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I dislike ALL wars, and I think generally that much of what ANTIWAR.COM does prolongs these conflicts.

In contrast, Obama inherited the Afghanistan war. He is thus in a position similar to Richard Nixon’s in 1969, not politically responsible for the mess left by his predecessor and not compelled to perpetuate the policies that led to that mess. But whereas Nixon’s base included a great many constituents who firmly believed in the anti-Communist domino rationale for continuing the Vietnam war, Obama’s base includes relatively few constituents who believe in the neoconservative nation-building rationale for continuing the war in Afghanistan.

Nixon had to appease his anti-Communist supporters while angling to extricate the United States from Vietnam with a figleaf of honor. He didn’t, however, have to worry that Democrats would accuse him of being too soft on Communism or of losing a war that a more-hawkish strategy would have won. Obama’s situation is different. Republicans would surely argue that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan–followed by a complete reversion of Afghanistan to its post-Soviet, warlord-controlled condition, followed (perhaps) by a Taliban reconquest–amounted to the United States’ losing a winnable war.

The Obama surge in Afghanistan looks to me like a calculated move to neutralize future criticism from foreign-policy hawks that adopting an aggressive strategy toward Afghanistan early in Obama’s presidency could have prevented Afghanistan from sliding into chaos, Islamic fundamentalist control, or whatever ultimately occurs there. The point is to to be able to say “We tried a surge, and it didn’t work, so we had to admit that our continued presence in Afghanistan served no strategic purpose.” This calculation weighs the political advantage of temporarily ramping up the war in Afghanistan against the cost in additional U.S. soldiers’ lives that will be lost as a result of the surge–and comes out four-square in favor of the political advantage. Since it doesn’t hinge on any expectation that the surge will actually work, the calculation is utterly cynical; but anyone who has been paying attention to U.S. politics for the past few decades should have grown accustomed to that sort of thing by now.

That may be the plan for Afghanistan. Tajiks will expel Pashtuns from troubled areas. It may not works as well there since, Pashtuns are far more numerous relative to Tajiks than were Sunnis relative to Shiites in Iraq. But I think that is the plan.