Like everybody else, around here, I have mixed feelings about President Obama's West Point Speech. In an effort to try to understand our options, I spent some time reading the evolving recommendations of a progressive I trust--Sen. Russ Feingold. After reading his views, I still disagree with some of President Obama's decisions, but I also see them in the larger context of a foreign policy strategy for Central Asia that is not far from what I would like to see.
My problem remains very simple: the danger we face is a violent movement that has successfully, and repeatedly waged war on the United States and our allies. To defend against that entity, we must remain engaged in the region through a combined military and non-military strategy.
My question for my friends who say they are "anti-war" is this:
What do you mean by anti-War?
Pro-Defense vs. Pro-War
For me, the issue I have is that I do not see President Obama or myself as "pro-war," an accusation that gets hurled at people who have come out against the direction of the Afghanistan policy.
My values vis-a-vis the military are crafted out of my education and my family upbringing. I was raised to see the U.S. military as an instrument of defense, rather than an instrument of attack. Hence, when the United States entered World War II, that was a valuable use of our military. When the United States invaded Vietnam, by contrast, that was not a valuable use of the military.
So, I supported the initial attack on Afghanistan, but rejected the invasion of Iraq. I even attended an "anti-war" protest to publicly show my rejection of the war in Iraq, all the while supporting the original invasion of Afghanistan.
At these rallies--the one I attended was in New York City--I heard many people identify themselves as "anti-War," but nobody ever defined it. Nobody ever took the time to explain what they meant.
Rather than explain what they mean, people who call themselves "anti-War" tend to just get angry and sarcastic--accusatory.
I recognize the culture out of which this stance evolved, and I respect it. In the 1970s, the anti-Vietnam protesters were accused of being "anti-American," and to a larger degree, the pain of that treatment has been passed down to the next generation.
Despite all that, however, I still feel that people who are anti-War right now--in this context--have an important point to make that they simply refuse to make: what do they mean by "anti-war"?
To Make Your Case, Define the Term: Anti-Occupation
In the situation we face right now, I would define my general position on Afghanistan with this statement:
I believe we should use every tool at our disposal to fix as best we can in a limited time fix the botched occupation created by the previous botched policy.
That "mess" I refer to is a war transformed into an occupation. While George W. Bush used the military under the guise of protecting the United States from violent groups in Central Asia, his actual policy was to occupy foreign nations with the goal of transforming them into free-market utopias--which would then be held up as evidence of the ultimate truth of Republican ideology.
Forged in response to the Bush era of military policy, I define myself as squarely anti-occupation, but I also recognize that simply walking away from an occupation is not always viable. In some instances--most instances--the occupation itself creates new dangers that, if not dealt with prior to turning control of the occupied country back over to indigenous leaders, will lead to greater violence and instability than before the initial occupation.
And so, I am for ending occupations in a timely fashion--which means: working with military and civilian forces to end the occupation in such a way that it does not lead to a situation far worse that it was prior to our arrival.
Facing Responsibility
Ultimately, this position leaves me in a moral dilemma. Since occupations are wrong and I am against them, the dilemma is that I must endure a short period of what I feel is wrong as a transition to what I feel is right. I define this transition period as:
paying for our mistakes
What makes me angry is that we live in a time when the adherents of one political philosophy--neo-conservative Republicans--created the U.S. military's blundering mistakes in Central Asia, but they were kicked out of office before paying for those mistakes.
What makes me angry is that the leaders I support in my country are the ones who must now pay for the mistakes of the prior administration.
What makes me angry is that paying for mistakes does not ever feel like victory or justice.
I want the situation in Afghanistan to be 100% in sync with my anti-occupation and national defense views of foreign policy. But to get there, I must endure a period of paying for our mistakes.
Why is "Anti-War" a Better Perspective?
What remains for me is very simple: I cannot see why the current "anti-War" position of many on the left is better--morally or politically--than the anti-occupation view I have just described.
I am open to persuasion--very open. But before I join a protest, before I take to the streets to speak out against this policy, before I rally my friends and family to join me in that "anti-War" position, I need to understand what it is.
As it stands, I feel the anti-occupation stance I have taken is one shared by millions of committed liberals in this country. It emerges both from a sense of history, a commitment to national defense, and a position of taking responsibility even for the mistakes of prior administrations against which we fought so hard. It is not fun, but nobody said that leadership ever was.
So here I am--listening. I invite everyone here to use this thread to explain their anti-War view to me. Do it without sarcasm, and do it without anger if you can--although, if a little of that seeps into the discussion, I will understand (as I am not immune to it either).
I am anti-occupation--what are you?
