Going Over To “The Dark Side” By Supporting A Just War I Have Always Supported
Larison, whose claim to fame is the many links Andrew Sullivan bestows on him, is supposed to be a “paleoconservative” expert on foreign affairs, and yet if his latest postings are any indication, he’s gone over to the Dark Side. (I guess this explains that interview with The Economist, which has never before shown such interest in the foreign policy views of a small and nearly invisible sector of the American Right). ~Justin Raimondo
Yes, we wouldn’t want non-interventionist arguments to be found anywhere except in our own echo chambers. It must be the powerful lure of dark forces that has caused me to articulate the exact same view I have always held on the war in Afghanistan. As I have stated explicitly several times, the proposed Afghanistan plan seems to me to be the best and most realistic way of creating conditions that will allow us to depart Afghanistan sooner. I am open to arguments to the contrary, which Raimondo naturally never provides, but what does not interest me is the lazy, reflexive opposition to the plan displayed by the likes of Rep. Chaffetz, Arlen Specter and their newfound admirers.
Chaffetz and Specter do not oppose the plan because they object to empire or U.S. power projection abroad. Their records and recent statements make that clear. At least these might be principled objections I could respect and understand. Chaffetz opposes it because it is Obama’s plan and because he does not like fighting a limited counterinsurgency in which we do not inflict mass death on a foreign population. Chaffetz believes that the rules of engagement that are beginning to prevent the disastrous bombings of civilian centers are tying the hands of the military, and in any other case Raimondo would want to keep those rules in place, but for whatever reason Chaffetz’s dangerous ideas on this score get a pass because he winds up favoring withdrawal. Specter opposes the plan in a desperate bid to keep his job by trying to satisfy progressive voters unhappy with the administration. They may be imitating some of the arguments that I and others have used against the Iraq war, but this does not derive from any understanding of Afghanistan that they have. The situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the same, and the reasons why the “surge” was unlikely to achieve its stated goals do not necessarily apply to the Afghanistan plan. Not only do the wars differ in legitimacy, but the strategic importance of each is very different.
One of the most damning things opponents of the Iraq invasion argued against its supporters was that they were pursuing ideological fantasies and were ignoring the realities of the places they were trying to transform. For those ideologues, war always seems necessary and escalation is always the right answer. It is no wonder that Kristol, Kagan and the rest have endorsed sending additional forces to Afghanistan, because they always call for sending additional forces under any and all circumstances. The nature of the conflict does not interest them–just like Chaffetz, they always favor using more force than anyone else favors.
If non-interventionists believe that force can sometimes be used justly within limits for limited, specific ends, it is a mistake to adopt the same habit of always opposing every single increase in forces when the war is a legitimate one that most of us have theoretically been supporting all along. By all means, let’s hear a strong argument why the plan is wrong, or better yet let’s hear why the Afghan war is no longer justified or legitimate. My view on Afghanistan could be wrong, and I might be persuaded that this is the case, but I’m not going to be persuaded by shoddy arguments from the Chaffetzes and Specters of the world when they have no credibility on such matters. For the sake of argument, let’s say that I have gone over to “the Dark Side.” If that’s true, what doesn’t make any sense is cheering on long-time Iraq war supporters such as Specter or advocates for bombing Iran such as Chaffetz. If I have gone over to “the Dark Side,” they have never left.
For the record, Sestak ran and won in 2006 in no small part on his opposition to the war in Iraq. He contrasted his support for the war in Afghanistan, in which he had served, with his opposition to that unjustified war. In his case, this was not just rhetorical posturing, but a view derived from making a reasonable distinction between a retaliatory war against the hosts of a group that attacked the United States and an unnecessary and unjust war of aggression. (Sestak did not necessarily describe Iraq in exactly those terms, but he did see invading Iraq as a terrible mistake.) His current primary opponent, Arlen Specter, voted for and supported the Iraq war steadfastly for as long as he was a member of the GOP. It is the Iraq war that Raimondo has repeatedly claimed was among the greatest foreign policy blunders in U.S. history, and strangely it is supporters of that war (and in Chaffetz’s case a possible war against Iran) that he now seems to be championing against those of us who correctly opposed invading Iraq while understanding that the war in Afghanistan was a legitimate and unfortunate necessity. It is absurd to say that the victory of the insurgent progressive, anti-Iraq war Sestak against the Washington-backed “centrist,” opportunistic hawk Specter would represent a “rather large feather in the War Party’s cap.” That is how far out Raimondo has had to go to keep his argument from unraveling completely: he has to make established antiwar voices out to be agents of dark forces and he also has to credit reliable hawks with antiwar views they don’t actually hold.
If Raimondo would like to defend career hawks who have been wrong on every major foreign policy question of the last decade and who are now very, very latecomers to opposing the one recent war that is legitimate, he is free to do so, but it won’t change the reality that these hawks do not oppose any military interventions in principle or in practice. Chaffetz’s sudden discovery that it is politically useful to oppose “Obama’s war” by complaining that the rules of engagement in Afghanistan are too stringent and limiting is the opposite of any coherent ideas on how to reduce civilian casualties and weaken the hold of Taliban militias. Chaffetz has called for withdrawal from Afghanistan because he apparently cannot grasp that there is anything between withdrawal and total war, and he knows that he will not get the total war and “victory” he insists on seeking. If Chaffetz had his way exactly as he wanted it, the escalation in Afghanistan would be larger, the Afghan civilian death toll would be far higher, and the mission would be even closer to failure. Specter’s realization that some Pennsylvania progressives might punish Sestak for taking a controversial position in his party on Afghanistan is just more of Specter’s utterly unprincipled maneuvering.
For his part, Sestak still supports the war in Afghanistan as he has always done, and I am trying to do the same. If that puts me on “the Dark Side” in Raimondo’s book, I must have always been there, because my arguments on this have not changed over the years. I’d rather be there than siding with a shabby old pol who would do and say anything to win another term and a foolish House member urging us to “take out” Iran’s nuclear facilities.
17 Responses to “Going Over To “The Dark Side” By Supporting A Just War I Have Always Supported”
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I think your Byzantine style of argument must have confounded him …
More seriously, whilst Raimondo has made little or no effort to understand or engage with your position, I am interested to hear more about why you consider the Afghan war justified and legitimate. I accept that the war was justified in the first instance and I am amenable to the argument that there is a moral responsibility to the Afghan people but I wonder at what point you would judge further effort fruitless and wasteful? I grudgingly support Obama’s call as the best of a series of bad options but my fear is that my reaction, and to some extent his as well, is nothing but a kind of gambler’s fallacy. If we can’t and wont stay for the long haul are we not simply wasting resources and prolonging conflict and its attendant evils? I don’t (obviously) have any answers to these questions but I would like to hear more from you about how you have weighed this balance.
I agree that the original intervention was justified by the Taliban hosting those who attacked us and refusing to give them up.
I wonder, however, about the cost, the logistics, and the feasibility and wisdom of fighting the Pushtuns, who don’t take kindly to foreign soldiers. If we need more troops to cover a withdrawal or broker a deal, perhaps you have a point, but I fear it’s a bad business to send more young people to risk death and dismemberment for something we will probably abandon very shortly. That’s the Tony Blankley position, and it has some merit.
The thing that I wonder is why no one considers the Afghani war “over.”
I remember vividly that the Afghani war was cast in explicitly retaliatory terms; the Afghani state government knowingly allowed bin Laden and his organization to use their land as a training and staging ground for attacks against the US and allies. Dr. Larison and I seem to remember this in the same way. At the time, there was almost no popular interest in transforming the Afghani government into something entirely different, and what little interest there was seemed to me to exist solely in the minds of human-rights oriented liberals who used such arguments to justify the war to themselves and each other.
That history said, the Al Qaeda camps, their supporting infrastructure, and anyone interested in defending either of the two, were utterly destroyed in 2002 and 2003. To me, that seems like that. The war is over, we should have left then.
The obvious counter argument to this is that leaving in 2003 would have possibly allowed 1.) another Taliban-esque government to come to power in Afghanistan, and 2.) then again allow another Al Qaeda-esque organization to train and recruit on their watch. To this I say that 1.) is going to happen anyway, regardless of how or when the US leaves, and 2.) can be mitigated in much the same way that the US currently mitigates its foreign problems; with periodic bombing/cruise missile/drone campaigns. In my mind, we should have left in 2003, and if a new terrorist organization took root in Afghanistan, then bombs away. Putting it this way probably gets me on Dr. Larison’s bad side, but I think this would have been far preferable to the current, nearly decade-long occupation and growing regional conflict that the Afghani war has become.
Instead of leaving in 2003, however, Bush decided to stay and begin two new wars: one in Iraq, which was obviously a terrible idea and a disaster, and another in Afghanistan that took on much the flavor of the Soviet campaign of two decade before. It simply wasn’t enough that the US had completely and totally destroyed its enemies in Afghanistan. We also had to transform an entire society of people, for some reason.
The Iraq war was and is always a disaster, with no redeeming qualities and the reverberations of our actions there will haunt us for generations. While I’m not going to say that the initial Afghani invasion was ‘noble’ (because I don’t think it’s a good idea to describe violence in such a way), I do think it was necessary. What the Afghani campaign has become, however, is a completely different story.
[...] responds to Justin here. | | | | | [...]
Daniel, are you using “justified and legitimate” as a single phrase with two terms for added effect, or are you meaning them in two different fashions?
As previous commentators have mentioned, the initial conditions which may have justified a war in Afghanistan – that the government of that nation was harboring men who attacked America – doesn’t hold water anymore.
The question the prog-bloggers ask – “Why are we still in Afghanistan again?” doesn’t seem to have a really good answer. “Why were we there in the first place?” does, but that’s not the situation we’re in today, over eight years after the 9/11 attacks.
After 9/11 I think America had a moral right to go after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Taliban for harboring them, but there should have been a declaration of war. That there was not taints the whole enterprise. But I also agree with Ron Paul that we probably could have done what we needed to do in Afghanistan by issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal and using smaller strike forces and strategic air strikes but short of a full scale invasion.
I agree with JJM that that war was won in 2002 or 2003 and everything since has been nation building.
The problem with supporting the Afghanistan “surge,” besides the likelihood that it won’t help in the long run, is that in the current climate there is little room for nuance. There are internationalist interventionist of both the liberal and “conservative” variety who support the move and dominate the conversation and a small group of non-interventionists screaming from the sidelines trying desperately to affect the debate. The message from our crowd needs to be consistent and clear. “Bring the boys, all the boys, home now!” To agree that more troops for a couple of more years may make the leaving a little less problematic seems to me conceding too much to the opposition and a recipe for perpetual war to make ending the war easier. What if things aren’t any better in two years? What then?
I join the other commenters here both in their sense that the initial action was justified and unavoidable and in the sense that staying there is a bit dangerous. I confess further that I have never understood how we were going to withdraw gracefully and i still do not understand what event, exactly, is going to serve as a marker for when it is safe to withdraw. I have a very bad feeling about this. Obama’s strategy seems to me to be little more than kicking the can down the road.
Mr. Larison:
Your challenge, “let’s hear why the Afghan war is no longer justified or legitimate.”
Here it goes:
Originally, the war in Afghanistan was just as a defensive response to an offensive attack. Besides just cause, one of the elements of the just war theory is the duty to implement a proportional response to the unjust offense. Another element is pursuit of an achievable / realistic objective. (I recommend Dean Tuomala’s law review article laying out the basic elements of the just war theory here: http://works.bepress.com/jeffrey_tuomala/2/). While the war was initially just, it no longer is because it violates those two elements of the just war theory.
Although the attack on 9/11 was horrific, it does not give us license to occupy Afghanistan indefinitely, which is what many on the left and the right seem to want (I know you do not). In my view, our occupation and waging war for nine years represents an excessive and disproportionate response to the attack. This is especially true since we have eliminated the terrorists camps that planned the attacks, and at this point most experts agree that there are only about 100 al Qaeda members in Afghanistan. So, I would say “mission accomplished” some time ago, and continuing the war represents is an unjust act of disproportionate aggression on our part.
Also, the goal of the Afghanistan war has become unrealistic. Originally, the goal (I assume) of the war was to dismantle the terrorist camps and kill people who actually planned and supported the attack—a realistic goal. It seems, however, that the mission changed from that to an open-ended nation-building project, at some point. This probably happened because Bush allowed himself to be influenced by the neoconservatives who think that America will be safe when other nations achieve western style democracy (and it is America’s duty to show them the way). Whether the goal is to neutralize al Qaeda or to nation build, neither goal is realistic. If in nine years of war (a war longer than the last war America won—WWII) we have not been able to contain the al Qaeda threat and have not been able to build the Afghanistan government into a stable government, then we never will. It is folly to think otherwise. It is unjust to send more men off to die in vain in pursuit of an unrealistic goal.
Here is the correct link to the law review article referenced in my earlier blog entry: http://works.bepress.com/jeffrey_tuomala/2/
I am trying to think of a historical precedent which helps justify the occupation of Afghanistan – a non-state actor, aided by a sympathetic state apparatus, strikes at another state. That other state attempts to respond by attacking both the non-state actor and the sympathetic nation-state.
The only modern example I can think of may be Austria-Hungary and Serbia as the trigger to WWI. That’s not exactly going to add to justification. Perhaps much older examples might include raids from nominally subdued peoples – say, the Cossacks or Tatars into Muscovy? That’s not really going to help justify the cause either: that partially resulted in hundreds of years of occupation and rivalry between Ukraine and Moscow.
We are no longer in Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda. We are engaged in nation-building, shoring up the government we created against the Taliban & fellow travelers while suppressing the production of poppies. I was surprised by your support for the Afghanistan surge, I always thought of you as more radical than, say, Bacevich, who seems quite down on it.
TGGP, on December 17th, 2009 at 2:13 pm Said:
“We are no longer in Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda. We are engaged in nation-building, shoring up the government we created against the Taliban & fellow travelers while suppressing the production of poppies.”
Nation-building in a place which hasn’t had a ‘nation’ for how many decades? (or centuries……………….)
1) The Afghan War was never justified. It merited a police action, not a war, to apprehend the criminals responsible for 9/11. Armies fight armies, and those criminals did not control an army. We had no right to sentence the people of Afghanistan to the indiscriminate death penalty that war inevitably represents.
2) Not only was the war never justified, and hence immoral, but our every day’s continuing presence feeds the insurgency, and the surviving relatives of our inevitable collateral damage constitute an ever-growing security threat to real Americans (not our sainted politicians hiding behind their multibillion dollar security apparatus).
3) If Daniel Larison claims to be an Orthodox Christian, I think he should be ashamed of himself.
I appreciate the comments, most of which have been very smart. They given me a lot to think about. I’ll have more to say on this shortly. As for the last comment, I would just state the obvious, which is that I have continually argued in favor of eliminating the use of all those indiscriminate tactics that contribute to the security threat he mentions. Our continuing presence does not necessarily feed the insurgency. It is principally the way in which our forces act and how they treat the local population that feed the insurgency. That doesn’t mean that I want our presence to continue there for very long, but while they are there they have legal obligations to provide for the security of the population, and the government now seems to be taking that obligation much more seriously.
Regarding the last remark, it might be worth remembering how many emperors and kings the Orthodox Church has glorified as saints despite having significant amounts of blood on their hands from various military campaigns, most of which would not meet the extremely high standard opponents of the war in Afghanistan would set for what constitutes just war. Met. Anthony Krapovitsky once wrote a short pamphlet justifying Russian entry into WWI, the most senseless and unnecessary of conflicts as far as Russia was concerned. He was mistaken about this, but I don’t think Met. Anthony was a bad Orthodox Christian for making the argument. As the other commenters have shown, it is not necessary to resort to such pathetic insults to make a strong case against the war.
I respect the people who want to set very high standards, and I have written repeatedly that just war requirements should be understood as a barrier to initiating and participating in wars rather than loopholes that permit the use of force. Where most of us seem to disagree is over whether the original war objectives have been met and whether a continued military campaign there has any justification. I am willing to admit that I may be mistaken in taking the position I have, but I think we are all coming at the question from the same assumptions. I’ll have more to say in a little while.
Thanks, Daniel, for responding to my and the other comments. Good point: many Orthodox saints were quite militaristic (and let’s not start talking about people like King David). But I think we should all strive to use our (God-given) intellect and judgement to improve on our instinctive and historical practices.
As a practical matter, I don’t see how putting 20-year-olds in kill-or-be-killed situations, building clinics only to see them destroyed, placing locals in heart-breaking tests of loyalty between us versus them can ever be successful. An army is a vast, chaotic machine for killing and destroying things. Expecting it to perform a social engineering miracle while being vastly undermanned is unrealistic at best. And the tools they have at hand are just not going to work. Realizing this, and not placing hope in an improbable outcome with a certainty of tremendous collateral damage, is, I believe, both the moral and mature point of view.
I’m sorry if I sounded harsh and/or touched a nerve, but (many) peoples’ lives are at stake.
The catholic catechism breaks things down to four requirements, but I would note that the requirements cover both means and ends.
To help clarify, consider that the death penalty is technically just, but it must be carried out within the framework of an executive and judiciary. If they are corrupt and are going to execute the guilty, or misuse the power so much, it does not matter that it is technically a just punishment, the application would be unjust so it should be denied.
If someone steals something you and you have only an attack dog that you can’t really control, do you release it even if it might attack someone other than the thief? Or kill the theif instead of simply doing sufficient damage to recover the item?
In the case of Afghanistan, what would have been justified (as opposed to police action or letters of marque and reprisal) would have been a systematic attack to kill Al Queda and Osama.
Instead we ended up moving the Taliban (who apparently did want to negotiate) to the outskirts – they did eliminate the opium trade and we paid them for it if you remember. Installed the corrupt, torturing and murdering war-lords in government, forgot about AlQueda and Osama after a few months, gave a lot of contracts to Haliburton, created the Bagram airbase and torture center, and started to stovepipe reasons to do the same to Iraq.
So in the case of Afghanistan, it is not whether it was theoretically just, but if the means of fighting it and the ultimate results given that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. were going to be unleashed and do whatever their goals were could be deemed just.
This is where I have a problem with catholic “non-negotiables”. Technically they are such, but if I don’t think it overrides electing someone I expect to do known grave evils at least proportionate – and if I can’t expect “loyal opposition” to such evils. If you elect the “pro-life junk yard dogs”, you need to keep them on a short leash and behind a tall fence.
And here is where conscience is informed. Any war will be fought for Haliburton and Blackwater, have atrocities, torture, and other “collateral damage”, destroy liberties, impose worse corruption. This is no longer deniable or avoidable. So any call for “just war” must be just even if all these disproportionately evil effects are taken into account.
I also make the point that Abortion is a holocaust of 50 million innocents, and we “aren’t done negotiating”, “every other measure has not failed” although it has not produced a dent, somehow superglueing the locks at clinics is too severe a response to what is going on, etc. The threshold for a just war must also take into account the great effort to avoid violence in the face of this ongoing massacre. If violence – war – is not proportional to end the abortion holocaust which numbers 50 million, what other act against innocents here would exceed the threshold?
Cheney was out making statements about the need to discard the rule of law when innocent life was at stake – two weeks before Tiller was killed.
Go ahead and try to justify war, but take care you don’t indirectly justify other wars of greater gravity which you might object to fighting.
[...] meet Justin Raimondo’s eccentric and ever-changing purity test. Six months ago, Raimondo was full of praise for two reliable hawks who supported the Iraq war because they happened to be making the right politically expedient noises on Afghanistan, and he [...]