I don't think that is it. Novak has a paleo isolationist bent. He isn't fully in that camp but he listens to them. The most legitimate side of that is simple concern about imperial overreach and whether we can hold everything, or need to, in all these foreign places.
I don't agree with Novak, and even less with the full blown isolationist paleos. I think the war requires forward reach into same hard to get to places, because that is where the enemy likes to hide. But it is not simply a snit. We should continually review our troop deployments around the world and what they are accomplishing. And whether it remains necessary. There is a definite historical tendency to just stay forever any place we've fought.
In Afghanistan, we should be looking at ways to get the locals up to snuff to take over the remainder of the job. Not as a defeat. Just as a way to get our troops back, to reduce the hardship on them and to have them available for new emergencies. If that takes a while yet, OK. But it is where we need to be headed.
In Afghanistan, we should be looking at ways to get the locals up to snuff to take over the remainder of the job.
An interesting point you bring up. I was reading Thomas Sowell's Barbarians Inside the Gates this a.m. and came upon an essay called
Misunderstanding the Marshall Plan. His key point is the truth behind John Stuart Mills statement that "
what is crucial is the 'human capital' needed to build or rebuild the physical things"
I think it's clear that Afghanistan is clearly lacking in human capital. I'm not sure what we can hope to attain as far as creating anything more than a third world backwater can go. Our best hope is to help them progress to a point where they actually have something to lose if the Taliban and al-Queda return.
They won't be an industrialized democracy anytime in the foreseeable future, but there's plenty of backwater hell holes that aren't hosting al-Queda.
Owl_Eagle
”Guns Before Butter.”