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So I wrote this to one of the (too many) listservs I’m on, in response to a question about whether the Afghanistan war — or escalating it — is justifiably seen as a progressive goal. My reply was that I see the case for continuing the war and progressivism as two ships passing in the night, a category error. Reading my reply over, I figured I should just post it, since I haven’t recently written anything from a normative perspective about the merits of escalating the war. Frequent readers will have probably figured out where I stand. But why not be explicit about it? So, here goes, with some edits…
I would say the case for escalation is a case based on the national interest. That is, escalation in Afghanistan is necessary to secure our legitimate security interest against al-Qaeda. This can be done by adopting a counterinsurgency approach to deprive al-Qaeda of the strategic depth provided by its Afghan allies through addressing root-cause or ‘demand-side’ reasons why Afghans actively or passively bandwagon with the insurgency: lack of governance; lack of resources; and lack of security. I consider those to be achievable goals, but it’s quite possible they’re not, and the time that all of this could have been achieved is passed. I would be lying if I said I could know for sure. But I think the risks of continuing Afghan instability, providing al-Qaeda with greater strategic depth, trump the risks of not trying. I don’t like the fact that I find this to be a compelling argument, for what it’s worth.
The war may have some benefits that are progressive — such as cementing at least some gains in women’s rights — or it might not. An end to the war might, for instance, involve negotiations that empower at least some elements of the Taliban. And it’s not like the Afghan government today is remotely progressive. What I’m saying is that progressivism is orthogonal, or at best peripheral, to this war and its escalation. My heart is with the advocacy groups that say the U.S. ought to emphasize women’s rights more in the case for the war, as Ben Smith reports on, but I fear it would be misleading and exploitative to sell a war based on concerns that are not ultimately central to the objective. That’s not to say we ought to be indifferent to women’s rights, because we shouldn’t. We have a lot of influence over the Karzai government, and if there’s ever a cause that gets me thinking there are worse offenses than interference in a country’s self-determination, it’s the prospect of half the population stifling the desires of the other half.
But it is to say we ought to apply a test: what concerns, by themselves, justify a long and costly war? For me, it’s the prospect of extirpating al-Qaeda by getting rid of the conditions that allow it to function, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, in combination with the unavoidable military activity against the individuals that make up al-Qaeda. This is a war that we can end, on terms satisfactory to our interests.
That doesn’t have to be the end of the argument. I view the national-interest case for escalation as compelling, but not by much, and the arguments for it grow more compelling when paired with an ultimate endpoint for a war entering Year Nine, as Obama apparently will lay out tomorrow. But I think we should be pretty clear-eyed that this about the national-interest, not additional progressive goals. Wars can be justified and/or necessary without being progressive. The Gulf War, for instance, was, and it wasn’t progressive, unless we’re to define progressivism down to mean “opposition to foreign military conquest.”
So: handwringing enough for you? To add one other meta point: I hate the term “liberal hawk” for a variety of reasons. But foremost among them is the fact that it’s an incoherent term. It has to mean “hawk for liberal reasons” if it is to be meaningful, not “hawk who happens to be a liberal.” In this case, though, I’m the latter. Now take me to task in comments and strengthen my argument.
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Your progressive goals, military occupation in order to save Afghan women, is fine handwringing but I think you’re right to let that go. If you want to improve the status of Afghan women through the barrel of a gun, good luck with that.
To me, this sounds like deluded fantasy. But I’ll bet Bill Kristol will pretty much agree with it.
Deluded fantasy is just about right.
Spencer, every one of your positive arguments is a maybe with the likelihood that NOT A SINGLE ONE of them will be achieved.
You are going all in on a pair of fives in the hopes you can bluff your way to the pot.
And you’re betting with soldiers lives.
Shame on you.
‘Progressive’ is essentially undefined. I believe that progressivism demands a commitment to helping people without consideration of nationality, but a lot of progressives seem to feel that we should only be responsible for ‘our own,’ or more accurately that we should see to Americans first and more. There’s not really an Afghanistan-specific progressive argument but there is a blanket progressive argument for foreign intervention to protect and enrich. In many places, and I believe Afghanistan is one of them, the American brand is such that direct intervention is an inefficient choice and should be avoided in favor of using diplomacy to get someone else to do it, but we sorta told the whole world ‘fuck off, A-stan’s our bitch’ a few years ago so getting a replacement intervenor is basically impossible. But I wouldn’t characterize ‘we have to because no one else will’ as a progressive argument, just an argument progressives are probably susceptible to.
I also have a personal progressive reason for being willing to risk more in Afghanistan: it creates an opportunity to raise taxes on America’s super-duper-obscenely-rich, and if we don’t hobble the runaway income disparity in this country then there’s gonna be a whole lot more stomping in the future.
You lost me at “necessary to secure our legitimate security interest against al-Qaeda”. What evidence is there that al Qaeda actually poses a threat to the security of the US to the point that we need to deploy so many thousand troops so far away?
We have had exactly one attack from al Qaeda on US soil, and a handful of additional, smaller attacks on our “interests” internationally. We have expended approximately a trillion dollars in response. What evidence can you point to that we have gotten anything for that expense and for the approximately one million additional deaths and four million displaced? Yes, I’m intentionally conflating the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan because in the end they are the result of the same blind, unfocused rage from our country.
On the flip side, ample evidence exists to show that our very presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and especially the tactics most favored by General McChrystal, result in positive recruitment for al Qaeda and other extremist groups. To the extent that al Qaeda does pose a threat to us (personally, I would put that threat at about the same level as a Columbian criminal drug cartel), we are doing precisely the opposite of what we should be doing to reduce that threat. Obama’s escalation can do nothing but make a horrible situation even worse.
Your very own research has pointed out how completely broken our deployment capability will be once this surge is in place. That is a huge risk to the security of the country and should not be tolerated.
I have deep, deep skepticism that what’s planned for Afghanistan will do any of these things, or that ground troops are what’s needed to try these things.
Spencer,
Jim White, Jason and others have it right. Al Qaeda is more buttressed by having American soldiers over there killing Muslims than just about anything else we could do. The Afghans are never going to be as you want them to be– I would surmise that killing foreign occupiers is, if not the most satisfying thing in their lives –certainly the thing they have succeeded at, historically, more than anything else. It’s a progressive fantasy, adopted by the neocons for their own purposes, that cultures are infinitely malleable by outside experts . But trying to do the impossible has real costs in blood and treasure. Bush brought us a long way to ruin, don’t let Obama push us further. I’ve said before, and will say again– if you were old enough to have experienced Vietnam, you wouldn’t be writing this way.
Afghanistan AND Pakistan?? Pakistan too, really? How on earth will 30,000 extra troops in Afghanistan “get rid of the conditions that allow AQ to function in Pakistan”? That’s a lot of conditions to get rid of in a country where we have no ground troops. Is there some unequivocal buy-in from the Pakistani government and citizenry that I don’t know about, or some new grand strategy that relies on the storied beneficence of the ISI? If there is, Obama should really play up that shit tomorrow night.
See, this sort of ignorant othering is the exact reason I’m going to trust Spencer’s assessment over yours. Progressive objections to a peacekeeping and nation building effort in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly mired in this ‘East is East and West is West’ crap. Stop. It.
These are all good points, but I’d take this argument a step farther and ask, “what is meant by national interests”?
Do we mean the interests of military contractors, generals jonesing for glory, armament manufacturers, tech start-ups lusting for DARPA seed money, academics at think tanks who further their careers analyzing the “terrorist threat”? Or do we mean the interests of the nation’s millions of unemployed, or those who have no health insurance, or the homeless, or the working stiffs who commute to and from their jobs across a disintegrating infrastructure?
I feel, Spencer, your support for this imperial adventure is shaky and riddled with bad conscience. Come on over to the other side, as there is nothing to be gained to sit with the hawks on this one. They are on the wrong side of history, and they’ve already screwed things up royally. Now the U.S. is asked to fight to keep an actual puppet government in place, voted into office through massive fraud and violence, backed by some of the cruelest warlords on the planet.
Counter-insurgency programs grew out of the fight against insurgents in Algeria and Vietnam, and to a certain extent, the Philippines (the Huks). The French, British and Americans thought they could ape the tactics of the insurgents, and make it a battle for hearts and minds, village by village. The instrument on both sides was (and is) terror… because that is what war is — murder, terror, rape, destruction of the “enemy”.
The U.S. faces a disaster of Vietnam proportions in Afghanistan (though not necessarily in soldier fatalities). The Iraq adventure is truly not finished either.
If I were one of the old banished Soviet-style communists — banished from modern political discourse — I would say, “Go for it, comrades. We cheer you on. Apres vous, le deluge.”
It seems pretty simple to me to square these two circles (progressivism and occasional hawkishness) in this case. If you’re not on board with the policy you probably don’t much like this argument, but I think it is sound nonetheless, namely: this is what he said he was going to do, and progressives in droves sent him to office largely in response to his making that the central plank of his foreign policy platform. We progressives had every opportunity to reject the notion of a shift of resources from Iraq to Afghanistan in favor of the a proposal to retrench and begin to focus on needs at home rather than merely shifting the focus of our foreign efforts in the party primary from which this president emerged. It seems to me now that simple coherence in our politics demands that there be a certain stoic acceptance by those who sent this president to office of his seeking to institute policies that he clearly ran on, even in the primary, hearing very little of the resistance he now hears. I personally am ambivalent enough about the decision that perhaps this is a convenient argument. But I fear a certain schism in both the discourse generally as well as in the progressive if a president can run clearly and centrally on a given policy, get elected largely by a given constituency on the basis of that position (seemingly), and then retain zero support for the policy when he tries to follow through on it in office. I consider myself a progressive, but if this view gets me expelled from the tribe, so be it. My inclination in the face of the kind of political behavior l see among many progressives on this question (as opposed to civil liberties and detention policy, where Obama is clearly at fault) is to simply say there was no way to satisfy them.
The merits of the thing as far as I can see (at least as I would apprehend them if I were in Obama’s position) seem to me pretty simple too, and they are this: we face defeat in Afghanistan. Should we accept it and cut our losses or resist it? That’s the basic choice. It’s from that decision that the specifics of what is being done flow, and Obama’s task tomorrow night is to explain why, given the choice he is making with regard to the basic choice he is making — i.e., to fight on — (and given his proposals and rhetoric as both candidate and president, how in the world could that choice be surprising to anyone?), the steps now being undertaken constitute the best possible way, all things considered, to press that fight, in order to bring about the best outcome in that country and region for the U.S. that is possible.
There were certainly Americans we could have elected president in 2008 who might have made a different fundamental decision about Afghanistan than the one Obama is making tonight. But there was never any reason to believe Obama might have been one of the ones who would.
Spencer,
please give at least a few minutes to thinking about the alternatives—100,000 troops in afganistan total = $100Billion per year.
Are you seriously suggesting that there aren’t ways to spend 100B/yr in pakistan (gdp $168B) or israel/palestine (gdp $198B) that would not work better against AQ’s roots (ie recruiting drivers) than continuing US occupations?
micromeme
Well said, as usual; particularly this:
@Spencer, that’s pretty much how my own argument for continuance in Afghanistan came out, too.
I don’t claim to be progressive, just a reader of Spencer’s blog.
And also, in response to karaka and Mike D above– yes, that he campaigned on Afghan escalation is a pretty good reason for “stoic acceptance” by those who supported him then for this course. But I must confess, I took Obama’s commitment to win the war in Afghanistan about as seriously as people took FDR’s 1940 commitment to stay out of the war in Europe: i.e the words are one thing, the general aura given off by the campaign something else. But I was wrong.
You were indeed wrong, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Many of us chose to believe him when he said he wanted to restore the rule of law, and we were wrong too. There is a good counterargument to my POV that says, of all the promises he decides to keep, why should we have to accept that it’s the one for more war? I don’t have a good answer there, which is why, while if Obama had kept more promises I really would be frustrated with the community over the splintering I’m seeing among progressives over this decision, in the event I can only regret all the more the president’s failures to deliver on a number of other progressive issues and conclude that ultimately the blame lies with him.
I don’t think killing foreign occupiers is an “eastern” concept. Is it?
I doubt that’s what endymion was referring to. It seems more likely the OP instead meant that claiming Afghanistan cannot function as a democracy because it has no real history of such democracy seems to essentialize Afghanistan in a manner that doesn’t speak to the systems made in the last eight years, which are notable even if they are not wholly successful.