The temperature of Hell just dropped below freezing. Watch for pigs flying overhead.
George F. Will, the conservative political columnist for the Washington Post, wrote in his Sept 1 column that there is no further value in continuing the heavy US military ground-troop deployment in Afghanistan, and that the US should withdraw.
He isn’t exactly advocating peace — he suggests continued use of airstrikes and small Special Forces missions — but his position is much closer to that than Obama’s. The Obama administration is following a policy that tries to mix military force, diplomacy, infrastructure development, and nation-building. Obama already faces criticism of this policy from the left.
Will’s column puts him at odds with most of his fellow conservatives (see The Reaction, below).
Some excerpts from Will’s column, followed by links to some of the reaction:
Time to Get Out of Afghanistan
By George F. Will
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
…
U.S. strategy — protecting the population — is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about “deteriorating” … conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant …
The U.S. strategy is “clear, hold and build.” Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. …
Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country — “control” is an elastic concept — and ” ‘our’ Afghans may prove no more viable than were ‘our’ Vietnamese, the Saigon regime.” …
Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly because of, three elections, Afghanistan’s recent elections were called “crucial.” To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals… Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. …
Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan’s “culture of poverty.” But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. …
…
[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.
…
The Reaction
- New York Times: Loss of Will
- The Atlantic: George Will’s Afghanistan Moment
- Huffington Post: George Will’s Afghanistan Column Gets Support
- Politico: White House fears liberal war pressure
September 3, 2009 at 6:16 pm |
I don’t want to get into whether or not George Will is right or wrong, but I can’t get too excited about a conservative opposing an Obama policy, even if it tends to show said conservative is reversing a stand on Afghanistan. The anti-Obama crusade has gotten ridiculous lately. Have you seen the conservative backlash about Obama’s direct message to students to stay in school? Socialist Propaganda!