Afghanistan: What Could Have Been?
Kevin Drum points out that if Iraq is unwinnable then surely Afghanistan is as well.
I've long wondered what would have happened if we hadn't invaded Iraq. Would the goodwill we had in the world community allow us to effectively occupy Afghanistan, or would we be in exactly the same position we're in now, with just the place-names changed?
It's a shibboleth among we progressives that Afghanistan was a good war and Iraq a bad one -- only true nut jobs protested invading Afghanistan. But if Afghanistan is unwinnable, maybe we're the crazy ones? It's now painfully clear that those who advocated invading Iraq (including me) were horribly off-base about the viability of occupation as a projection of American military power. Were we also wrong about Afghanistan?