Allocating Worry

Just because I don't think our president is doing a good job doesn't mean I'm going to charge him with losing Afghanistan. I keep reading pessimistic pieces, but I don't see the doom that is projected. We could lose, of course. Since we engineered our own defeat in Vietnam after successfully handing off primary responsibility to South Vietnam, we could certainly do it again. But don't assume defeat in Afghanistan. Are we simply unable to recognize victory?

Here's a piece by someone who should know, who argues that we are winning in Afghanistan:

Americans haven’t lost a war in so long, we’ve forgotten what doing so looks like — and what it costs. The only war that we undeniably lost was the Vietnam War; thrown out of the country literally under fire, we abandoned our allies to a horrific fate and left behind a legacy of terror in the region, breaking our Army in the process.

Despite the miasma of discontent with the effort, the United States and its many allies are not losing in Afghanistan.

This is good to read. I keep reading pessimistic pieces. But despite the disorder, it doesn't strike me as defeat. Just messiness. Which pretty much defines Afghanistan. Just what do we expect victory to look like? Vermont? With the Taliban staking out the anti-bike path faction?

And the author notes that we need to stay in Afghanistan in order to continue to "decapitate" jihadi organizations with drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So maybe my worries about leaving Afghanistan despite our intentions to retain troops after 2014 may be misplaced.

I only have cause for worry with one section meant to encourage staying in Afghanistan:

U.S. forces continue to perform similar functions in countries around the globe where we have fought and won our wars; they remain stationed in Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and Bosnia. They will remain in Afghanistan as a sign of our continued vital interest in the region, which remains ground zero for global terrorism and nuclear proliferation, the most dangerous threats to U.S. security in this century.

There are no U.S. forces stationed in Vietnam. We lost that one.

As I noted, we did win Vietnam. South Vietnam fell to a North Vietnamese invasion that rolled over supply-starved South Vietnamese forces. We lost after "responsibly" ending that war. It was an unforced error on our part.

But what really worries me is the fact that we left Iraq last year. There are no U.S. forces stationed in Iraq.

Will we ultimately lose Iraq as an unforced error, too, because our president couldn't bear to defend the win he inherited from the previous president?

And then I think about Afghanistan again and the assurance that since we need to stay in Afghanistan after 2014, we certainly will. I mean, I assumed we needed to stay in Iraq after last year.

So worries all around, I guess.