Foreign Policy
I’ve long argued that the mission in Afghanistan has morphed from a limited, focused effort to damage al-Qaeda into a foolish and expensive–in both blood and treasure–nation-building crusade. But there is now evidence that we are spending billions of tax dollars and risking the lives of our soldiers to protect the biggest concentration of pedophiles in the world. Please read this article and then tell me if you think the war in Afghanistan is worth it.
I haven’t weighed-in on the “ground zero mosque” controversy before, although some of my colleagues at the Cato Institute have done so on both sides of the issue. However, the tone of the opposition to the building of the mosque (actually a multi-functional Islamic cultural center) makes me increasingly uneasy.
First of all, while most opponents of the Cordoba House project acknowledge that there is a legal right to buid the center, and insist that their objection to it is based solely on the lack of “decency” of erecting a symbol of Islam on that site, their actions often belie such assurances. After all, the initial action that opponents took was to try to get the New York City government to deny a building permit. That didn’t exactly show respect for the freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment.
Second, opponents almost always stress the “hallowed ground” aspect of the proposed site for the center–some 2 1/2 blocks from ground zero. But there are several problems with that argument. Most notably, there are already two other (smaller) mosques and several other religious buildings in the immediate area–not to mention shops, restaurants, and porno outlets. Do opponents of the new Cordoba House want those structures to be bulldozed? They don’t appear to advocate that step. So why the outrage over this project?
Third, while some of the opposition to the building of Cordoba House reflects genuine anguish on the part of people who lost friends or relatives on 9-11, and for whom the sight of a major Islamic center so close to ground zero would be a cause of further pain, there is something much broader–and uglier–at work. The “proximity to ground zero” argument does not explain why there have been equally virulent campaigns against proposed mosques and other Islamic structures in such places as Tennessee, Wisconsin, Florida, and Virginia. What’s the justification in those cases? Proximity to the Grand Old Opry, Lambeau Field, the Manassas battlefield, and Disney World? No, those campaigns reveal an underlying religious bigotry. Muslims may be the latest targets of that intolerance, but they’re hardly the only ones. In earlier periods, Jews, Mormons, and other religious minorities experienced similar discrimination.
Finally, those who spew vitriol in response to the Cordoba House project need to understand that they are playing with social and foreign policy dynamite. Contrary to some hawks who would like nothing better than a holy war against Islam, the United States is not at war with all Muslims. We are at war with a small faction of radical Muslims. But moderate Muslims in the United States and around the world are watching the Cordoba House controversy. And some moderate Muslims are already being radicalized because of their anger at the opposition to that project.
Critics need to understand that an ill-advised position on this issue could help lead to a disastrous self-fulfilling prophecy in which most Muslims, both here and abroad, do end up hating the United States and becoming mortal enemies of this country. The consequences of that kind of religious war are too horrible to contemplate. Even those Americans who do not like many of the values put forth by Islam, and I count myself among them, need to stand up for the principle of religious tolerance embodied in the First Amendment. That is both the prudent thing to do and the morally right thing to do.
Last month, I spent nearly three weeks in Australia and New Zealand. In addition to delivering some speeches on U.S. foreign policy, especially the future of America’s role in East Asia, I held a number of meetings with defense and foreign ministry officials in both countries. Three important insights emerged from those meetings. First, although Australia and New Zealand have crucial economic ties with China, they are also increasingly nervous about Beijing’s growing power. Second, despite repeated assurances from U.S. officials and nongovernmental foreign policy experts from America that everything is just fine and that Washington will keep military forces in East Asia and take care of the region’s security problems (as it has since the end of World War II) forever and ever, the Aussies and Kiwis look at our enormous federal budget deficits and have major doubts about those assurances. Third, since they believe that U.S. military retrenchment is likely at some point, they want both India and Japan to play larger security roles in the region. Otherwise, they fear that China will become totally dominant.
I found their thinking far more realistic than the drivel that passes for foreign policy analysis in the U.S. government and most American think tanks. My reflections on the meetings and my analysis of East Asia’s security situation and the choices facing America’s allies can be found here and here.
Vice President Dick Cheney always impressed me as the most dangerous and vicious member of the Bush administration. He seemed to regard war as the answer to every foreign policy problem, and his contempt for the Constitution and civil liberties was legendary.
But his daughter, Liz Cheney, seems determined to outdo her father with respect to both of those repulsive attitudes. She is fast becoming my least favorite Cheney.
Her organization, which has become a prominent lobbyist for war with Iran, has now taken dead aim at supposed terrorist sympathizers in the Obama administration. Television ads are now running attacking the president for appointing officials to the Justice Department who had previously served as defense counsels–or even just peripheral members of defense teams–for accused terrorist suspects. Smearing those attorneys as the “Al Qaeda Seven,” the ad implies that such legal work should disqualify them from appointments to office.
That is a “guilt by association” attack that would have made Senator Joseph McCarthy (who was notorious for such tactics) blush. And it is an especially ugly tactic in this case. Lawyers are expected to be willing to defend even odious individuals, and they routinely do so. That is part of the code of their profession. It is appallingly unfair to hold that duty against them, much less to imply that they endorse the values of those individuals. Moreover, just because someone is accused of being a terrorist does not necessarily mean that the person is one. That’s why our justice system requires fair trials–and defense attorneys.
If the logic of Liz Cheney and her cohorts was correct, John Adams, America’s second president, should have been disqualified from ever holding any office of trust. After all, he was the defense lawyer for the British Redcoats involved in the Boston Massacre. Got an acquittal, too. Wonder what Liz and her smear artists have to say about that episode?
The good news is that decent conservatives have rebuked Cheney for her odious tactics. People should not have their patriotism or integrity impugned because they uphold the core principles of our legal system. That she would do so says all we need to know about Liz Cheney and her neoconservative associates.
President Obama will address the American people on Tuesday night regarding Afghanistan. Reports have leaked out over the past week that he will announce that he is sending additional troops into that quagmire. The only question seems to be whether he will send 30,000, 40,000 or some number in between. That is, frankly, not a very important issue. And for all of his talk about “off ramps” for the United States if the Afghan government does not meet certain policy targets or “benchmarks,” the reality is that he is escalating our commitment. Since Obama has repeatedly asserted that the war in Afghanistan is a war of necessity, not a war of choice, his talk of off ramps is largely a bluff–and the Afghans probably know it.
I am in the process of co-writing a book that includes a chapter on America’s disastrous war in Vietnam. I’m the first to acknowledge the hazards of equating one historical event with a development in a different setting and time period. In fact, the tendency of U.S. leaders to view every conflict in the world over the last 60 years through the prism of the failure to stem Nazi aggression in the 1930s has been a major cause of policy disasters like Vietnam and Iraq. And I don’t want to imply that what Obama is doing is exactly the same as the foolish strategy that the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations adopted in Southeast Asia during the 1960s. But there are a couple of very disturbing similiarities. In both cases, U.S. leaders opted to try to rescue a failing war by sending in more troops. And in both cases, Washington found itself desperately searching for a “credible” leader who could serve as an effective partner in the war effort. The United States never found such a leader in Vietnam. From the first client, Ngo Dinh Diem, to the last leader of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu, American policymakers were frustrated by a parade of repressive, corrupt, and ineffectual political figures. Now, doesn’t that sound more than a little like the problem the Bush and Obama administrations have encountered with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government?
That fact alone suggests that our Afghanistan mission is not likely to turn out well.
Instead of escalating, Obama should move to rapidly draw-down our forces and narrow the mission to one of trying to harrass Al Qaeda and keep it off balance. My colleague, Malou Innocent, and I published a Cato Institute White Paper, “Escaping the Graveyard of Empires,” describing how to achieve that goal without pursuing the futile objective of nation-building in Afghanistan.
I have a new article in the National Interest Online about the speech by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates during his recent visit to East Asia. His comments inadvertently underscored why U.S. foreign policy is such a mess. In one speech, he 1) made the North Korean nuclear crisis more dangerous, 2) greatly reduced the chances that China will exert itself to help solve the crisis, and 3) gave U.S. allies Japan and South Korea a green light to continue underinvesting in their own defense while free-riding on U.S. efforts. Other than that, it was a brilliant speech.
Gates is reputed to be the foreign policy “adult” in the Obama administration. If that’s true, we’re all in deep trouble.
Last week, I published an article in The National Interest Online about the folly of engaging in nation building in Afghanistan. Following the 9-11 attacks, I strongly supported military action in Afghanistan to punish al Qaeda and the Taliban regime that gave the terrorist organization a safe haven from which to plan that dastardly attack. But I also warned that we should not try to remake Afghanistan into a modern, stable, democratic country–in other words, try to pursue a utopian nation-building crusade. Yet, during the Bush years, we gradually drifted into exactly that sort of mission. And, unfortunately, the Obama administration seems to be escalating that effort.
The reality is that Afghanistan is not going to become a Central Asian version of Arizona–or even Arkansas–no matter how long we stay, how much money we spend, and how many American lives we sacrifice. The country is not called “the graveyard of empires” for nothing. Invaders from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union discovered that it was impossible to subdue that fractious society. Now, the United States seems determined to make the same foolish error.
We have to adopt realistic objectives. It is possible to further disrupt and weaken al Qaeda. But we must learn to treat that terrorist threat as a chronic, but manageable, security problem, not an overpowering threat that requires a definitive victory with a surrender ceremony (which isn’t going to happen anyway). And it certainly doesn’t require us to (somehow) get the people of Afghanistan to become good 21st century democratic capitalists committed to gender equality. That won’t happen for generations–if it ever does.
Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, we need an exit strategy, not the escalation strategy that the Obama administration is giving us. On September 14, my colleague Malou Innocent and I will be publishing a Cato Institute White Paper giving a detailed analysis of the current situation and outlining such an exit strategy. Please stay tuned.
Four experts (including, with all modesty, your’s truly) have been waging a vigorous debate in the latest issue of Cato Unbound (Cato Institute’s on-line monthly publication) regarding the war on drugs. The focus has been on the drug-related violence in Mexico, with former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda writing the lead essay, but the discussion has evolved into something much broader. Please take a look.
President Obama has received considerable criticism because he has refrained from strongly endorsing the anti-regime street demonstrations in Iran. Much of that criticism has come from the same neoconservative geniuses, such as former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who brought us the Iraq debacle. My colleague Christopher Preble does an especially good job of showing why meddling, even verbally, in Iran’s internal political affairs would be a bad idea. Given America’s less-than-savory reputation with many Iranians ever since the CIA overthrew the country’s democratic government in 1953 and put the brutal, corrupt Shah back on the throne, a U.S. endorsement of the opposition would likely be the kiss of death.
The alleged election victory by hardline President Mahmoud Amadinejad was probably the result of fraud, and most Americans hope that the ongoing demonstrations ultimately oust the clerical regime. But if a revolution occurs, the Iranian people must do it for themselves. It would be both improper–and given the unfortunate history of U.S.-Iranian relations, counterproductive–for the U.S. government to meddle. So far, President Obama has struck the right cautious and balanced tone.
The situation in Pakistan is becoming increasingly ugly. Taliban forces and their Al Qaeda allies have gained control over significant chunks of Pakistan along that country’s border with Afghanistan. The feckless government in Islamabad, after unsuccessfully attempting an appeasement policy, has now apparently reversed course and is confronting the militants with a major military offensive. The bottom line is that Pakistan is an extremely fragile country with a growing radical Islamic insurgency. At the very least, those developments complicate America’s already beleaguered mission next door in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration is beefing-up the U.S. military presence. And we need to ponder a possible worst-case scenario: Pakistan completely unraveling and the militants getting control of that country’s nuclear arsenal. While the risk of Pakistan becoming the South Asian version of Somalia is still relatively remote, that possibility cannot be ruled out.
My colleague Malou Innocent recently published an excellent study on this extremely complicated situation. She spent several weeks last year in Pakistan as part of her research, and her analysis is the best relatively short treatment I’ve seen of this crucial and difficult issue.