"The more I read the more depressed I get. I simply do not believe that we will be able to rid the region of Islamist terrorists by military force, diplomatic genius or civilian outreach. And I suspect that our very intervention has spawned more of these terrorists than might have existed otherwise. The only reason we are there is because Osama bin Laden used the place as a base for the 19 unarmed men who perpetrated 9/11. The question we have to ask is: How is our current policy going to prevent another 19 unarmed men from wreaking havoc in the same way?
"I don't see it. And what are the unintended consequences of extending this war into Pakistan, and adding more and more resources to Afghanistan? God knows.
"I just try to imagine what the founders would say. With this level of debt, with another country, Iraq, still jammed with US troops, and still deeply unstable, with a global recession threatening to gut our capacity to finance even basic domestic needs, we are about to tackle a region of this complexity and danger. At some level, it is unhinged. It presupposes American responsibility for things we cannot understand, cannot control and cannot defeat. Its premise is imperial responsibility, not a reasonable assessment of national security. Does that make me sound like an isolationist? If isolationism means not trying to remake Afghanistan and Pakistan, then absolutely."
A couple of days earlier, Sullivan linked to a thoughtful, compassionate post about Afghanistan by Matt Steinglass. Among other things, Steinglass asked:
"... what are the moral dimensions of a possible retreat from Afghanistan? Is it possible to honor our promises to those who have chosen our side in Afghanistan if we decide that we no longer have a strategic interest in preventing a Taliban victory? Isn’t it important to keep such promises? ... So what do we offer to the girls whose schools will be closed, the police and army officers who will be executed, the NGO volunteers who will be whipped when the Taliban jeeps roll into Kabul? Nothing? “Sorry”?"
I, in turn, posted this comment:
"These are huge moral questions. Thank you for raising them. But what are we to do?
"What we’ve got here is a case, as they say, of Bush’s mouth writing checks that his ass couldn’t cash. What clear-headed assessment of Afghanistan’s history would have led Bush to imagine we could remake the country at all — let alone remake it into a place where we could promise girls the schooling they so deserve?
"If Bush promised each Kabul resident a ride on the Space Shuttle, I assume we’d want Obama to politely explain why America wasn’t going keep Bush’s promise.
"Prolonging a doomed war for the sake of showing that we tried our darnedest doesn’t help anyone — not us, not our troops, not even Afghan schoolgirls.
"Let me be clear. I want there to be a way to make good on these promises. Someone needs to show me how it can be done without bringing back a military draft to get us up to the troop levels we’d need for a responsible, robust counterinsurgency. And maybe that’s what it comes down to. If morality prevents us from walking away from a delusional promise, maybe a moral America needs to grow a military that’s gigantic enough to keep the promise.
"More of my thoughts on the Afghanistan conundrum here …
"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-quigg/why-we-all-ought-to-read_b_141555.html
"Thanks again for making us take a hard look at the morality of all this."
And yes, we really should be taking a hard look at this. This post was the first I'd read by Matt Steinglass. I look forward to reading more.
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