Mark Thiessen, a conservative op-ed writer for the Washington Post, warns against a stepped-up pullout of American forces from Afghanistan — but what he’s really warning against is pulling out of Afghanistan at all. Ever.
Thiessen devotes Tuesday’s column to what he calls “the top five disastrous consequences of a precipitous American withdrawal,” including an end to drone strikes in Pakistan, a higher risk of nuclear proliferation, a strengthened Iran, and a resurgent al-Qaeda “emboldened to strike the United States again.” These arguments are shaky to begin with — many would argue that it is our presence in Afghanistan, not our withdrawal, stoking al-Qaeda’s ire — but Thiessen’s logic really breaks down when he rails against the “ripple effect of a precipitous American retreat.” (Apparently “precipitous” is the only adjective in the author’s arsenal.) He never addresses how two more years in Afghanistan will produce an outcome even marginally better than the dismal one he describes. By 2014, will the drone war in Pakistan be any less necessary? Will the country’s nuclear weapons be any less vulnerable to extremists? Will Iran, after another two years of U.S. troops on its doorstep, be ruled by anyone more stable than the current ayatollah? Thiessen proclaims that leaving now would mean “Iran won’t fear us, our allies won’t trust us, and fence sitters will have no reason to stand with us.” It’s hard to believe he really thinks Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are quaking in their boots right now, or that anything short of a nuclear explosion in Beijing would compel China and Russia to get off the fence.
Thiessen is not stupid, and one must assume he deliberately neglects to address what two more years in Afghanistan can achieve. After all, to admit that remaking Afghanistan requires not two years but decades would force the admission of an even more uncomfortable (and unpopular) truth: Thiessen does not think we should get out of Afghanistan at all. He believes American blood and treasure is well spent by staying in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. Given that half the respondents to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll not only “endorsed speeding up the withdrawal plans” but also “are worried that keeping American forces there makes the United States more vulnerable to terrorist attacks,” recommitting the U.S. to a never-ending war is a bridge too far for even a neoconservative chickenhawk to cross.
It’s interesting to note that Thiessen’s own party has grown considerably more bearish on the entire Afghanistan adventure. Newt Gingrich, going further than Romney or Santorum in expressing his doubts, recently admitted that the mission “may frankly not be doable.” Gingrich is rarely the voice of reason on any topic, but the question he raises is worth asking: “Is this in fact a harder, deeper problem that is not going to be susceptible to military force — at least not military force on the scale we’re prepared to do?” Certainly his position is more reasonable than those who advocate a seemingly interminable presence in the Middle East, and far more reasonable than one would expect from a politician salivating over military action against Iran.
Gingrich is in tune with Thiessen, however, in his low regard for the Obama administration’s war effort. Thiessen, who authored a book with the dubious title “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack” (really, the same CIA that missed 9/11?) writes in his op-ed that Obama “has almost entirely abdicated” the role of commander-in-chief. It’s a shaky conclusion, especially considering that the administration has studiously avoided the sort of “precipitous withdrawal” that Thiessen so vehemently warns against. On the same day that the Post published Thiessen’s op-ed, General John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, testified to the House Armed Services Committee that “we will still have combat forces in Afghanistan all the way to the end” in 2014. When pressed by Rep. Howard McKeon, a persistent critic of the administration, whether Obama “has always followed your best military judgment,” Allen answered in the affirmative and claimed the U.S. military was “on track” to achieving its goals. Presumably, those goals don’t include laying down a welcome mat for al-Qaeda or inviting further Iranian intransigence, as Thiessen claims Obama is doing. In fact, a news article in Thiessen’s own newspaper observed that “Allen’s comments appeared to place a military marker in the path of the rapid withdrawal advocated by some lawmakers and, according to opinion polls, by a majority of the American public.”
While I obviously don’t agree with Thiessen that Obama’s approach to Afghanistan is undermining Gen. Allen’s war effort, I also don’t agree with Allen that two more years will transform Afghanistan into a functional country. The rest of America seems to share that evaluation, as a recent Pew survey found that “57 percent of respondents want a quick withdrawal from Afghanistan, versus only 35 percent who want to keep forces there until the country is stable.” More ominously, sixty percent of respondents to a Washington Post/ABC News poll “believe the Afghan war wasn’t worth fighting.” I wouldn’t go that far; the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban was a legitimate response to 9/11, and denying Osama bin Laden a safe haven ultimately drove him to his end in Pakistan. (I assume Thiessen doesn’t include the killing of bin Laden among the ways Obama is “inviting the next attack.”) But the U.S. effort in Afghanistan is subject to the law of diminishing returns, and I doubt the situation will look much better in 2014 than it does today. Perhaps the best recommendation for the 2014 withdrawal date is also the most cynical: It’s not an election year.
. . . So Well Read. . . 