Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
Showing Original Post only (View all)Tom Nichols (The Atlantic): The American public now has what it wanted (Afghanistan) [View all]
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/afghanistan-your-fault/619769/And now those same Americans have the full withdrawal from Afghanistan they apparently want: Some 70 percent of the public supports a pullout. Not that they care that intensely about it; as the foreign-policy scholar Stephen Biddle recently observed, the war is practically an afterthought in U.S. politics. You would need an electron microscope to detect the effect of Afghanistan on any congressional race in the last decade, Biddle said early this year. Its been invisible. But Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden all ran on getting out of the war, and now were out.
What the public does care about, however, is using Afghanistan as raw material for cheap patriotism and partisan attacks (some right and some wrong, but few of them in good faith) on every president since 2001. After the worst attack on U.S. soil, Americans had no real interest in adult conversation about the reality of anti-terrorist operations in so harsh an environment as Afghanistan (which might have entailed a presence there long beyond 20 years), nor did they want to think about whether draining the swamp and modernizing and developing Afghanistan (which would mean a lot more than a few elections) was worth the cost and effort.
Nor did Americans ever consider whether or when Afghanistan, as a source of terrorist threats to the U.S., had been effectively neutralized. Nothing is perfect, and risks are never zero. But there was no time at which we all decided that close enough was good enough, and that wed rather come home than stay. Obama made something like this case during the 2011 surge, and Donald Trump tried to make a similar argument, but because Trump was too stupid or too lazy to understand anything about international affairs (or much else), he made it purely as a weaponized political charge and, as with his inane attempts to engage North Korea, in a search for a splashy and quick win.
Bidens policy, of course, is not that different from Trumps, despite all the partisan howling about it from Republicans. As my colleague David Frum has put it: For good or ill, the Biden policy on Afghanistan is the same as the Trump policy, only with less lying.
But as comforting as it would be to blame Obama and Trump, we must look inward and admit that we told our elected leadersof both partiesthat they were facing a no-win political test. If they chose to leave, they would be cowards who abandoned Afghanistan. If they chose to stay, they were warmongers intent on pursuing forever war. And so here we are, in the place we were destined to be: resting on 20 years of safety from another 9/11, but with Afghanistan again in the hands of the Taliban.
__________________________
I don't agree with the author's premise (towards the end of the article) that Biden's exit was shameful. I do agree that it's come to such a tragic end, but that was known, and agree with the rest of the article that it was the right thing to do. 2/3 of Americans don't want troops occupying Afghanistan. We have domestic terrorists here. Let's deal w/ those & leave the rest of the world to take care of itself for once while we sort out our own problems.
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
11 replies, 1677 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (12)
ReplyReply to this post
11 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Tom Nichols (The Atlantic): The American public now has what it wanted (Afghanistan) [View all]
onetexan
Aug 2021
OP
I have the photographic evidence that I forcefully objected to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Arazi
Aug 2021
#1
There's no good answer to this. Thousands of our loved ones have died for what?
Firestorm49
Aug 2021
#3