i've been holding off commenting on obama's plan for afghanistan, notwithstanding the fact that all or most of it seems to have leaked out already. but what i find remarkable is how quickly public sentiment about the war in afghanistan has changed.
from late 2002 until this year, afghanistan has been mostly ignored in american discourse. to the extent it came up, it was almost always as the "good war" contrast to the "bad war" of iraq. that's why obama ran on the idea of escalation in afghanistan. in his famous 2002 iraq was speech he said: "I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars." iraq was the "dumb war" but to prove it, he need a not-dumb war. and that was afghanistan.
which was a pretty safe choice. lot's of iraq war critics had used that same iraq = bad war/afghanistan = good war formulation. john kerry criticized george bush for taking his eye off the ball of afghanistan to invade iraq when he ran in 2004. the good war/bad war dichotomy had been used for years. it allowed them to freely slam iraq war policy without being lumped in with the hippies.
but then it changed. in 2008 iraq started to fall off the headlines. the war correspondents who spent years in baghdad started going back to kabul. with iraq disappearing from the public's radar, the good war/bad war thing didn't work anymore. without the mess of iraq as a foil, afghanistan just doesn't look very good on its own.
also after obama was elected, that freed up a few conservatives to call for a withdrawal from afghanistan, something that would have been unthinkable when their guy was in the white house. at the same time, obama's announcement of the pullout from iraq freed up antiwar people to rediscover that other conflict. suddenly, support for the war in afghanistan went from being one of the safest political choices you could make to one that was fraught with complications. polls started showing the "good war" to be unpopular, and it seems pretty unlikely that will change. the good war has completely transformed into just another quagmire.
i'm still surprised by how quickly it happened.
