The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan both involve fractious societies, weak governments installed by the United States, rampant criminality, persistent insurgencies, and high stakes insofar as either battlefield (in particular Afghanistan) could become havens for terrorists. Yet the dominant rhetoric of Democrats is that Iraq is the “bad war,” a distraction at best . . . a major injustice to the Iraqis at worst. And for these critics Afghanistan is the good war, the justifiable retaliation for the 9/11 attacks and a necessary investment to avoid the reemergence of terror camps in Afghanistan.
My question to opponents of the Iraq War and supporters of the Afghanistan War is why if these wars are so similar, insasmuch as both are counterinsurgencies among bellicose and tribal people with whom we share very few values and interests, can we not expect similarly bad results in Afghanistan as we have obtained so far in Iraq? After all, are we not employing the same strategy by the same army in Afghanistan as in Iraq? Or, in other words, how can we win in Afghanistan considering our lackluster results so far in Iraq?
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The reason for calling Iraq a bad war is to weaken and destroy the President. It is one of several political tactics that resulted in a Democratic victory in the last election.
Omar is correct. The “bad war” charge is also factually untrue, as our casualties remain breathtakingly light, but at least it is debatable. Turning it into a purely political excercise is beneath staesmen even if the anti-Bushniks are correct in saying “Bush did it first”, a charge I dispute since what President on earth is going to abdmouth a war he is prosecuting, I mean except for fashionably anguished liberals named Kennedy, LBJ or their worse successors like James Carter?