Afghanistan Papers Part Deux
I wrote about my reaction to The Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers. I’ve got some low level foreign policy creds (seriously low level, not self-deprecation), and some even lower level military background creds, but I’m just an aspiring documentary photographer who occasionally writes (and is looking for additional work that allows me to also continue with photography - shameless plug, hit me up!). Colonel Andrew Bacevich, however, is the real deal. I recommend reading his thoughts (in The Atlantic) on the Afghanistan Papers.
If Ukraine Is Impeachable, What’s Afghanistan?
A misguided war that drags on inconclusively for more than 18 years is, I submit, a great crime.
DECEMBER 10, 2019Andrew Bacevich President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
As usual, I’ll point out some of my biases. I’ve liked Bacevich since I read The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005). I was in graduate school at the time. A couple of years earlier, in 2002, I was mobilized for OIF or OEF. I’d need to double check the certificate I got. I was about as far away from danger as you could get. I supported military action in Afghanistan* but was dead set against the Iraq War. Still, I tried unsuccessfully to do the second part of my mobilization in Kurdistan. (Boy did I go about that wrong. I pissed a few people off. Sorry. Not my finest moment of navigating through Human Resources.) Bacevich provided an articulate, well-researched framework for my views on the use of force. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:
Bacevich is critical of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, maintaining the United States has developed an over-reliance on military power, in contrast to diplomacy, to achieve its foreign policy aims. He also asserts that policymakers in particular, and the U.S. people in general, overestimate the usefulness of military force in foreign affairs. Bacevich believes romanticized images of war in popular culture (especially films) interact with the lack of actual military service among most of the U.S. population to produce in the U.S. people a highly unrealistic, even dangerous notion of what combat and military service are really like.
I lost track of Bacevich after that. I’d see his name listed on the cover of the Foreign Affairs magazines I’d buy in grad school and never actually read. I vaguely remember disagreeing with him on some things, but I can’t remember why. I’ll read through the rest of that Wikipedia article to see if I can remember. He was probably right. Or it was related to domestic politics. My guess is he’s much more conservative than I am. I’m left of center, moving lefter (not a word). That’s partly because the right is moving further right daily.
* Afghanistan. I mentioned I supported our military attack…invasion?…in 2001. I think I’d support it again. I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive to view 9/11 as an act of war while also acknowledging that our policies contributed to the rise of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. But now I’d like to re-read the alternatives that were being discussed then. I’m even further along now in my skepticism of the effectiveness of military force. Interesting exercise, but I think those alternatives would have required a political will that I’m not sure has ever existed in America.