Still the good war?
Michael Crowley’s new piece on Afghanistan should be a sobering read for liberal hawks: For the left in the Bush era, America’s two wars have long been divided into the good and the bad. Iraq was the moral and strategic catastrophe, while Afghanistan–home base for the September 11 attacks–was a righteous fight. This dichotomy was ...
Michael Crowley's new piece on Afghanistan should be a sobering read for liberal hawks:
Michael Crowley’s new piece on Afghanistan should be a sobering read for liberal hawks:
For the left in the Bush era, America’s two wars have long been divided into the good and the bad. Iraq was the moral and strategic catastrophe, while Afghanistan–home base for the September 11 attacks–was a righteous fight. This dichotomy was especially appealing to liberals because it allowed them to pair their call for withdrawal from Iraq with a call for escalation in Afghanistan. Leaving Iraq wasn’t about retreating; it was about bolstering another front, one where our true strategic interests lie. The left could meet conservative charges of defeatism with the rhetoric of victory. Barack Obama is now getting ready to turn this idea into policy. He has already called for sending an additional two U.S. brigades, or roughly 10,000 troops, to the country and may wind up proposing a much larger escalation in what candidate Obama has called "the war we need to win."
But, as Nagl understands at the ground level, winning in Afghanistan will take more than just shifting a couple of brigades from the bad war to the good one. Securing Afghanistan–and preserving a government and society we can be proud of–is vastly more challenging than the rhetoric of the campaign has suggested […] The challenge of exiting Iraq was supposed to be the first great foreign policy test of Obama’s presidency. But it is Afghanistan that now looms as the potential quagmire.
It’s certainly worth questioning to what degree the Democrats’ enthusiasm for the fight in Afghanistan has been an effort to protect their right flank while opposing the war in Iraq. This isn’t so say that this fight isn’t necessary, but it’s going to be far more painful than most of its supporters realize.
For what it’s worth, the U.S. escalation in Afghanistan has, to a large extent, already begun.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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