What Do We Do About Afghanistan?
It’s amazing what a change in Presidents will do to the politics of war.
Back when George W. Bush was the commander-in-chief the lines were clearly drawn in the political arena. The right, generally, supported the war. The left, generally, opposed it. The liberal media gave the war endlessly negative coverage, ignoring almost all news of progress and success in favor of “the car bomb of the day” style coverage. Libertarians stuck with their naive “let’s hid behind our borders and pretend like if we ignore everyone else they’ll ignore us” position.
Now Barack Obama, who first rose to prominence with outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq, is President. Thankfully Iraq isn’t much of an issue any more. Thanks to his determination to stick to his guns to the very last days of his administration we won the war in Iraq. All that’s left there is going through the motions until our troops are withdrawn. But Afghanistan remains very much a hot war, and it’s interesting to see how that’s playing in the political arena.
Suddenly liberals, and the media in general, is very quiet about the war and conservatives aren’t nearly so enthusiastic. And what’s a little disappointing is this seems to indicate that, for many, their position on the war was predicated more on domestic politics than a consideration of sound foreign policy.
But the question remains: What do we do about Afghanistan? A question made more pressing by a call from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff for more troops in the war.
For my part, I say send them. Some would argue that we never should have invaded Afghanistan. Some would argue that by being in Afghanistan we’re just making ourselves more enemies. I disagree with both of those positions, but what’s more I think the time for having those debates has come and gone a long time ago. The fact remains that we are in Afghanistan now. We invaded with the promise that we would leave the country better off than when we found it. If we abandon our mission now, and our commitment to the people there, we run the risk of creating far more enemies than we ever did by invading in the first place.
And if we let Afghanistan fall into rogue status once again it will revert to the next of terrorism it was when bin Laden was using the nation as a hide-out during the 9/11 attacks.
We won in Iraq by doubling-down during the war’s most critical hours. I think that we can win in Afghanistan by doing the same. I know that, unlike Iraq, we are in dire economic times with a current crop of political leadership that seems to view no deficit as being too large. But war spending is a fraction of our overall deficits problem. We can fix the deficits and follow through on our commitment to Afghanistan.
And more than just “can”, we should do just that.
