Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The We Must Prevail Version Posted by Michael Cohen

I have just returned from vacation/travel and the first day after a long trip is always the most difficult to get back into the swing of things, but I would utterly remiss if I didn't comment on the bloated, monstrosity that is masquerading as an op-ed about Afghanistan on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

First of all it took three US Senators, Graham, Lieberman and McCain (that's a 3% of the institution) to write this chest-thumping insult to reasoned and well calibrated policy-making. And this op-ed has everything:

There is gratuitous flag-waving:

Growing numbers of Americans are starting to doubt whether we should have troops in Afghanistan and whether the war there is even winnable. We are confident that not only is it winnable, but that we have no choice. We must prevail in Afghanistan.

It relies on dubious, but scary assumptions:

We remain at war because a resurgent Taliban, still allied with al Qaeda, is trying to restore its brutal regime and re-establish that country as a terrorist safe haven. It remains a clear, vital national interest of the United States to prevent this from happening.

Offers hero worship of a guy in a uniform:

We have an exceptional new commander on the ground, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has begun a top-to-bottom overhaul of all aspects of our war policy and put forward a dramatically new civil-military strategy that clearly identifies failed policies and prioritizes the proven principles of counterinsurgency, including protecting civilians, creating legitimate and effective governance, and boosting economic development.

By the way, does it matter that the Afghan government is neither effective nor legitimate and doesn't seem to have a keen grasp of how to encourage economic development. The Karzai government: it's the Holy Roman Emperor of the 21st century.

Warns of dreaded "failure"

More troops will not guarantee success in Afghanistan, but a failure to send them is a guarantee of failure.

AND

We have reached a seminal moment in our struggle against violent Islamist extremism, and we must commit the "decisive force" that Gen. McChrystal tells us carries the least risk of failure.

It goes without saying here, by the way, that McCain, Liebermans and Graham make no effort to tell us what success, victory or winning in Afghanistan actually looks like.

Shifts responsibility for failure to others:

Our problems in Afghanistan are not because the Taliban are invincible or popular. They are neither. Rather, our problems result from what was, for years, a mismanaged and underresourced war.

Who was serving in Congress as that war was mismanaged and underresourced; (not only serving by the way, but all members of the Senate Armed Services Committee); and who was cheerleading for an invasion of Iraq that opponents of the war - like Barack Obama - warned would lead to resources being taken away from Afghanistan and the fight against al Qaeda?

And demonstrates some fairly impressive historical illiteracy:

The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse. The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again.

Can we end the canard once and for all that somehow it's America's fault that Afghanistan fell apart after the Soviet withdrawal? You know who is really to blame - the Soviet Union!! Do people understand that the Najibullah regime stayed in power for several years after the Soviet withdrawal, that the Afghan Army fought quote effectively against the mujaheddin, that things didn't go south until the Soviets cut off aid, and that Najibullah wasn't replaced by the Taliban, that things really fell apart during the civil war that followed the fall of Najibullah's government and that perhaps the Afghans themselves have to bear some responsibility for what happened, like for example the warlords who currently find save haven in the Karzai government . . . and I could go on and on.

Of all the absurd historical analogies made about Afghanistan this is the most pernicious and inaccurate. Should the US have done more to help Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal? Probably. Would it have made a huge difference either way? Likely not. Are we to blame for the rise of the Taliban? Please. The notion of American omnipotence never ceases to amaze me - as if we had sent a few hundred million dollars to Afghanistan every warlord would have gotten in a circle and sung Kumbaya.

And now comes the best part of this op-ed:

Yet an increasing number of commentators, including some of the very same individuals who opposed the surge in Iraq and called for withdrawal there, now declare Afghanistan essentially unwinnable. Had their view prevailed with respect to Iraq in 2006 and 2007, the consequences of our failure there would have been catastrophic.

Similarly, the ramifications of an American defeat in Afghanistan would not only be a devastating setback for our nation in what is now the central front in the global war on terror, but would inevitably further destabilize neighboring, nuclear Pakistan. Those who advocate such a course were wrong about Iraq, and they are wrong about Afghanistan.

Just so we are clear, Lindsay Graham, Joe Lieberman and John McCain actively supported and cheerleaded on behalf of a war that is arguably the greatest foreign policy and national security mistake in American history. BUT, because they argued for an increase in troop strength in 2007 that happened to coincide with the easing of ethnic violence in Iraq, the declaration of a cease fire by the Mahdi Army and the turning of Sunni militias against AQI we should listen to them. And we shouldn't listen to the people who actually argued fighting that war in 2003 - that these three Senators never wavered in their support for. The ability of Iraq war supporters to explain away their failures of judgment by hiding behind the ephemeral "success" of the surge is truly amazing.

What is most frustrating about this op-ed is that it puts enormous political and even emotional pressure on the President to continue fighting the war in Afghanistan, but simply ignores the many serious problems that we are seeing today - the corruption of the Karzai regime, the continued presence of Afghan Taliban safe havens in Pakistan, the lack of an effective civilian surge, the failure of the Afghan government and security forces to support a counter-insurgency mission etc. These are serious policy issues that cannot just be elided over with hoary proclamations that "we must prevail."  It's these types of arguments based on platitudes and simplistic arguments that truly cheapen what is a critically important policy debate.

This President spent eight months running around the country telling the American people that John McCain was reckless and wrong about US national security. He was right and it appears that the American people generally concurred. But now, with increasingly large members of the President's own party saying that we should not be sending more troops to Afghanistan why should he listen to John McCain's platitudes about victory in Afghanistan? He shouldn't.

If I was Barack Obama, when folks like Graham, Lieberman and McCain write that America has no choice and we have to prevail in Afghanistan . . . I'd be running for the exits.

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