Iraq and Afghanistan: Not an either-or situation
Posted by sanityinjection on July 15, 2008
Christopher Hitchens, the columnist I told you recently had himself waterboarded as an experiment (crazy but impressive!), is back with a new piece debunking the idea that only the war in Afghanistan, and not the war in Iraq, is necessary, and that the war in Iraq is hurting our ability to win the war in Afghanistan. Hitchens explains the linkage between the two and even points out that counterinsurgency techniques learned in Iraq have subsequently been successfully used in Afghanistan. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why we are fighting in two places at the same time:
tubby said
I agree with the author’s point about learned counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq applying to Afghanistan. I also agree that now that we are embroiled in what Iraq has become, the two conflicts are not mutually exclusive. However, his first argument about being able to capture al Qaeda forces, e.g., Zarqawi, now that they are in Iraq seems a bit circular. If we had chosen to only invade Iraq rather than Afghanistan in the first place, how would we have flushed out these Al Qaeda forces? They were in Afghanistan, so that’s where we had to go get them. Iraq, on the other hand, was originally invaded for completely different reasons than to get Al Qaeda, but now the Bush Administration falsely claims that’s the only reason we are there. We are there primarily to ensure the stability of a country, and to prevent civil war. Can’t we face the fact that getting Al Qaeda there is really just icing on the cake? Mr. Hitchens is conveniently trumpeting the capture of Zarqawi in Iraq as a success of his “pan-war-on-terror” strategy. I would argue that this capture was incidental to a Mesopotamian conflict that persists for reasons far more complex than an anti-terror objective.
sanityinjection said
OK, but isn’t the icing the best part of the cake?
A good rule of thumb when considering Middle East policy: If a situation hasn’t turned out to be at least 5 times more complicated than it originally seemed, you’ve missed something