Obama's Good War

Fouad Ajami looks back on 9/11 and Obama's "good war" in Afghanistan.

Eight years ago, we were visited by the furies of Arab lands. We were rudely awakened from a decade whose gurus and pundits had announced the end of ideology, of politics itself, and the triumph of the world-wide Web and the "electronic herd." We had discovered that on the other side of the world masterminds of terror, and preachers, and their foot-soldiers were telling of America the most sordid of tales. We had become, without knowing it, a party to a civil war in the Arab-Islamic world between the autocrats and their disaffected children, between those who wanted to live a normal life and warriors of the faith bent on imposing their will on that troubled arc of geography.

Afghanistan belongs to Obama now.  He campaigned against George W. Bush on the notion that Iraq was the wrong war.  Afghanistan was where we have to carry the fight to defeat al Qaeda, he said over and over.  But like everything else he said in the run up to November 2008, it was all campaign talk, intended only to win him the brass ring.  Well, he's got the brass ring now, and fortunately Iraq was mostly stabilized before he got it.  But things aren't going so well in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is his baby now.  So far, Obama's only discernible policies are to reward special interests with stimulus money and to continue giving campaign speeches.  How's that going to work in Afghanistan?

Comments

[CaptDMO]

Am I the only "strategist" on the planet to consider Afghanistan as
militarily and politically untouchable (by contemporary means) as Switzerland, simply due to geography and climate?

Much like what is now known as The United States, the indigenous folk have no need to adhere to "the rules" of war set by ANY invaders. They hide behind rocks, and don't wear convenient targets designating them as "not-civilian". (whatever THAT might imply)

Tell me again about the firearms murder rate amongst those nice folk with open arms markets, ensuring that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." I understand the suicide rates are higher than the murder rates in (mandatory possession) Israel and Switzerland as well.

I could be wrong...

There are those that might opine that "Things are different now..." than the post-conflict "Colonies", and current "political science" trends in Afghanistan.

THEY could be wrong...