"Democrats for Afghanistan"
Thomas Friedman, in today's Times:
For many Democrats, Afghanistan was always the “good war,” as opposed
to Iraq. I think Barack Obama needs to ask himself honestly: “Am I for
sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win
there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism,
or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I
have to be for winning some war?”
He goes on to quote Rory Stewart’s July 17 Time magazine cover story from Kabul:
A troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge, and the support for our presence in the insurgency areas is declining ... The more responsibility we take in Afghanistan, the more we undermine the credibility and responsibility of the Afghan government and encourage it to act irresponsibly. Our claims that Afghanistan is the ‘front line in the war on terror’ and that ‘failure is not an option’ have convinced the Afghan government that we need it more than it needs us. The worse things become, the more assistance it seems to receive. This is not an incentive to reform.
Other op-ed columnists at the Times were too busy being embedded with the Obama campaign on "O-Force One" and blaming his lack of "bounce" after his Big Adventure on "echoes of Hillary" to ask if he wasn't being cynical on Afghanistan, his apparent idée fixe on this trip.
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