George Will says now. Frederick Kagan and Rich Lowry disagree. And Mark Steyn seems to agree.
Steyn makes the argument that Will does, although not explicitly adopting it, that our nation-building aims were too broad and unachieveable. I thought it was right to go into both Afghanistan and Iraq, and still do, but I thought Pres. Bush's rhetoric and goals were far too grandiose. Like Derb, I'm inclined to think rubble don't make trouble. As horrific as that may sound, are we really going to create a stable government in Afghanistan where there has never been one? This might be a more successful approach in Iraq where there is some culture, education--civilization--but even there our aims should have been/should be narrower (and I think Bush successfully narrowed them a bit before he left office).
Will recognizes that we will have continuing operations in Afghanistan, but he downplays the extent of doing so as Lowry points out. No clear solution, but certainly a lesson we must learn that our grand illusions of liberalizing the world shouldn't be guiding policy. Against our own sentiments we must have a harder heart about our security and war making. This is not to say leveling Afghanistan and leaving is the solution, it is obviously more difficult than that. But our "principles" perhaps get in the way of clear-sightedness in foreign policy.
