Tweet
So just today we have word from the Wall Street Journal that Kandahar is the next battle in the Afghanistan war, which raised questions about whether the current 4000-Marine-strong fight in Helmand is, as one military official told the Journal, a "sideshow," and in the course of that piece, the Journal concluded that Gen. McChrystal thinks the Taliban is winning, which in turn prompted Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell to criticize the paper. We also have a report from the New York Times — and confirmed by the Pentagon — about a big shift in counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan that prompted Ex to wonder, "[W]hy are we in Afghanistan? To fight drugs?" And then there’s discrepancy between an articulation of U.S. goals in Afghanistan and Andrew Cordesman’s price tag for merely avoiding disaster. Pretty big day in the Afghanistan debate, and you can hardly blame Michael Cohen for asking if the worm has started to turn in a direction away from escalation.
A friend and I were talking about something similar, and I wrote that up for the Washington Independent. Let me know if you think I’m on to something or off-base here.
The Iraq debate tore the left into factions. Did you support the war on human-rights grounds? Oppose it on realist grounds? Oppose it out of general dovishness? Support it out of post-9/11 political opportunism? Support it as a measure about WMD proliferation? Each faction wanted to make its argument into a broader critique of what liberalism meant after 9/11 and why its opposing factions had revealed an intellectual decadence within liberalism.
And Afghanistan in 2009 … isn’t that at all. One of the things that’s struck me about the Afghanistan debate — aside from how muted-to-nonexistent it is — is that no one is making an argument about what it means for liberalism. There’s a general lack of certainty on the part of those who favored the troop increase earlier this year that tends to preclude ideological arguments.
I’m open to an argument about how any consideration of escalation in war involves a degree of implicit ideological freight, but that’s not really what I mean here. And in any case, analogies are problematic things and we should always at all times consider all such weighty questions from the perspective of their fundamental importance for the national interest. But as a meta-critique, I think this holds a degree of truth.
3 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About ATTACKERMAN
RSS/XML Feed
I’m just not sure how tightly bound together a political ideology and an opinion on applying military force to a national security problem really are. Intuitively I think there are as many people opposed to ALL military intervention, all the time on both ends of the political worldview scale.
Currently, with the US in a position where there is ZERO risk of losing a conflict, or being invaded by a foreign nation, the questions being asked become more of practicality, utility, economics, partisan (as opposed to ideological) gain, cost/benefit and institutional advantage.
Those who have a vested interest in the US military, the defense budget and military and procurement spending will always tend to approve of low-level hostilities that will keep the operational tempo and the requirements higher and the defense plants humming. Those who have an inherent sectarian point of view (such as “Muslims are evil and we need to crusade against them”) will selectively support military action in that part of the world. Those with a professional or even an emotional investment in Barack Obama will hesitate to walk away from his longstanding commitment to Afghanistan as opposed to Iraq.
But for so many of us, the administration has just done a dreadful job of explaining why we’re there, what we’re defending against, what we might stand to gain and how it will all be worth what it costs. I don’t think they’re incompetent, I don’t think that case CAN be made, so while they struggle with the political problems associated with a high-profile campaign commitment that is going south on them fast, while they try to figure out a path where they can walk back their “afghanistan NOT iraq” rhetoric without being pummeled for it politically, while they try to deal with the fallout of the bush/cheney administration’s sea change of giving over ultimate command authority to the military (we’re gonna listen to the generals on the ground), the arguments will get louder and louder.
It’s a political time bomb for Obama, and there’s no clear path out of the minefield….
mikey
Mikey nails it. There is no explanation consistent with liberal aims. The drug war is a known cause of violence and government breakdown : witness Mexico! I am reminded of the fall of the New York Mafia in the 60’s : something they expected once drug running became part of operations.
But I can think of a really nasty reason with visions of Iran-Contra not that old : and many around who remember Air America from another round of Asian adventuring.
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot……-dies.html
Start with ’Pentagon puts drug traffickers on a hit list’ and I think the pattern is clear enough.
Exum’s ignorance about the nexus between drug traffickers and the Taliban is really unexcusable. If there is any doubt about the need to address the drug industry in Afghanistan (assuming one wants COIN to succeed there), you really must read “Seeds of Terror.” You many not agree with Ms. Peter’s recommendations, but she accurately captures the facts.