From the New York Times, “The Wrong Force for the Right War” by Bartle Breese Bull The generally hawkish and specifically pro-surge Bull questions the bipartisan wisdom that we should flood a bunch of troops into Afghanistan in order to better pursue “the right war.”
Joe Klein might want to hop off here, because what follows will feature a neocon actually questioning a war or at least the expansion of one. I will not be held responsible for any further intellectual confusion this might cause Time magazine’s leading columnist The consensus on sending more troops to Afghanistan has acquired the same simplicity that the plea for more troops in Iraq had four years ago. Back then, the cries for more troops, especially from Bush administration critics, seldom included precisely what the complaining pundits intended to do with those troops. The “more troops” mantra ultimately became so divorced from strategic realities that critics of the surge like Andrew Sullivan dismissed the surge’s possibilities for success because, Andrew argued, it would have taken at least a half million additional troops to make a difference. The strategy, tactics and goals associated with the surge didn’t merit any consideration. (These same critics have since decided that the Anbar Awakening whose beginning preceded the surge actually made victory inevitable.) Regarding Barack Obama’s insistence that he’ll send more troops to Afghanistan, even his friends like Juan Cole don’t believe him. They believe Obama’s engaging in a little political posturing in order to show this particular community organizer has the cajones to be Commander-in-Chief. For what it’s worth, I agree with Cole’s reading of Obama’s Afghanistan bluster, but then again I’m a well known cynic when it comes to Obama’s rhetoric. Nevertheless, since both presidential candidates agree that we ought to be surging troops into Afghanistan, it would be nice if they let us in on precisely what the surging troops are supposed to accomplish and why their contemplated accomplishments are a vital national security concern. As Bull points out, Time magazine called Afghanistan “the right war” a few weeks ago. It certainly was “the right war” after 9/11, when the Taliban had to pay the price for facilitating the 9/11 attacks. Why Afghanistan remains “the right war” and precisely what sacrifices we’ll have to make to win that war deserves a more serious discussion than we’ve had to date.
