“I’m going to break a longstanding practice of never writing about foreign policy, a subject on which I have no competitive advantage, because it looks to me like this one is such a complete no-brainer: As things stand, there is no possible outcome but national humiliation in Afghanistan. The counter-insurgency doctrine that Petraeus executed so well in Iraq cannot succeed without confidence in the villages and among local officials that the military will be there for the duration. Not just “will have a hard time succeeding,” but cannot succeed. President Obama cannot commit himself with the kind of stubbornness that President Bush committed to the surge. Even if he changes his stated policy about the withdrawal, no one will believe that his heart is in it—because it won’t be.” — Charles Murray, blogging at the AEI blog
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Mr. Murray seems to believe that “national humiliation” has (via Bush’s “stubbornness” and the “purge”?) been avoided in Iraq.
I respectfully disagree.
Note also what passes for criticism of war. “It can’t be accomplished at a cost acceptable to ourselves.” It’s not that we have no business invading a country and toppling a government that has done nothing to us and is offering to hand over the perpetrators of the crime. There’s no reflection of how we’ve wrecked the country and how that country was already a wreck thanks to US intervention. It’s just that it can’t be successful. That’s criticism of war in the US propaganda system. You can read Nazis criticizing Hitler for opening an eastern front before dispatching with the British. It was a “strategic blunder.” Soviets would say the same with regards to their invasion of Afghanistan. “It’s a quagmire.” Nothing about the many innocent people slaughtered. That’s not real war opposition.
I understand this is AEI so we do expect right wing talking points, but watch for that pattern on other media as well.