The Dishonest Case for Staying in Afghanistan

Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, reminded us this week just how blinkered the opponents of withdrawing from Afghanistan are:

The alternative to withdrawal from Afghanistan was not “endless occupation” but open-ended presence. Occupation is imposed, presence invited. Unless you think we are occupying Japan, Germany, & South Korea. And yes, withdrawal was the problem.

An “open-ended presence” that is violently opposed by an insurgency is something quite different from military deployments in peaceful, allied countries. The consent of a kleptocratic client state that is entirely dependent on U.S. support is not the same as that of a stable, democratic ally. Anyone even slightly familiar with conditions in these other countries would understand that having troops there is not the same as keeping thousands of troops in a war zone. If the U.S. had kept an “open-ended presence,” that would have meant an increasing number of American casualties every year for as long they remained there. The U.S. has no vital interests in Afghanistan that would justify keeping a military presence there in any case. There is certainly nothing that would justify accepting the cost of more Americans killed in action in an unwinnable war.

One can debate the merits of a continued U.S. military presence in these other countries, but it is clear that they are not being put in harm’s way by staying there. If U.S. forces had repeatedly come under attack from local insurgents in post-WWII Germany, South Korea, or Japan, it is doubtful that they would have remained as long as they have. Another important point that Haass misses is that U.S. interests in these other countries are significantly greater than they have ever been in Afghanistan. The U.S. has more at stake in the security of these states than it does in fighting a desultory conflict in Central Asia. Haass knows this, and he is pretending not to see these differences because he is reflexively against withdrawing U.S. forces from anywhere for any reason.

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Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.