Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides when they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.
There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”
Jim Geraghty, commenting on this, writes,
The base of the Democratic party is fundamentally pacifist and isolationist and has extraordinary, although not complete, leverage over this White House. They want the rest of the world to go away so we can focus on creating the perfect health-care system. . . .
We now know liberal bloggers never meant what they wrote about Afghanistan. We will soon know if the president meant anything he said about that war on the campaign trail.
On that, the Anchoress is skeptical. Sure, six months ago, the President said that the war in Afghanistan is one we must win and could easily lose, that it would be a Very Bad Thing if we did, and thus that we needed to send more troops and push harder; now, though, he has Secretary of State Clinton telling our military commanders that we don’t need to send more troops because the situation really isn’t that bad. (Umm, politicians with no military training or experience who are half a world away from the combat zones interfering with the military commanders on the scene . . . I thought the idea was not to have another Vietnam. Was I wrong?) As the Anchoress sums it all up,
The Afghan war, the “good” war, the “war that needs winning” was—it turns out—just one more hammer meant to beat up Bush.
Now, the Anchoress sounds mostly resigned about this, I think because she never expected anything better out of the Left. Others, though, are less so; Ace, for one, is utterly furious:
But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.
You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?
You . . . um . . . voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?
We won’t forget, champ. And we won’t let you forget, either.
Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it’s safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.
I think Ace is right to be furious at the sickening dishonesty, hypocrisy and cynicism evident here, as these people berated George W. Bush to high heaven for “playing politics with people’s lives” and “using war for political gain” even as—indeed, as the very act of—doing the exact same thing. I agree, if that’s what President Bush was doing (and I didn’t and don’t agree that it was, either by intent or in practice, which is why I supported him), it was reprehensible; but doesn’t that make his critics, who are now admitting to doing so, at least as reprehensible?
Still, I don’t have the energy even to reach, let alone to sustain, Ace’s level of anger; in large part, I suppose, because I too never expected anything better. It would have been nice to believe that President Bush’s critics were all operating out of the degree of moral seriousness and geopolitical awareness they claimed; but in truth, the only ones I ever believed to be sincere were the ones (like Doug Hagler, I believe) who were just as opposed to Afghanistan as to Iraq. I thought (and still think) they were wrong and unwise, but I trusted them to be honest, as I did not trust the posers. As such, I am not surprised, nor even truly dismayed, for the reality merely matches my expectations.
You know, I used to be more disgusted with the Republican party, but I've been more disgusted with the Dems for a while. At least the GOP does things that I think are awful, but which are in line with their demonstrated values. The Dems, on the other hand, fall down whenever they pretend to go with their base and then leap to the right hypocritically. This is a good example of a stomach-twisting pattern that began with Democratic support of the Patriot Act, which flew in the face of every progressive value I can think of.
And yes, I did in fact march against the war in Afghanistan :). I will maintain, for now, that there is no possible "good war", has never been a good war, and will never be a good war. War is unmitigated evil for everyone involved – its just harder for the "winners" to see the evil.
I'm also always happy to lay the challenge out there – while I love and respect my colleagues who disagree in good conscience, I personally do not see any (sufficient) justification for a disciple of Jesus Christ to support war.
I'm a bit puzzled concerning the claim that the left is isolationist. Our president travels everywhere in the world to praise other governmental systems, to shake hands with dictators, and to excoriate the country he represents. Today he speaks at the United Nations. He will apologize for our national history, "cultural racism," and "imperial intentions."
The left as isolationist? Try the left as internationalist.
::Insert tongue in cheek::
Oh puh-lease 🙂 we're both of course!
On the question of whether we should prop up criminal dictatorships (like, say, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban for two of the many the US fostered over the years) we're isolationist. I suppose that being anti-pre-emptive-war is also isolationist after a fashion (still working on just being plain anti-war).
When trying to look cool and cosmopolitan, we're internationalists. Everyone knows that to be cool, you go to Europe and pronounce foreign names with a little affected accent…and ignore the fact that the UN is the tool of the Antichrist, ushering in the last days.
Doug–LOL! As always, I give you credit for both consistency and intellectual integrity, and I appreciate the fact that they come with a sense of humor. As for the case for just-war theory, I'll take that up at some future point–which I know sounds vague, but clearly this comment thread is a bit cramped of a space for it.
Phil: isolationism doesn't necessarily mean the extreme form Japan adopted under the shoguns. If you're happy to travel around the world but your general attitude toward the rest of it is that we shouldn't intervene in its problems (except perhaps by sending money), then you're still an isolationist. I'll certainly grant that the particular version we tend to see on the Left is one which likes to compare the US unfavorably to other countries; that, as Jim Geraghty suggests, is part of the reason why they're isolationist–they want our resources going to fund their desired programs in this country, rather than being spent on operations outside it.