Martin Peretz is asking the difficult questions about the war in Afghanistan. I am one of 14 or 15 people in the U.S. who has supported the war in Iraq while feeling uneasy about the war in Afghanistan. The day the Afghan war started is burned in my mind, there was that episode at RFK where tens of thousands of football fans cheered as word of the war was announced. It made me uncomfortable, I reflexively am skeptical of anything that appeals to mass crowds. The war there has always felt a little like vengeance for 9/11. In contrast, Iraq was a festering international problem that had a moral and legally justifiable reasoning.
I am far from convinced that we have won in Iraq, and still not sure if it was a complete mistake, but I am even less convinced that Afghanistan was ever the right war at the right time.
February 4, 2009 at 8:06 pm |
[...] have written on this topic before, and I still agree that Afghanistan is not the war we ought to be fighting. Strategically, Iraq, [...]