Did we Really Ever Have an Afghanistan Debate?
Andrew Exum and Andrew Bacevich are again at each other’s throats, and yet again Bacevich gets the better of the argument. Bacevich argues:
What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. As then, so today, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny.
I’m sorry, I like Andrew Bacevich very much, but this is simply and demonstrably false. Plenty of us in Washington have in fact been having a very sober-minded discussion about U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the limits of our new counterinsurgency doctrine. To suggest otherwise reveals ignorance of the discourse here.
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I think one of the things that annoys Bacevich is that some of us have moved on to strategic and operational concerns after reaching different political conclusions than his own…. But the two of us have simply reached different conclusions on Afghanistan, and I for one am sick of this argument that just because some of us are now working on operational concerns, we have somehow failed to ask the questions of policy Bacevich is asking. It’s a little condescending, or at the very least reveals an ignorance of the debates and discussion actually taking place.
Exum misses the point.
What Exum is referring to is called “hand wringing” not a policy debate. The consensus on Afghanistan has been assumed since at least 2004. It is true that many of the supporters of fighting the “good war” there occasionally gather over conference tables and sometimes beers to air their concerns. But that is not the same thing as having an honest debate, in public between individuals who genuinely disagree about whether we should be more involved in Afghanistan.
The issue isn’t that people like Exum haven’t considered the issue individually. I am sure he has. Many others have also considered the issue, and many have shared their concerns with one another, but it has been, for years, in the context a shared consensus that has actively sought to exclude real disagreement. It is not about doing due diligence on the policy, it has been about reinforcing the group identity about supporters of expansion of the war in Afghanistan.
Exum also points to his decision to invite Bacevich to speak to a CNAS conference as an example of an openness to debate. But inviting a token skeptic, is again, not the same as a real debate.
I don’t want to make it seem as if the there has been a conspiracy to silence opposing views. What happened actually is more complicated.
First, it took a lot of people a lot of time to recover their bearings after 9/11. And in that time, a “never again” consensus arose regarding threats from Afghanistan. That argument still remains dominant. It is quite clear, I think, that military occupation of Afghanistan provides little protection from terror plots planned there. But in the final analysis, every proponent of escalation in Afghanistan continues to rely heavily on the “lessons of 9/11″ to justify their position, without any clear effort to justify precisely how military occupation promotes counter-terrorism.
Second, the consensus gained a great deal of political momentum because as early as 2004, Democrats decided to use Afghanistan as a cudgel to bash the Bush Administration over Iraq. It was a convenient attack and had a surface plausibility — but I think it is quite fair to point out that most people making this argument at the time did not have any real plan for Afghanistan having not given it any real thought. We are now dealing with the blow-back of the political dynamics this line of attack created. (Full disclosure: I myself fall into the category of people who used Afghanistan to attack the Iraq commitment without actually thinking through what I would actually do in Afghanistan.)
Third, Obama explicitly campaigned on expanding our efforts in Afghanistan. But since McCain agreed with him, there was no debate there either. Instead, the debate got bogged down in the idiotic sub-debate over whether cross-border attacked into Pakistan ought to be expanded but kept quiet (McCain’s view) or expanded but announced (Obama’s view). Now maybe there was some high-level debate in the Obama camp on this issue. But from what I could tell, it was largely a default position that built on the criticism that Bush (and McCain) were overly focused on Iraq, while at the same time defending Obama from the charge that he was in favor of a generalized retreat.
In short, there has never been a debate on Afghanistan. Instead the consensus formed early and has remained wholly unchallenged. The fact that proponents of an escalation in Afghanistan sometimes privately air their doubts to each other is not the same thing as doing so before the American public and openly, and fairly, presenting both side of the argument. The consensus has been so strong that adherence to it is considered, ipso facto, a requirement to be considered a “serious” thinker on the issue. The “eerious” thinkers consult with each other, but even if they have doubts, they are all in tacit agreement on the answer before they even begin. It is not an open process.
There is no conspiracy here, just the usual dynamics of group think and political influences on policy.
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