At Commentary Abe Greenwald presents the argument for leaving significant numbers of American soldiers in Syria and Afghanstian, presumably forever:
Our troops don’t go to war for the parades. They fight to protect their country. And a serious country understands that messy wars with elusive victories still have to be fought. In this light, our military efforts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan have been vital. What have we gotten in return for all the pain and sacrifice? Only a peaceful homeland—a strangely under-appreciated miracle in the 21st century. Like the growth and prosperity that comes from free trade, peace is taken for granted. But it’s the direct result of American success in the wars we love to hate.
He goes on to characterize opposing views:
The counter-arguments are too familiar: It’s no business of ours what happens in places like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Small improvements in the security conditions of lawless countries aren’t worth the cost in American blood and treasure.
Consider this graph:
Was Afghanistan safer in 2017, the last year for which we have statistics, than in 2008 before President Obama began his “Afghan surge”? Perhaps I’m asking too much but it seems to me that an adult policy would recognize when no progress were being made.
In the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen (yes, we’re there, too), the US attacked a country that was formally at peace with it and which had not attacked the US or any of its allies. The governments of the countries ranged from friendly (Libya) to hostile (Iraq), but they were at peace.
These American wars are wars of aggression in precisely the same sense that Germany’s invasion of Poland and Japan’s invasion of China were. The leaders of the American wars, its Presidents and Generals who led them, are war criminals in exactly the same sense that Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Paulus, Rommel, Guderian, Hirohito, Yamamoto et al. were.
Abe Greenwald, like Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, Robert Kaplan and the other fake American neocons are unregistered agents of Israel, and they promote all these wars because they think that chaos, death and destruction in the countries surrounding Israel benefits Israel. They are delusional to the point of actual psychosis.
The extent of their psychosis is that they also want us to be at war with Iran, Turkey and Russia.
God help America with “patriots” like these.
I don’t really disagree with that, Mr. Sykes, but Another angle that I see is, they may be delusional, but they are addressing the fears of the American public, which has become almost irrationally risk averse.
There must never be another 9-11, let alone another Pearl Harbor. We will spend whatever it takes to keep this country safe from terrorism. We will “kill them over there so we don’t have to kill them here” Even if our tactics cause more terrorism. This was a very natural reaction to 9-11, but George W. Bush reveled in it. He donned the flight jacket, landed on the carrier. “Mission Accomplished!”, the banner said.
My point is, we will never be safe. But we will be safer if we stop killing every person we become suspicious of. Imagine how we would feel if our loved ones were killed by a drone strike by an enemy halfway around the world that we’d never met or harmed.
Time to stay prepared but go off active war footing.