VDH

A pretty good analysis of the whole McCrystal fiasco.

6) The Left is in a trap in Afghanistan of its own making. From 2007-8, Obama et al. created a false narrative of Afghanistan as the good war and Iraq the bad, predicated not on facts, but only on casualty rates, public opinion, and their own desire to strut national security toughness without ever making gut-check decisions. Afghanistan was quiet in 2007 and so seen as stable—so why not adopt a “let me at ‘em” attitude? Iraq was scary, so why not trash it as Bush’s lost and unnecessary war? But Afghanistan has no tradition of secular literacy, Iraq a little—and no ports, terrible terrain, no oil or cash to work with, a nuclear Pakistan next door, and so on and on. Some of us cringed when we saw that Obama was taking the tougher challenge and boasting of his warrior cred, and trashing a war that was winnable, and indeed in the very process of being won. Nemesis again for the nth time with this president. (Cf. Guantanamo suddenly no longer the gulag, or renditions and Predators no longer terror).

And he gives proper shout-outs to Ryan Crocker -

Crocker is also a much underestimated figure, whose professionalism and competence will increasingly be appreciated, in contrast to the current diplomatic team in Afghanistan. We owe him a great deal; he was not an advocate of invading Iraq, and yet when asked to serve did his best to carry out a policy that saved lives and a country itself. He was a far better candidate for a Nobel Prize than Obama will ever be.)

Amen.

I guess my major disagreement with Hansen is that he still thinks the Afghanistan war in both winnable and worth winning. I'm not convinced of either. I don't mean to be myopic here, but I've been on this point for a long time now, that Afghanistan is not of geo-political significance except insofar as Al Queda uses it to operate. And it basically no longer does. Couple that with what we're working against here - a culture of corruption with no history of democratic governance, no inkling that the country can be transformed, with a neighbor who we call our alley and yet supports the Taliban to give itself "strategic depth" against India. All this just strikes me as a bad poker hand, the type you want to get out of when the stakes go too high. It's like we're going for an inside straight draw and maybe with an outside chance at a flush...it's smart to stay in the hand - maybe - it the stakes are low because the pot is large. But in this case, pushing more and more US troops in there going into year 9, it just doesn't seem wise. Plus, there are other looming and existing issues related to Islamic Fundamentalism - the Iranian Bomb - Hamas in Gaza - Hizbollah - and the threat to us from IF, even with Al Queda gone from the earth, isn't over. This is a long battle and we need our resources and to get our economy on back on track to pay this sort of adventurism. And maybe I've learned something over these past 10 years about Al Queda - that in many respects they just got lucky on 9/11 and as awful as that day was - our society not only can survive, but can thrive, even after taking a lick. We've still got the big stack. So why risk it on a bad hand? Better cards will be dealt us in the future and we ought to play those. For instance, the Iranian protesters. We should have given them more support...but other things like that will happen again. And when they do, we want our money and our reputation in good position to take advantage. This McCrystal incident does not help either.