The Good News About Afghanistan Ambivalence
The War on Terror, confusing and anxious-making as it may be, has produced one encouraging side effect in American politics: The gung-ho is gone as all sides concede the military effort in Afghanistan is a dangerous enterprise with an unknowable outcome.
As President Obama goes face-to-face with General McChrystal today by tele-conference, the debate over what to do next has been a good deal less rancorous than any other in recent Washington history. “Dithering” has been the harshest accusation against the White House by Congressional Republicans, as the Administration leaks reports of success against Al Qaeda by covert operations.
On PBS, GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss agrees with the Democrats’ Carl Levin that “just putting troops out there is not going to guarantee success” and argues for more reliance on the military judgment than Levin is willing to accept, a far different tone than partisan disagreements over the Surge in Iraq.
As wrenching as what’s at stake is, it’s heartening to see some semblance of sanity in American politics, the disappearance of which Tom Friedman laments today: “Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word ‘we’ with a straight face. There is no more ‘we’ in American politics at a time when ‘we’ have these huge problems.”
On the fringes, the overheated rhetoric goes on, from Gore Vidal on the Left expressing disappointment in Obama and predicting “dictatorship soon” to a Republican Congressman calling the President “an enemy of humanity.”
In a perverse way, Afghanistan with all of its corruption and complexity is bringing back serious thought to political debate at a time when the substance of issues has been degraded into a 24/7 circus of media slanders.
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3 Responses to “The Good News About Afghanistan Ambivalence”
The President will decide and whatever he decides I will support.
Nobody but Republicans care what Republicans say nowadays anyway. Such is the way they have divided America with their hate and obstructionism.
Whoever said “war is politics by other means” created one of the most dangerous euphemisms known to humankind. I'm definitely tracking left on war. Unless we are directly attacked, then why launch a war? Interestingly, Afghanistan is one of the clearer cases for retaliation, since it was harboring the Al Qeda training camps that hatched the 9/11 attacks, unless you're one of the fringe who think those attacks were actually hatched in the White House situation room, or on one of Dick Cheney's hunting trips. In any case, even in a clear-cut case like Afghanistan, we're still there eight years later.
“attacks were actually hatched in the White House situation room, or on one of Dick Cheney's hunting trips”
You could say that years of blundering foreign policy and the blunders of President Cheney and vice president Bush are at root the cause for where we are today. And if 9-11 foreshadowing clues were bullet holes in the hull, the whole enterprise would sink mighty fast. Just because we were incompetent, asleep at the switch, doesn't mean we should be attacked, but take a little responsibility.
The incredible fantasy of a War on terror which = war everywhere all the time involves a certain nearly paranoid ideology. If we follow the money though we might find out who benefited from Iraq and who will benefit from Afghanistan. hint/hint starts with H ends with N.
To some extent we armed Bin Ladin and Sadaam and actually named them Al qeda after 9-11.
Something like 60% of Americans still believe Sadaam caused 9-11.
I do believe it is a travesty of justice to make hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's and Afghani's suffer, especially the innocent.