A Bit More on the Left and Afghanistan Posted by Michael Cohen

There have a number of thoughtful comments on my TNR article today. Andrew Exum has a good post over at abumuqawama although I think he is perhaps a bit unfair to the CAP folks. Spencer, as usual, makes some smart points. I'd advise reading his entire post one thing he said merits a response:

I get the impression that Michael is less interested in the descriptive question than he is in making the normative case that liberals ought to break with the Obama administration over Afghanistan.

Obviously for regular DA readers this seems like a pretty fair judgment - my view on the incoherence of our Afghanistan strategy is well-documented. But actually this is not completely correct.

I would like to see more progressives break with the Obama Administration . . . but mainly because that seems to be a pretty accurate view of how many progressives actually feel about the war. My rationale for writing this piece was the disconnect that I have seen between progressives who privately express fear and despair over the President's strategy and their public reluctance to criticize it. This is something that I have seen since I began writing about Afghanistan a year ago; liberals have been, for the most part, loathe to speak out even when harboring private misgivings. On few other issues either domestic or international has that been the case.

Now in fairness Spencer is an exception to that rule. So too is Andrew Exum. But in my experience few people I speak too either in government or out; progressives or conservatives have much confidence in the current strategy . . . and yet as news has gotten worse from Afghanistan there have been few evident voices on the left expressing concern. If anything, it is folks on the right, who are now treading in the water of opposition to Afghanistan policy. And that, in my view, is a progressive failure.

Tim Fernholz over at the Tapped blog really seems to grasp this point; and in particular the difference between attention to Afghanistan and critical analysis. It's also a worthy read.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

In some ways, the Afghanistan operation doesn't even seem like a war anymore. It's just a permanent condition of American foreign policy, like the War on Drugs or military bases in Okinawa.

I mean, nine years? In Afghanistan???

I'm glad you're still on the case, Michael. But who can keep track of these phantasmagorical foreign nightmares anymore? It's like Apocalypse Yesterday.

The military seems to want this war. Maybe they just think of it as on ongoing war game that helps them stay in practice, and work out the kinks in drone attacks or whatever. If the military wants to keep putting themselves through the meat grinder in some remote hellhole until they turn all of the Afghans into Americans and make sure there are no "safe havens" around; and if the leadership of both parties are determined to write blank checks for the soldiers forever, then who is the mere left to stop them?

Nobody in Washington pays any attention to "the left" anyway. The left exists for them only as a target for Rahm Emanuel's sniggering shouts of "Fuck you, suckers!".

[Michael Drew]

I'm sure you talk to a lot more informed, foreign-policy-conscious progressives than I do. But I really do believe the main reason there isn't a bigger overall progressive outcry on Afghanistan is that, as you put it in the TNR piece, "in contrast to the war in Iraq, liberals generally support the objectives of the war in Afghanistan—and for a good part of the past seven years have been calling on the U.S. to devote more attention to the war there, rather than Iraq." I'm really having a hard time seeing why this is not simply the answer to the question, which probably means I don't understand the question you're trying to ask. Until now, I took the question you were interested in to be why liberals (as you term them in that quote - you seem to be using the three terms, "the Left," "progressives," and "liberals" interchangeably in this discussion) were being quiet about Obama's war policy. Obviously, whether or why liberals should hold these views is a perfectly valid question, but that's just simply the basic underlying question about the justification for the war, escalation, etc. But you seem to acknowledge right there that they do hold them, at least in some significant number -- and in my view this is accurate, and as a result "the Left" is divided and engaged in internal debate on the question in a way that unsurprisingly muffles any strong show of resistance. Which is not to say that no resistance is or has been expressed, which is something else I think you don't acknowledge prominently enough.

With this post you seem to clarify your question some, but to do so I think you inevitably have to narrow what had been a quite sweeping inquiry into the behavior of a broad section of political viewholders into a much more specific question. It seems now that you are simply asking the question, "Why do some progressives I know of who oppose this policy hesitate or decline to speak out about it?" Which is a perfectly good question, and also one I think you answer pretty well in the piece. But it is a much more narrow question that indicts a vastly smaller group of people than the question of "Why is the Left quiet on Afghanistan?", which has a pretty simple answer that you yourself give in the piece. In a lot of cases, it's because they support the policy (whether they should or not being decidedly a different question altogether).

[Don Bacon]

The typical analysis of the Afghanistan quagmire focuses too much on the military aspects, which are always depressing, and not enough upon:
1. The basic failure of the, in COIN-speak, "host government" to meet the prescribed COIN indicators of legitimacy, which dooms the effort.
2. The failure of the US to put any emphasis on diplomatic solutions through an international effort, as with other world problems such as North Korea and Iran. Instead, there has been an overwhelming emphasis on a failed military strategy.

Brian Katulis: I usually heard general restatements of the basic principles of counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine: that the United States is trying to build up Afghan governing institutions as part of an overall strategy centered on the notions of "clear, hold, and build"

FM 3-24, COIN: Six possible indicators of legitimacy that can be used to analyze threats to stability include the following:
* The ability to provide security for the populace (including protection from internal and external threats).
* Selection of leaders at a frequency and in a manner considered just and fair by a substantial majority of the populace.
* A high level of popular participation in or support for political processes.
* A culturally acceptable level of corruption.
* A culturally acceptable level and rate of political, economic, and social development.
* A high level of regime acceptance by major social institutions.

Brian Katulis: Finally, the Obama administration should work with the Afghan government and its partners in the international community to present a more sustainable plan for Afghanistan in the long term.

President Obama, March 27, 2009: . . .together with the United Nations, we will forge a new Contact Group for Afghanistan and Pakistan that brings together all who should have a stake in the security of the region -- our NATO allies and other partners, but also the Central Asian states, the Gulf nations and Iran; Russia, India and China.

Afghanistan fails the legitimacy and diplomatic tests, therefore the military effort is doomed (as we see).

[Don Bacon]

And thank you Michael for staying on this.
You be da man.

[Don Bacon]

Just a reminder that Afghanistan is a smallish mountainous country (as countries go), with mostly illiterate people, and almost no national economy, on the absolute other side of the earth from the USA -- which is supposedly threatened by this smallish . . .

Really! I didn't make this up.

[James Gundun]

It's not surprising that the left has tuned out of Afghanistan. That's how Obama managed to undersell his campaign plan - originally two combat brigades (~10,000), now 50,000 troops - and get off the Pentagon's surge. As for why Obama hasn't stood up and reminded everyone he means July 2011 - he never did. It was always a mere campaign promise for his second term, but a bad one. The December review is a set up to continue the war whether it's progressing or deteriorating. If you thought the last review and the strategy it produced was disjointed, just wait for the next one.

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yet as news has gotten worse from Afghanistan there have been few evident voices on the left expressing concern. If anything, it is folks on the right, who are now treading in the water of opposition to Afghanistan policy. And that, in my view, is a progressive failure.

[sesli sohbet]

With this post you seem to clarify your question some, but to do so I think you inevitably have to narrow what had been a quite sweeping inquiry into the behavior of a broad section of political viewholders into a much more specific question. It seems now that you are simply asking the question, "Why do some progressives I know of who oppose this policy hesitate or decline to speak out about it?" Which is a perfectly good question, and also one I think you answer pretty well in the piece. But it is a much more narrow question that indicts a vastly smaller group of people than the question of "Why is the Left quiet on Afghanistan?", which has a pretty simple answer that you yourself give in the piece.
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