What exactly are we doing in Afghanistan?

9/11 was a really really good reason to go to Afghanistan and wipe out the people who engineered that colossal act of evil. That’s why I never had a proble with the war on the Taliban and al-Quaeda that commenced shortly after. It seemed rather obvious that the mission was “destroy the people who committed 9/11”. Short sweet mission statement, nicely in line with Just War. Me not being a pacifist and all, plus being as full of anger about 9/11 as next billion civilized guys, I still think that would have been a great thing to do.

But somehow the guys with the Grand End to Evil theories about turning the Mideast into an American protectorate decided to divert all that national will to a big nation-building project by means of our highly successful adventure in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight took us into that war, shouting “deficits don’t matter!” and “cakewalk” and, six years we’ve got a shiny new Iraq still sucking up the blood and treasure, while teetering precariously. Mission accomplished.

Meanwhile, over in Afghanistan, the guys who like, committed 9/11 are still on the loose (probably in Pakistan) and the Taliban who were their good buddies? Well, we’ve gone from shooting them to trying integrate them into the hilarious simulacrum of a “government” in our newest nation-building project.

This is what you call “mission creep”. And when you are trying to do the impossible task of molding the dry sand of a bunch of Pashtun shepherds and kill crazies into a government, the only way a gluttonous bureaucracy knows how to think about that is “We need more blood and treasure!“

Well, yes we do–assuming it is our task to build Afghanistan into another American protectorate. On the other hand, if our mission was to protect the US from another 9/11, I’m not sold that this is the way to go. It appears that the international police work that has foiled terror plots all over the world (most recently in Colorado and NY) has much more to do with that than our Sisyphean attempts to prop up a corrupt govt in Afghanistan.

More and more, I’m beginning to think that one of the strange polarities in American culture is the deathless faith our entire citizenry has in the machinery of government to save the world. The only real difference is that the left thinks if you throw enough money at the government it will build the nation called “the US” and the Right thinks that if you throw enough money at the government it will build some Third World hellhole into a Mini-Me of the US. Me: I think “If you like Obamacare, you’ll love Afghanistan! Another fine product of the US Government!” If the Great Society didn’t work here, what on earth makes Righties think it will work in the Graveyard of Empires?

One of the entertaining fissures that is now starting to open on the Right is the split between the folks who cling to the vision of the Grand End to Evil project of a world redeemed by democratic capitalism imposed on the world through Michael Ledeen’s beloved “creative destruction” (a sort of Trotsky in pin-striped suit fantasy) and the populist fury of folks like Beck who are dimly aware that this doomed fantasy is no small part of why we are in hock up to our eyebrows. Gigantic empires are expensive to maintain and people are in less and less of a mood to spend their kid’s inheritance (and their kid’s blood) on… what exactly? A war that has morphed into playing footsie with the Taliban?

So you get the inchoate rage of 9/12 movement and all that–and you get the guys who beat the drums for war, (and stampeded the 9/12ers) the Frums and the Little Green Footballs guys now trying to ride the tiger and figure out a way to keep the increasingly rudderless and chaotic morass that used to be “conservatism” from blindly opposing everything Obama does. That’s because Obama is aiming to continue Mr. Bush’s wars. If the mob of Becksters spins out of control, it could wind up imperilling that, so we are seeing more and more of the End to Evil guys trying to dim his star a bit and trying to divert all that bubbling outrage away from anything that might endanger our increasingly pointless efforts in Afghanistan.

Me: I think George Will has called it. What’s the point anymore?