Accountability and Wars
Aug 16 2012, 9:06 AM ET
Steve Clemons - Steve Clemons is Washington editor at large for The Atlantic and editor of Atlantic Live. He writes frequently about politics and foreign affairs.
Harvard scholar Stephen Walt argues in his Foreign Policy piece, "Why Isn't Anyone Talking about Afghanistan?" that hawkishness is rewarded by the national security establishment and that those agitating for prudence or moderation are shunned or called "weak-willed idealists."
The Obama campaign four years ago called Afghanistan the 'right war' and Iraq the 'wrong war.' Those who sat on top of the foreign policy/national security food chain in Washington were those who drew their power from the Afghanistan conflict. Former National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, General David Petraeus, then US Ambassador to Afghanistant General Karl Eikenberry, General Stanley McChrystal, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and others leaned in to the Afghanistan terrain in part because it was a national priority but also because that was where status could be claimed.
But as Walt describes, few are talking about Afghanistan today even though Obama administration supporters of the war incessantly justified it with rationalizations about preventing a state-sized terrorist safe haven, supporting Afghan women's rights, spreading democracy, or shoring up US credibility.
When Obama was considering 'surging' US troop levels in Afghanistan up by 30,000 more military personnel, there were many who counseled against it -- inside the administration like Vice President Joe Biden and many others outside. They counseled against the deeper investment of US lives and resources not on pacifist grounds but through realistic calculations of costs and benefits.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/accountability-and-wars/261211/