Blogs For Victory

Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) makes the GOP anti-war case for Afghanistan. The two salient points:

…We can win any war, Mr. President, but only with your full commitment to the mission. Absent such a commitment, our presence in Afghanistan does nothing more than endanger our troops, compromise our readiness, and waste our money…

…Mr. President, in my humble opinion I believe it is time to bring our troops home. The troops have fought valiantly and won. Yet, the fight is not over. For generations the United States must continue to hunt and kill terrorists around the world who want death and destruction for the American people.

Mr. President, if you believe we must continue to fight in Afghanistan with tens of thousands of our men and women, let’s do so with a full commitment to win by giving the commanders in the field everything they need so they can bring all of our troops home swiftly and safely.

There is no real argument against the assertion that if we’re to fight, we must fight for victory with every ounce of our being. But is there validity in the argument that we can pull out? Rep. Chaffetz offers up the prospect of using “hunter-killer” units to go after any manifestation of al-Qaeda, but asserts that the nation-building aspect of the Afghan campaign is not in our best interest – and notes that with the threats from Iran, domestic terrorist attacks and our increasing debt leading to national bankruptcy, we’ve got other matters which demand our attention. Does this state the unarguable case?

Not in my view.

Certainly, if President Obama is not willing to go all out for victory, then we’d better get out of there as swiftly as physically possible. But the only reason for this is that it is immoral to have a pointless effusion of blood. If we’re not fighting to win, then fighting shouldn’t be done at all. My largest concern about President Obama’s war policy is that he’s half-hearted – that he doesn’t want to have the stigma of military defeat, but that he also doesn’t have the plain guts to see a war through to victory. But supposing that President Obama’s plan does work out as a pledge to victory, is it still better that we leave?

I agree that Iran is a growing threat. But Iran is, also, an easily manageable threat at the moment. The trouble is that President Obama seems determined to go about Iran in exactly the wrong way – so there’s no point is saying that we should pull out of Afghanistan and concentrate on Iran: Obama will continue to get Iran wrong and thus I don’t see the policy benefit of surrendering in Afghanistan in order to concentrate on surrendering on Iran’s nuclear program. Better to win in both places, but if we can only possibly win in Afghanistan – and that is the case – then we should go for what victory we can achieve.

I agree that terrorism is a continual threat here at home – but I’m enough of a student of military history to know that the only thing which results from a purely defensive effort is defeat. We can’t sit tight here and believe we’ll be safe – any defense can be overcome by imaginative offense. No matter how tight we make our borders and how many security programs we implement internally, if we’re not striking at the enemy then he will strike at us, and with great success, in the by and by – he only has to get past our defense once, while we have to always catch him. Such is not possible. To me, fighting in Afghanistan is, among other policy desires, a means of not fighting here at home.

I agree that our debt is out of control – but Obama simply will not do anything to control our runaway spending. Any deficit reduction over the next four years will be mere happenstance – something which happens because Obama simply can’t think of something new to spend a lot of money on; or because an increasingly fearful Democrat Congress simply won’t go along as election years approach. To terminate the Afghan campaign in the hopes that the saved money will go towards deficit reduction is to live in a fantasy world. Its just not going to happen – any savings in military spending will just be spent elsewhere. I’d prefer that we did pay for the war as we go along – I’d even agree to tax increases if I could get some massive cuts in non-defense, discretionary spending…say, two dollars in spending cuts for each dollar in new taxes (it’ll still work out best for the economy – better to be taxed than to be borrowed in to oblivion; best if we can cut taxes and spending, but we’re never going to get anything like that past Obama and the Congress).

Finally, any American withdrawal from Afghanistan will be viewed – correctly – by the enemy as a crushing American defeat. The whole purpose of the asymetric warfare of our enemies is to wear down and discourage the stronger force until it just gives up. A US withdrawal would fit perfectly in with the Islamists campaign model – we’ll have proven to them that if they can endure us for years, we’ll eventually throw in the towel. This will, in turn, encourage them to try again – remember, to them it doesn’t matter how many people die or how many years it takes to get us to quit…if they can get us to quit, they win and as long as they’re winning, they’ll keep right at it.

Any withdrawal from Afghanistan will eventually be paid for in blood and treasure – and far more blood and treasure than fighting for victory would cost (but its still better to get out, now, rather than fight half-heartedly…the bad stuff will still follow, but we’ll at least have saved some lives and some treasure and thus the ability to fight down the road when the enemy over-provokes us, once again – Obama offers the prospect of years of killing, then a withdrawal/defeat – I’m willing to take the horrible course rather than the horribly bad course). And don’t think that hunter-killer units will dismay the enemy – they’ll consider that just part of the cost of doing business.

We have entirely lost sight, I think, of what this war is about. It wasn’t that 19 Moslems just got it in their head one day to drive planes in to our buildings. Those men, and the men who currently fight us, are the result of a complex series of historical events churned up by the horrific politico-economic morass of the Moslem world. Only a fundamental change in Islam will end this war – and this change cannot come from within, it must come from without. If we refuse this task, then all we’ve done so far will be fruitless and, eventually, we’ll pay a high price for our unwillingness to fight for victory. We’re all tired of the war – but wars don’t just “end”: they are won or they are lost. If we pull out now, we will have lost no matter how much we try to sugar-coat it. The question all Americans must ask themselves – from President Obama on down is: do you want to win, or to lose?

I want to win.