In a robust rebuke of critics of the war in Afghanistan (including their own George Will, who goes unmentioned but who wields the straw-men arguments they deplore), the Washington Post’s editors explain:

Yet if Mr. Obama provides adequate military and civilian resources, there’s a reasonable chance the counterinsurgency approach will yield something better than stalemate, as it did in Iraq. The Taliban insurgency is not comparable to those that earlier fought the Soviets and the British in Afghanistan. Surveys show that support for its rule is tiny, even in its southern base. Not everything in Mr. Karzai’s government is rotten: U.S. officials have reliable allies in some key ministries and provincial governorships, and the training of the Afghan army — accelerated only recently — is going relatively well. Stabilizing the country will require many years of patient effort and the pain of continued American casualties. Yet the consequences of any other option are likely to be far more dangerous for this country.

But the problem with the critics’ argument is that, while the strategy they oppose has yet to be tried, the alternatives they suggest already have been — and they led to failure in both Afghanistan and Iraq. For years, U.S. commanders in both countries focused on killing insurgents and minimizing the numbers and exposure of U.S. troops rather than pacifying the country. The result was that violence in both countries steadily grew, until a counterinsurgency strategy was applied to Iraq in 2007. As for limiting U.S. intervention in Afghanistan to attacks by drones and Special Forces units, that was the strategy of the 1990s, which, as chronicled by the Sept. 11 commission, paved the way for al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington. Given that the Taliban and al-Qaeda now also aim to overturn the government of nuclear-armed Pakistan, the risks of a U.S. withdrawal far exceed those of continuing to fight the war — even were the result to be continued stalemate.

(CONTENTIONS contributor Max Boot, in more detailed fashion in today’s Wall Street Journal, makes the case that “leaving Afghanistan in its current state would be a defeat in the larger war on terror, which would encourage jihadists everywhere.”)

But Will—who is short on facts and long on contempt for our British allies’ sacrifices—is not alone among conservatives. The isolationists are all the rage. Sen. Chuck Hagel goes down memory lane in Vietnam, making the case that anything really hard and complicated, requiring sacrifice by America, probably isn’t worth it.

Politics is replete with irony but none greater than the sight of a president, who rose to power decrying the ultimately successful effort in one battlefield in the war on terror, looking now to those dreaded neo-con pundits and Republican lawmakers for support against the pre-9/11 mentality he was all too happy to promote on the campaign trail.

The New York Times observes:

Despite Mr. Will’s argument, national security hawks in the Republican Party — not Mr. Obama’s most natural support base — still back the president on Afghanistan. “So far, to their credit, they’ve either remained silent or they’ve been supportive, guys like McCain and Graham,” said Matt Bennett, vice president of Third Way, a moderately left-wing think tank, referring to Senator John McCain of Arizona and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans.

But of course we can’t do all the work for the president. It is the commander in chief who must make the case to the American people and who must commit all the necessary resources, resisting the urge to try another war “on the cheap.” And if public opinion does falter despite his best efforts, it will be incumbent on him to show resolve and resist the cries to bug out or to set artificial deadlines for withdrawal.

Let’s hope Obama can match George W. Bush in resolve and political courage. Maybe Obama should put aside the anti-Bush venom for a moment and give his predecessor a call—he might learn something about the lonely obligation of a commander in chief to resist the howls from the likes of Will, Hagel, and the netroots.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 8:45 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.