children can be educated, you need faith that the family will be alive and intact for the next few years. Without security, there isn't time to be educated.
Jun '10
Re: Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
I believe it will take a generation, not a decade, to achieve our loosely stated goals. The sort of reform that would matter would require dragging the disparate regions of “Afghanistan,” wholesale, into the 21st century. This is neither an achievable military or political mission. The Afghanis are not a people and Afghanistan is barely a nation in either a political, cultural (language?) or national sense.
Iraq needed to be cured of an anachronistic political structure, a pervasive cancer, to flourish and as of now the surgery seems to be going well; Afghanistan needs to be created and re-created...from whole cloth...to enter modernity as a nation. The conservative, it seems to me, is more prudent and realistic than this.
Jul '10
Re: Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
There must be a temptation among some Republicans to brand Afghanistan "Obama's War" much as Howard Dean tried to brand Vietnam "Nixon's War" a few years ago. Things are not going as well as, perhaps, they could be. Afghanistan is a tough case. Until recently, it was not clear that it possessed resources that might spur economic development. I'm optimistic that the mineral discoveries of the last few years will help that nation develop, but a lot depends on how the Karzai government handles mining rights, etc. Given new opportunities, we may see a much more stable Afghanistan, or we may see something akin to the situation in the Congo.
Re: Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
It's odd, though, isn't it, that it's only now, when the situation in Iraq is remarkably stable (compared to the predictions of a couple of years ago) and we have a team in place in Afghanistan that seems poised to make progress, that we're wavering -- both on the right and the left.
Why is that, I wonder? Some perverse quirk of human nature? American politics?
May '10
Re: Support for the War in Afghanistan Remains Imperative
The hell of all this is that Obama set back the war effort all but irreparably when he declared that we would start drawing down in June next year. No one in that part of the world is stupid, and they all read Obama perfectly well: He had to be either a fool or a cynic to think that anything like an acceptable outcome could be achieved in that period of time. The fool would think, "Let the army pull off another "surge" and we're done in a year." The cynic would think, "In a year there will be no one left in the US who supports the war and we'll go home. Sorry about the US casualties in the meantime. Either reading works fine for the bad guys. They can get some practice shooting up NATO forces and generating martyrs while they wait for the inevitable withdrawal, collapse of Karzai's government, civil war, and return of a Pakistani-backed Taliban regime. Just like last time. But that will be Obama's defeat, no one else's.