I don’t mean to keep harping on my cynical and impolite belief that the primary purpose of the Afghan War is to keep the Reds out of power here in America. But in the wake of the McChrystal brouhaha, Steve Kornacki got closer to it than anyone else I’ve seen in print. He fell a little bit short, but he was on the right path. Please forgive a very gentle fisking, starting in the sixth of thirteen paragraphs:
On one level, it’s not that hard to see how he got snared in this trap. He came to office promising to focus on the war in Afghanistan and, in accordance with that pledge, picked his own general to run the show and supplied him with (some) of the new troops he was looking for. Afghanistan became Obama’s war, and presidents don’t like to lose wars. But to really understand where Obama went wrong, you have to go back to his decision as a candidate to make a strong distinction between the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq.
So far so good. Here’s paragraph seven:
When he hit the campaign trail in 2006 and 2007, this made for brilliant political strategy. The Iraq war had become broadly unpopular and the Democratic base was still seething over the assist so many of its leaders had given President Bush in launching it. In the primaries, it was a no-brainer for Obama to contrast his early opposition to Iraq with Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize it.
Still mostly okay, but there’s a troubling implication to this that we’ll get to in just a moment. Here’s paragraph eight:
But Obama also feared that the “peacenik” label could hurt him in the fall. So Afghanistan, then not nearly as unpopular a venture as it now is, became a useful tool. He could embrace Afghanistan, prove he wasn’t scared of war, and frame his difference with hawks as one of judgment — not toughness. So it was that Obama was able to spend the fall of 2008 taunting his Republican opponent, a war hero who touted foreign policy wisdom as one of his chief assets, for foolishly believing that the “central front” in the war on terror was Iraq, when it was obviously in Afghanistan (and Pakistan).
And now we get to the nut of the problem. While lauding Obama’s political dexterity, Kornacki is also subtly blaming him for the polluted water in which he swims. Look at the language, Obama “feared” the “”peacenik” label” (note the scare quotes), he viewed a war as a “useful tool”. The obvious implication here is that Obama erred in making this decision, and that he (and everyone else) is now paying the price.
Kornacki goes on to talk about Democrats being haunted by the mistake of voting against the Persian Gulf War back in 1990; he notes that Bill Clinton was able to duck the issue (as he was a governor not a senator), and that Al Gore voted for it. (That opposing that war, the sloppy conclusion of which lead directly to our catastrophic 2003 invasion, was probably the correct decision in hindsight is left unmentioned.) He then goes on to note that in 2003, Obama was in a position to oppose the war without paying any political price for it. Here’s the final paragraph:
But, just like all the Democrats who buckled in 2002, he wasn’t interested in being the antiwar candidate. Instead of challenging misguided popular sentiments about the wisdom of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, Obama chose to cater to them. This right war/wrong war distinction made for great politics in 2008. But as policy in 2010, it just doesn’t work. The question is whether it will be too late before he admits it.
What was previously implied has now been stated outright. Kornacki is saying that if Obama had been braver as a candidate we could be on our way out of Afghanistan right now, instead of digging ourselves in deeper. But “Instead of challenging misguided popular sentiments” ignores the political climate of the time. Let’s not forget that Obama was lambasted numerous times for the sin of suggesting we communicate with Iran without the use of bombers. The press, roughly 99.9% of whom spent all of 2007 convinced Hillary Clinton was a mortal lock for the Blue nomination, would’ve laughed him off stage left with Dennis Kucinich had he not toed the warmonger line on Afghanistan.
Once more, with feeling: Barack Obama would not be President if he had opposed both wars. We’re spending billions to kill Americans and Afghans for no apparent reason and it’s agonizing. I get that. But there is a justification, however unpleasant: all those deaths and all that destruction and waste are worth it to keep the Reds out of power. The United States of America (and places elsewhere) suffered staggering blows as a result of eight years of neoconservative foreign policy. I can’t imagine what it would look like after four or eight more.
The juvenile bounds of polite discourse fall notoriously short of a lot of unpleasant truths, this is just one more. And while you can lay blame on Obama, he’s a smart guy/he should know better/leaders have to lead, blah blah blah, this is not a problem that one man can solve, even a President (and certainly not some piss ant senator/candidate). The deep pathology of blind pride and national righteousness that is every American’s birth right was ruthlessly exploited in the wake of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and anthrax. Obama’s predecessor, who was never reviled by the press nearly as much as he was by the public, created a climate of almost unlimited fear and paranoia in which anyone who isn’t ankle deep in blood is considered dangerously naive.
There’s a decent case to be made that we have not actually won a war since we nuked Japan sixty-five years ago. But the long and growing list of armed failure has not penetrated the national consciousness, to say nothing of the far shallower conventional political wisdom. Far and away the most successful American troops of the last six and a half decades are the ones who sat in Germany and didn’t fight anybody. With a few piffling exceptions, every time we’ve actually shot people has ended in stalemate or outright failure. Yet the culture of win endures, in everything from profanely deluded Newsweek covers to high public officials like Leon Panetta.
Marry the unsupported mass delusion of inevitable American victory to our current national fashion for fearing Muslims, and things get even worse. The unclenching of the national sphincter when it comes to Islam will not be accomplished in a year or even a decade. From dropping the phrase “War on Terror” to actually removing troops from Iraq (something Bush the Younger floated many times but never did), Obama has taken a number of admiral steps in that direction. But the fear is still so strong that he can’t get more than a thin slice of Congress to back him on closing Guantanamo, even though pretty much everyone agrees it’s a black mark on the nation and a hindrance to our foreign and military policies. As gobsmacking and indefensible as his civil liberties policies have been, he is doing a terrific job when it comes to calming national hysteria.
I have no doubt that we’ll still be mucking around in Afghanistan when America goes to the polls in 2012. But that’s a small, affordable catastrophe compared to that election being won by a Red who promises to get tough in Afghanistan and show Ahmadinejad (who is not, by the way, Iran’s actual leader) just how big our dicks really are. It would not surprise me if historians some day conclude that Obama’s position on Afghanistan was a wholly cynical political ploy, but in this case it was a necessary one. Would we be closer to leaving under a President Edwards or a second President Clinton, would either of them even have won the election?
Obama was the least bad in 2008, and he’ll be the least bad in 2012. All the alternatives are worse, and that may not be much, but it’s more than we had, and for the time being it’s all we’ve got.
End note: For a good example of the deadly political inertia that fucks up our country, see Kornacki’s piece from a few days ago on David Brooks’ latest hairball. Taking Brooks to the woodshed isn’t hard, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. The sooner guys like him are laughed out of importance, the better off we’ll all be. Other fun disembowelments of the perpetually foolish Brooks: LGM, and Taibbi twice.
