It has been said that there are two parties in the United States; . Perhaps better described as a naive party and an opportunist party, the idea behind this concept is that the the poor decisions of one party allow for enactment of the unfathomable agenda of the other. It is clear this week that the GOP is, at the moment, the Stupid Party.
The notion that one party is stupid while the other is evil is something on which activists in both majory U.S. parties can agree. Though the facts aren’t on their side, activists in the Democratic Party use this concept to contend that the passage of their financial reform is in doubt because the legislation was watered down to placate GOP centrists, thereby alienating some progressive Democrats. In this bogus example, Democrats are the stupid party for focusing on reaching out to an “obstructionist” GOP, the “evil party” for them, instead of passing more comprehensive legislation with enthusiastic backing from Senate Democrats, and scant support from Senate Republicans. In reality, lingering uncertainty about the legislation, and broader concerns about the economic policies of the Obama administration are due to an approach to governance focused on the power of bureaucrats and organized labor at the expense of shareholders, taxpayers, consumers, and entrepreneurs.
But for Republicans, a rather more concrete example of this concept became apparent in recent days. RNC Chairman Michael Steele offered remarks late last week regarding history, and recent events surrounding the war in Afghanistan. Instead of viewing these remarks in context, however, prominent Republicans and on the right gave the Obama White House a narrative it .
Anyone paying attention would know that Chairman Steele was making the that President Obama owes the American people an explanation regarding Afghanistan. Regular readers of this blog know that essentially the same point was made here not long ago. It is fundamentally inconsistent for the White House to claim that a military surge will work in Afghanistan when the administration refuses to admit that the Iraq surge was a success.
Furthermore, the current effort in Afghanistan is Barack Obama’s war. To credit the ongoing effort in Afghanistan to George W. Bush would be to attribute Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policy to Lyndon Johnson. President Eisenhower drew to a close the Korean War prosecuted initially by President Truman. Sometimes wars are won or lost very early in the fighting, but even then, the leader then in charge is responsible for how things end. Thus, when President Obama appointed Stanley McChrystal to lead the effort in Afghanistan, he was fully taking ownership of the war.
At no time did Michael Steele directly question the legitimacy of the present conflict in Afghanistan. Rather than come out against the war, as some have suggested happened, Mr. Steele was pointing out that past ground wars in Afghanistan have failed miserably. The last incident of blatant Soviet aggression took the form of a decade-long civil war in Afghanistan, one which ultimately permitted the rise of the Taliban. More than half a century earlier, the British Empire with little success attempted to subdue Afghanistan. The success-if it can be called that-of the British misadventure was the Durand Line, better known now as the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Rather than promote the that Republicans are for war without end, Chairman Steele put forward a realistic appraisal of a very difficult war. Analogies to Vietnam are popular, but “Af-Pak” is fundamentally different from the states of Southeast Asia. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, all three party to one degree or another to twenty years of war between 1955 and 1975, are largely culturally cohesive countries. There are ethnic minorities of note in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, but their cultural and political development relative to the more numerous, neighboring nationalities is quite limited; the Mon, for example are a majority in no country. In Afghanistan, the Pashtun are the prominent ethnic group, and decades of civil strife have only reinforced the sizeable Pashtun population in nearby areas of Pakistan. The Mekong and Red rivers provide an impetus for commerce and development in Southeast Asia which has largely never materialized in Afghanistan, despite the presence of the Helmand River and tributaries of the Indus.
Iraq, a state with a long and proud history of commerce and societal development, is a state lacking in the geographical difficulties of Afghanistan. As a largely urbanized society, the people of Iraq have a sense of belonging that transcends ethnic or religious identity despite local revalries and mistrust. Simply put, if Iraq, despite having been a state sponsor of terrorism and a for al-Qaeda, was a ‘war of choice’ at the time that it was denounced by Barack Obama, then so too must the present struggle in Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda has been broken, and the forces once supportive of terrorist group have been removed from power.
More essentially, however, if the administration in Washington stands by their campaign rhetoric regarding the Iraq war, and if the surge has not improved the situation there, then the American people are owed an explanation as to why Afghanistan will, despite all odds, be different. Republicans are right to support military personnel in their endeavors on behalf of this great country. However, the right has been wrong to clamour for an approach to war in which no discernable goal has been established. In so doing, too many Republicans have revealed that they learned from the experiences of the last Bush administration.
For once, it is Michael Steele who is right, and the political establishment that is deeply mistaken. The unwarranted chastising of Michael Steele’s remarks has taken the of Republicans away from the pivotal elections set for later this year. Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, it is the ruling party that is politicising this war. The American people are with a recession left unhelped by a big-spending Democratic Party that would rather stick to its bad habits than fund the war and not in special projects. While Republicans have been busy over a non-issue, the other party has continuated unabated trying to implement its unfathomable agenda.
Last 5 posts by James Kane
- A November to Remember - November 8th, 2010
- On hope and fear - October 18th, 2010
- Expecting Different Results - September 12th, 2010
- A glaring omission on Iraq - August 31st, 2010
- Employing a losing strategy - August 7th, 2010