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If there was a high school yearbook category Person Most Likely to Stand in Front of a Tank To Stop It, I'd be the winner hands down.
And yet, there's no way I would support a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan post-haste. This blog entry, A Commitment Strategy to Afghanistan, by Lorelei Kelly offers a great explanation but here's the crux for me (I recommend reading the whole column though):
The left and the right are too often defaulting to Iraq-era talking points for Afghanistan. On the right, Vets for Freedom is running anti-Obama ads, using the Iraq surge as a bludgeon against him. On the left, the California Democratic Party just adopted a resolution calling for increased humanitarian aid along with a military withdrawal.
But what if you can't have one with the other? The consequences of a complete withdrawal would leave a violent, chaotic hole in the middle of a tense neighborhood. The US would deal a potential death blow to the world's premier military alliance (NATO) and crackpot messiahs across the globe will claim credit. Troops need to be in the mix. Most Afghans want us there. They overwhelmingly dislike the Taliban. Girls attending school has risen to 44% since we've been present. Far more Afghans have access to basic health care. We need to start seeing these benchmarks as part of a broader set of objectives -- all thus far achieved with the help of American troops. [emphasis mine]
A month before that, Lorelei wrote, in Commander-in-Chief, Yes He Is, a pre-emptive strike that Obama critics from any point on the spectrum would be wise to read:
It still kills me that so many neoconservatives claim to value the military, yet demonstrate so few military values. Like: looking after the general welfare, shared risk, sacrifice for common goals and longterm planning. And here's the kicker: public service. Here are some other reminders of how progressive the military can be:
- International human rights law: U.S. military lawyers have been human rights champions for Guantánamo prisoners and for the Geneva Conventions.
- International treaties: The U.S. Navy is one of the strongest advocates for the Law of the Sea.
- Conflict resolution: The Air Force has a prize-winning office of dispute resolution.
- Renewable energy: The U.S. military is the largest renewable consumer in the country.
- AIDS prevention: The Defense Department has an extensive program to help foreign militaries.
And her conclusion really says it all for me:
The idea that power comes not from dominance, but from the ability to influence change, is a lesson learned from recent experience. Contrast the tea-drinking and negotiating experience of Afghanistan with the linear, engineering mindset of the Cold War--where a rigid worldview fit nicely with hardware-heavy solutions. Low-tech is our future. Afghanistan is the test. Finally, we have a President who hears what the military has been saying for nearly twenty years now: Security is about people.
I'm going to gloss over the fact that what I hate most about our military intervention in Afghanistan is how disconnected I've always felt it has been from getting at those individuals and groups and influences behind who actually performed the terrorist attacks (read more about how they connect to one another) and the countries and entities that have truly given asylum to such individuals. I read Three Cups of Tea, I think the Afghanistan population, like that in many countries around the world, our own included, could benefit enormously from the skills our military can deploy when not using arms or weapons (as Lorelei notes the other things the forces do), but that's why we have the U.N. and its derivative groups as well as NGOs.
And so, as a student of just and limited war, while it's incredibly difficult for me to even accept that we're in Afghanistan since we barely went after the right parties in the right way in the first place, I must insist that we now look at how deep in we are. There's little practical value to withdrawing 100% immediately either as no objectives will have been met if we do so.
This headline from an article in today's New York Times, "Obama's Afghanistan Decision is Straining Ties With Democrats," sums up how it can be that the reaction coming out of the lefty blogosphere is tense and in tension with itself as they digest these dilemmas which the President's speech addressed on Tuesday night at West Point (which you can read here or view here).
Although written just before the speech was given,
