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Powerline blog makes the case for getting out of Afghanistan

By Eric Black | 04/06/11

John Hinderaker of Powerline, the influential Twin Cities-based righty blog, made the case on Sunday for ending the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan. I agree with the thrust of his argument.

Even more interesting, the vast majority of Powerline's mostly righty readers agreed too. It is a significant departure from McCainist foreign/military policy.

Here's a chunk of Hinderaker's argument:

"In the aftermath of September 11, we had no choice but to overthrow the Taliban, destroy al Qaeda's training centers and kill and scatter as many al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists as possible. We did that, brilliantly. Bin Laden escaped by the skin of his teeth, but al Qaeda has never recovered from that initial devastation.

Since then, for going on nine years, we have pursued a somewhat half-hearted peacekeeping/democracy policy in Afghanistan. The Bush administration was right, I think, not to devote excessive resources to Afghanistan, which is virtually without strategic significance compared with countries like Iran, Iraq and Egypt. Moreover, the country's human natural and human raw material could hardly be less promising…

In large part, our effort in Afghanistan has been devoted to protecting normal Afghans against extremists like the Taliban. But, as the current rioting in Kandahar, Mazar-e Sharif and elsewhere reminds us, there there may not be a lot of daylight between the Taliban and more moderate Afghan factions…

Is there a danger that if we leave, the Taliban will re-take control and, perhaps, invite al Qaeda or other terrorist groups to join them? Yes. However, it is not obvious that, after what happened in 2001, the Taliban will be quick to make its territory, once again, into a launching pad. If they do, one would hope that drones, bombs and perhaps the kind of small-scale insertion of troops that we mounted in 2001 will be an adequate response. In any event, when it comes to harboring terrorists, I am a lot more concerned about Pakistan than Afghanistan."

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Comments (10)

Submitted by Paul Udstrand on April 6, 2011 - 12:55pm.

I think if we had follow through after the initial fall of the Taliban we may have been able to leave with a stabilized country that would be loath to become a terrorist haven again. As it is, we simply can't afford this war, and it doesn't look like the "surge" is going to work as advertized.

Submitted by Brian Simon on April 6, 2011 - 1:34pm.

Hinderaker writes
"I am a lot more concerned about Pakistan than Afghanistan."

Well, sure. Pakistan has nukes & an unpredictable government. But one has to ask: what is the impact on the likelihood of Pakistan harboring terrorists if we pull forces out of their neighbor, Afghanistan? We'll lose the ability to conduct drone strikes, for one. We'd also be conceding a much larger territory to the terrorists, on both sides of the AfPak border. Even so, those impacts might not be deal-breakers for withdrawing, given the ongoing and excessive costs associated with staying. But another consideration must be Afghanistan's other unstable neighbor - Iran. I'm not sure how that games out; but I'm surprised that Hinderaker seems to give it no consideration, particularly after conceding that Iran is of strategic significance.

In short, I don't think the equation is as simple as asking: is Afghanistan a threat?

Submitted by Dennis Tester on April 6, 2011 - 1:38pm.

Chalk another one up to Obama's inexperience.

Candidate Obama: "As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan," Obama said in an op-ed published Monday in The New York Times, a day before he plans a speech here on his vision for Iraq and Afghanistan. "We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there," Obama said.

"Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and al Qaeda has a safe haven," Obama wrote. "Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been."

McCain criticized Obama for his stance on the surge [in Iraq]. "The major point here is that Senator Obama refuses to acknowledge that he was wrong," McCain said. "He said that the surge couldn't succeed. He said he opposed the increase in troops. The surge has succeeded."

Submitted by will lynott on April 6, 2011 - 6:14pm.

Dennis, is there a point in there somewhere?

Submitted by will lynott on April 6, 2011 - 6:32pm.

"Bin Laden escaped by the skin of his teeth..."

Bin Laden escaped because Bush took his eye off the ball and went to Iraq.

"The Bush administration was right, I think, not to devote excessive resources to Afghanistan...

The question is, once bin Laden got away due to Bush's short attention span, why did he devote any resources to it at all? With bin Laden safe in Pakistan, there was no longer any mission in Afghanistan except nation building, which candidate Bush had vigorously opposed.

Hindrocket is hoping we will forget Powerline's vigorous support of the Afghan and Iraqi adventures when they were Bush's wars. It's tragic--and outrageous--that so many lives and resources, and so much American prestige, had to be squandered before he saw the light.

Submitted by Paul Udstrand on April 7, 2011 - 8:54am.

"The Bush administration was right, I think, not to devote excessive resources to Afghanistan...

Yeah, this is disingenuous, it asks us to pretend that Bush invaded Iraq because he knew Afghanistan wasn't tenable. In fact they mistakenly assumed the Afghan war was over and moved on to the next country on the list. This is a somewhat clever way of pretending that losing the Afghan war is the smart thing to do, and was also by the way the plan along until Obama got elected and was silly enough to try to win it. Just remember, these are the same guys that told us the Iraq war wouldn't last more than a couple months, would cost $30 billion dollars, and would pay for itself with oil dollars.

Submitted by Paul Brandon on April 7, 2011 - 9:35am.

Yeah -- Iraq has oil.
All Afghanistan has is poppies.

Submitted by Bernice Vetsch on April 7, 2011 - 11:34am.

The so-called surge in Iraq was "successful" only because Moqtada el-Sadr ordered his militia to honor a ceasefire called by him at the request of his religious leaders.

The ceasefire held for a year or more in spite of Iraqi army (and U.S.??) attacks on Sadr City.

Meanwhile, the surge meant using cement barriers to wall off one neighborhood at a time, establish curfews, issue IDs to its residents which they had to show to reach their own homes, "cleanse" it of "terrorists and enemies" and declare Victory. Imagine that happening in, say, Minneapolis.

The surge and the drones that have killed many, many more civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan than terrorists are perhaps the main reason for any increase in the radicalization of young Middle Easterners.

"From above the clouds, the bombs kill without knowing whom, as beneath the shroud of smoke, the dead die without knowing why." Edward Galeano.

Submitted by Dennis Tester on April 7, 2011 - 5:07pm.

Bush bombed Afghanistan until there was no effect other than bouncing the rubble. Bush never had more had 13-15,000 troops in Afghanistan.

So to answer will lynott's question (#4), the point is this was Obama's priority. He said that Afghanistan was the good war, the war that we should be fighting instead of Iraq. He fired the field commander who disagreed with that notion and told the American people once we concentrated on Afghanistan the war on terror would really start to show results.

He was wrong. Because he's in over his head. People belittle George Bush's military record of flying interceptors for the TANG, but Obama never progressed beyond his GI Joe doll.

Submitted by will lynott on April 11, 2011 - 6:53pm.

Dennis, I'm sure you remember that in the wake of 911 everybody (me included by the way), favored invading Afghanistan to collar Osama. Bush piddled his chance away with two major blunders: he took his eye off the ball and went to Iraq (for stupid reasons, which doesn't surprise me), and he kept us in Afghanistan after he allowed bin Laden to get away.

Had that bungler piled in with all the flags flying and caught Osama, and then left Afghanistan to itself, he'd have no bigger supporter than me. Instead, he left us with two "wars" we can't win that are bleeding us of money and lives we need desperately at home, and he left his successor holding the bag. I don't care if the successor is D, R, or Presbyterian, that was at least the most misbegotten legacy any president ever left for his successor.

So, President Obama is foolish to continue with the Bush legacy? What's your point?