A Letter to the White House
Friday, November 27, 2009
Dear Mr. President,
Listen to Bill Moyers' compilation of L.B.J.'s recorded phone conversations about Vietnam, in podcast form on Moyers' website. As the increasingly weary and depressed presidential tone makes eerily clear, Johnson knows that bowing to pressure from the military, from Goldwater, and from the war mongers in general is wrong.
His rationale for caving anyway, beyond simply taking the path of least political resistance, was based on a premise whose falsity was clear to the few truth tellers in his entourage: should S. Vietnam turn communist, all of Asia would follow like a row of dominoes. Our involvement in Afghanistan is based on an identically false premise, namely that when the Taliban retake their country in the wake of our departure, Afghanistan will pose a mortal threat to the United States.
An impoverished, broken, backward, and distant backwater is a threat? As ludicrous an idea as the domino theory when put in those terms, but the sole argument of the contemporary war mongers. Like their predecessors forty-five years ago they are self-serving, heedless of the true national interest, themselves unlikely ever to hear a shot fired in anger.
No matter the blood and treasure expended, we did not alter the ultimate outcome in Korea and Vietnam. Nor indeed in Iraq, whose citizens are worse off today than they were under the former regime, despite our tens of thousands of casualties and trillions of dollars already wasted. Afghanistan will also ultimately decide its own outcome, regardless of the length and strength of our commitment. Suppose the war mongers are correct in the short term, and the Taliban retakes power when we leave. To paraphrase Dick Cheney, so what? The Taliban did not attack us. Providing a safe harbor to those who did cost them dearly once. They are unlikely to repeat the experiment again. If they are so insane as to welcome back Al Qaeda, so much the better for our interests. Concentrated once again in one place, our true enemy is that much easier to effectively bomb.
Avoid Johnson's fatal error. Resist the war mongers. On Tuesday tell the Afghans we will sort out their problems with technical assistance and cash to the extent that they allow, but that our military involvement is at an end. It is the only pragmatic course. It is also the right thing to do.