Rehabilitating the Iraq Hawks

Responding to the (now contested) report from CBS News that President Obama is ready to go the "Full Monty" in Afghanistan, Cato's Christopher Preble dissents:

Second, if the president has decided to follow the advice of those who called for more troops (most of whom — it is worth noting — were also leading advocates for the disastrous Iraq war), it is important for those of us who harbored doubts to have publicly registered our concerns.

The problem for Preble and others who would dissent from a counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is that the putative success of the Iraq surge has obscured the larger strategic failure that was the invasion of Iraq (a failure manifest in the fact that we are faced with "losing" Afghanistan after eight years of combat). Analysts who urged on the invasion of Iraq have been able to sweep away the strategic costs of the war by highlighting a short term, tactical success.

But it's important to understand that just because Iraq surge advocates were correct that more troops would quell the violence (at least, temporarily, the long-term prognosis for Iraq is still unclear), they still made a disastrous strategic judgment to forcefully remove Saddam Hussein and militarily occupy Iraq. It's like setting fire to your house, watching it burn almost to the ground and then grabbing a fire hose and dousing the flames. Yes, it's good that you put out the fire. But you shouldn't have started it in the first place.

(AP Photos)