On Oct. 8, another editorial, "Plan B for Afghanistan, carried the subhead, "It looks a lot like the losing strategies of past years.
The Post wrote: "The White House's Plan B would mainly amount to refusing Gen. McChrystal most of the additional U.S. troops he has requested " thereby saving the president a decision that would anger his political base. ...
"Such a choice by Mr. Obama [would] repeat the strategic errors of the Bush administration " mistakes that left the mess the new administration is facing in Afghanistan and that brought Iraq to the brink of catastrophe three years ago.
False Narrative
You see, in the Post's historical narrative, the invasion of Iraq was a great idea, only to be faulted because President George W. Bush didn't occupy the country with a sufficiently large expeditionary force, a mistake supposedly corrected by the "surge of about 30,000 additional troops in 2007.
And, the Post suggests Bush also should have committed more troops to Afghanistan " and that Obama must correct that mistake with a new "surge.
This narrative " what might be called the "myth of the successful surge " now dominates Official Washington and thus influences the Afghan debate. But the reality is that Bush's Iraq "surge in troops only matched levels that had previously been in place and was only one relatively minor factor in the decline of Iraqi violence.
More significant factors, which predated or were unconnected to the "surge, included the paying off of Sunni tribal leaders starting in 2006 and the ceasefire ordered by Shiite radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, reportedly under pressure from his patrons in Iran. [For more Iraq factors, see Consortiumnews.com's "The Rising Cost of the Iraq Surge. ]
This year, the further drop-off in Iraqi violence seems connected to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq's cities, thus tamping down nationalist anger over the presence of foreign occupiers. That factor, however, is ignored by the Post's editorial writers, perhaps because it would buttress the argument of war critics that a U.S. drawdown would help, not hurt, Iraqi stability.
The Post ignores another lesson from the Afghan and Iraq wars " that is was Bush's decision, supported by the Post, to divert U.S. military forces from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002-2003, which bought the Taliban and al-Qaeda time to reorganize in the mountainous region on the border with Pakistan.
If Washington's neocons had not prevailed in their preset plan to invade Iraq, U.S. forces might have succeeded in hunting down and eliminating the al-Qaeda leadership and possibly brought some stability to Afghanistan. Instead, with the Post's blessings, the Bush administration jumped to Iraq.
Nevertheless, Washington policymakers are still being lectured by the Post's editorial board about what to do now in Afghanistan.
War Drums
Besides the renewed war-drum-beating by the Post's editorials, there has been a steady thumping by pro-war Post commentators, too.
On Oct. 6, columnist Richard Cohen penned an opinion piece entitled "Does Obama Have the Backbone? Cohen started by laughing at Obama's "dumb move in lobbying for Chicago as the site for the 2016 Olympics before questioning Obama's mettle as a war president.
"The war in Afghanistan is eminently more winnable than was Vietnam, Cohen wrote. "Still, the war will require more than a significant commitment of troops and, of course, money. It will take presidential leadership, a consistent staying of the course " an implacable confidence that the right choice has been made despite what can be steep costs.
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