I don’t want to continue to pick on Marc for supporting Krauthammer’s “Iraq-is-more-important-than-Afghanistan” column, but I couldn’t help but notice we had a verysimilar debate over two years ago in both of our pre-TMV days. Indeed, it was one of the first true blog debates I ever had, and sparked one of the best (or at least, one of my favorite) early posts I ever wrote, on why viewing the war on terror through a traditional “state-centric” lens will lead us down the wrong path. Krauthammer bites into this critique rather hard, and doesn’t seem to grasp the post-9/11 paradigm that states no longer can be seen as the sole primary actor in international affairs.
Statecentrism and the War on Terror, originally posted January 19th, 2005, has the full argument.
Ah, nostalgia.