Whither Afghanistan?


When no less a sage than George McGovern warns the president against further involvement in Afghanistan, it behooves one to listen. Above, in an interview with the former 1972 Democratic presidential candidate -- who won that distinction for his opposition to the war in Viet Nam -- the American News Project's Harry Hanbury and Mike Fritz find McGovern warning President Obama of a possible fate like Lyndon Johnson's -- one in which a quagmire of a war puts an end to many grand social programs.

Still, your blogstress remains unconvinced that the the analogy is apt. For one, America was in no danger because of the Vietnamese civil war, in which we intervened. On the other hand, the al Qaeda attack on American soil was partly the result of the U.S. having walked away from Afghanistan in its hour of need just after its warlords so kindly won the Cold War for us. (No, Ronald Reagan did not win the Cold War; guys in turbans on horseback with U.S. Stinger missiles on their shoulders did. All it took was our fortification of a Pakistani tyrant, Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who ran the weapons for us even as he jailed Pakistani women for the crime of having been raped.) Your écrivaine is not so sure that abandoning Afghanistan now is the moral thing to do.

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