Planes carrying Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's delegation leave Forward Operating Base Shukvani in Afghanistan. (Reuters)
The Afghanistan Withdrawal: A Potential Disaster In The Making -- Peter Beinart, The Atlantic
Disputes over Iraq have distracted Americans from a more important debate.
For weeks now, the media has been gleefully recounting what former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta thinks about the decision by his old boss, President Obama, to withdraw American troops from Iraq. “Panetta unloads on White House for pulling US forces out of Iraq,” read a recent Fox News headline. “Leon Panetta blows whistle on lies about Iraq,” announced Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post.
Fine. Panetta has every right to bash Obama for ignoring his advice and withdrawing too many U.S. troops too fast. And given the disaster that Iraq is today, it’s only natural that the press would cover the comments.
But what the reporters interviewing Panetta generally don’t ask is what he thinks about Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. That’s a shame, because if the Iraq-troop debate is about assigning blame for tragic decisions in the past, the Afghanistan-troop debate is about deciding whether to implement potentially tragic decisions in the future. Afghanistan, in other words, is the troop-withdrawal debate that really matters right now. Yet it gets almost no play in the media.
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My Comment: Afghanistan was a disaster long before the Americans got involved. Was a disaster when the Americans had to go in and rout the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies. Has been a disaster for the past 12 years. And will be a disaster when U.S. forces finally leave.