If I hadn't already posted two quotes of the day, this one from Matt Y would certainly merit consideration:
...Max Boot offers a slightly different twist on the emboldening argument: "Just as Islamist militants were emboldened by the Soviet Union's retreat from Afghanistan in 1989, so they would be encouraged by our premature departure from Iraq."This kind of thing really needs to be taken apart. Did the emboldened militants follow the Red Army home from Afghanistan? No. Rather, a few years after Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan the USSR collapsed under the weight of accumulated economic problems that had been exacerbated by the long and fruitless war in Afghanistan. Now it's true that Osama bin Laden has been known to cite the mujahedeen's success against the Soviets as evidence that his war on America is feasible. But to argue that Mikhail Gorbachev should have continued the occupation of Afghanistan indefinitely in order to prevent a terrorist attack in Manhattan twelve years later is absurd. In retrospect, there are a lot of things one wishes were done differently with regard to Afghanistan in the years 1989-2001 but endless Soviet occupation isn't one of them.
The idea that we should base our foreign policy around the potential impact it will have on the psychological state of our enemies is absurd. The perception of strength is certainly a worthy goal, but it cannot be our only goal.
Al Qaeda understands it is fighting a battle for hearts and minds. As part of that struggle, they create and disseminate narratives that bolster whatever case it is they are trying to make. But just because they have chosen or may someday choose some particular narrative does not mean that we need to believe it. Osama bin Laden believes all kinds of crazy things. Insofar as those things affect the United States, they matter. But to say that they matter is not the same thing as to say that they are objectively correct. In fact, sometimes his ideas are dangerous precisely because they are simultaneously believable and false. This should not be difficult to understand, and yet for people like Boot, it apparently is.
Why, oh why, can't we get better foreign policy pundits? In a nation of 300 million, surely this is not the best we can do.
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