This is a Chihuahua That Quit Smoking

Mr. Yglesias has some thoughts on this excellent article about Afghanistan from the NY Times (which I'm still working my way through. It's hard because every so often I have to stop and slam my head into the wall until the pain goes away. And for some reason, I'm having trouble focusing on the words now.). And, well, read for yourself...

Just about the only place in the United States where you saw substantial opposition to the Afghanistan War back in the day was on college campuses. That, conveniently enough, is exactly where I was at the time, so I got to participate in a lot of arguments on this subject. One thing I'm fairly sure absolutely nobody ever pitched to me was "well, don't you see that if we invade Afghanistan we're just going to wind up failing to achieve any of our key strategic objectives because the administration will divert crucial resources and attention to invade Iraq instead?"

That, after all, would just be ridiculous. And yet it appears to be exactly what's happened.

Confessional time. I was one of those dirty hippies who originally opposed the Afghanistan war. And I wasn't on a college campus at the time, although I wasn't far removed. I don't think my line of reasoning was quite as eloquent or as established as the one offered by Atrios but it did begin with, “Hey, wait a minute. Aren't these the guys who were saying nation building was a suckers game last election? What are they going to do with the place once we make it a crate-filled ruins?” Abandoning Afghanistan after promising to help it was, after all, part of what led to the creation of Al Qaeda in the first place. Sprinkled with a dash of thinking that reflexively lashing out after the tragedy of September 11th was a sign of weakness, not strength. Like the horse that breaks its leg thrashing around trying to get a mosquito off, it was a symptom of unthinking rage and ignorance of consequences, part of the seeming rush to rip up our laws and traditions in the wake of an unprecedented but not impossible disaster – I felt it was a war to make us feel better, not to actually achieve anything. And I didn't think we needed things like the Patriot Act, and, instead, needed to work within our existing frameworks. Those threads combined into the poorly-formed, and worse expressed opinion that going to war with Afghanistan was a bad thing.

Back then, though, I didn't so much follow politics as I was aware of it happening in the background. And I would never have thought that my voice mattered, nor would I have been able to express it the way I'm capable of now. So that opinion faded into the woodwork as the war was carried out with speed and success. Marginalized, isolated, those of us who opposed the war were made to feel as though our opinions were wrong about any number of things. And was put into a deep, dark hole from which it hardly ever returned once the drumbeats for the Iraq started up and any kind of dissent was tarred with the brush of disloyalty. And, as Atrios says, if you wanted to be taken seriously discussing the Iraq war, let alone opposing it, you had to take it as a given that everything had worked in Afghanistan.

But, it's important to remember that everything didn't go right in Afghanistan. That, far from being the sole success of the administrations wrongheaded foreign policy regime of destruction and chaos, it was an early preview of the bankruptcy of their intelligence and capabilities. Bin Laden escaped. We let him slip out of Tora Bora even though he'd been corned. But, we were told, that's okay, that's fine, it doesn't matter as reality was rewritten after the fact.

Afghanistan went on, though, with the bodies of civilians piled higher than the trade centers had stood and bombs mistakenly landing on our allies. Afghanistan was the war that gave us Pat Tilman (And I'd toss a link in there, but that would mean I'd have to read up enough on the sad, twisted saga of lies and deception to find one. And I can't because it disgusts me so.). Afghanistan is now the place that gives the world 90% of its opium. A fractious place ruled by warlords and violence where, incredibly, the Taliban isn't even gone. The war is far from over and in as much danger of “failing” as Iraq. It's turned to dust and ruin as much as everything else touched by the Bush administration right from the very start when they outraged Islamic sentiment by calling it "Operation Infinite Justice". And we're going to be feeling the effects for years to come. Dealing with the repercussions we can't predict years down the line.

So, remind me again, just why was Afghanistan the good war? Just why is it that the people like me, who thought it was wrong, are the ones who are ignored while those who lead the cheer and the rush on to Iraq are the ones whose opinions have been validated? At the very least, now is a good time to re-evaluate whether the Afghanistan war hasn't wound up costing us more than it earned. And if we hadn't won the war and missed the point entirely.

This time, though, I know where I stand on the issue. And I'm not afraid to say it anymore.