Throughout the last few years, especially since Obama took office in
January 2009 and after the death of Osama bin Laden earlier this year,
calls to withdraw from one or both of America's major quagmires have
been met with media claims by Very Serious People along the lines that
"no one seriously thinks we can just withdraw."
According to a June 21, 2001 Pew Research poll, 56 percent of Americans favor immediate withdrawal of US occupation troops from Afghanistan. Many of these antiwar voters know that there could be negative ramifications; the same percentage believes that the Karzai regime will collapse without a US military presence. So it is not not true that "no one" thinks we can withdraw. In fact, most people think we should withdraw. And many of them are willing to countenance the possibility that the Taliban would win an ensuing civil war.
For "their" newspapers, radio and television journalists, however, these people -- over half the population -- don't count. They are "no one." They are certainly not "serious people" who have done the hard thinking. They are not, in other favorite meme, "realistic" or "pragmatic."
"We can't leave Afghanistan at this juncture," former US National Security Council member Rick Nelson told ABC News after US commandos assassinated Osama bin Laden. "There is still a significant terrorist threat emanating from western Pakistan." The US must "commit the resources, personnel, and money against this threat until we are certain that it is completely dismantled," said Nelson, talking as though to a small, slightly dim, child. To which such a child might reasonably respond: How would one know that such a threat had completely vanished? Fortunately for Nelson, ABC's excuse for a journalist didn't follow up.
"So why not just get out?" asked Newsweek's John Barry in 2009. "As always, it's not so simple."
Sure it is.
To paraphrase my fellow political cartoonist Matt Bors, US soldiers could go to the airport. They could board planes. They could go home.
The US pulled out of Vietnam. Vietnamese and Americans are both better off as a result. The Soviets left Afghanistan. They boarded trucks and tanks and APCs and drove to Uzbekistan. The Russians' big mistake was not leaving sooner. But no one talks about that -- at least not on the air.
Barry lists a familiar litany of what-ifs. All that's missing is the possible unleashing of killer blood-sucking zombies:
"If the Americans pull their troops out, the already shaky Afghan Army could collapse. (Once they lost US air support, South Vietnamese troops sometimes refused to take the field and fight.) Afghanistan could well plunge into civil war, just as it did after the Soviets left in 1989. Already, the Pashtuns in the south regard the American-backed Tajiks who dominate Karzai's administration as the enemy. The winning side would likely be the one backed by Pakistan, which may end up being the Taliban -- just as it was in the last civil war."
As a decidedly unserious person -- in fact, I rather deplore seriousness -- I wonder: So what? If the only alternative to endless war and occupation and oppression by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan is civil war and Taliban domination, wouldn't it be better to leave the carnage to the Afghans?
'Serious people' are often wrong
The American Conservative, a pleasurable and often surprising magazine aligned with America Firster and former presidential prospect Pat Buchanan, ran a 2009 essay by Daniel Larison that noted, reasonably, "after the last decade of terrible foreign policy guidance by self-proclaimed 'serious people' there is hardly anything more damning one can say about something than to say that 'serious people' embrace it."
Larison continued:
"There is a problem in hiding behind policy consensus and dismissing those outside it as an irrelevant fringe, and this is that the consensus gets important things wrong with remarkable frequency. Hawkish interventionists were able to create the (false) impression that 9/11 happened because America was too wedded to geopolitical stability and was too willing to tolerate authoritarian governments in the Near East, and then the lazy establishment consensus allowed itself to be dragged along with them to support an unnecessary and disastrous war. Establishment consensus views on Iraq and its weapon programs were wrong; consensus support for the bombardment of Lebanon and the Gaza operation was also wrong; the 'serious' bipartisan consensus in favor of NATO expansion has been disastrously wrong."
Back to the debt ceiling crisis.
For many Americans the gravity and absurdity of the current economy was crystallized by news accounts that Apple Computer had more ready cash on hand than the US Treasury ($76bn versus $74bn).
Apple isn't alone. "Corporations collectively are hoarding more cash than ever before, posting glowing balance sheets," reports International Business Times. "At the end of 2010, companies held an estimated $1.9tn of excess cash, and so far in 2011 most have not let go." US banks, says The Washington Post, have more than $2tn available to lend.
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