It's not easy to craft an argument more fringe than those of the Birthers, but Center for American Progress' Lawrence Korb managed to get the job done in his recent wrong-headed piece on Afghanistan.
A recent ABC/Washington Post poll showed that 59 percent of Democrats want troop levels decreased in Afghanistan, versus 29 percent of Republicans. Roughly twice the percentage of Republicans support a troop increase in Afghanistan compared to Democrats. But here's the thing: Republicans supporting a troop increase in Afghanistan comprise only 33 percent of their party, meaning that they are an even more fringe group than those who doubt/are not sure that Obama is a citizen -- a group that claims an additional 25 percent of Republicans compared to the Surgers (let's coin a phrase, shall we?). Surgers are the true extremists in American politics today.
That's why it's absolutely stunning to find a senior fellow of a supposedly progressive think tank like the Center for American Progress pushing Surger rhetoric.
Korb's article admonishes the president to stop letting troop deployments in Iraq (and, implicitly, American public opinion) limit his troop deployments in Afghanistan. He calls a 21,000 troop increase earlier this year a "good start." Korb's piece includes all the assumptions that got us into the mess in Afghanistan in the first place: that the September 11 attacks were acts of war, not of grand-scale criminality; that Afghanistan was therefore a war of necessity, not of choice; that because it's a war of necessity, the Afghanistan expedition justifies massive expenditures and commitment of personnel. In other words, Korb validates the basic frame of the Bush Administration's foreign policy and of Osama bin Laden's dreams: the War on Terror.
There's good reason for the fringe Right to be enthused about policies that fall in line with the War on Terror frame. As George Lakoff and Evan Fritsch wrote in 2006,
The war metaphor was chosen for political reasons. First and foremost, it was chosen for the domestic political reasons. The war metaphor defined war as the only way to defend the nation...Once adopted, the war metaphor...gave [the president] extraordinary domestic power to carry the agenda of the radical right: Power to shift money and resources away from social needs and to the military and related industries. Power to override environmental safeguards on the grounds of military need. Power to set up a domestic surveillance system to spy on our citizens and to intimidate political enemies. Power over political discussion, since war trumps all other topics. In short, power to reshape America to the vision of the radical right -- with no end date.
Osama bin Laden intentionally encouraged this kind of thinking as part of his anti-American strategy. According to a 2002 piece by Bruce Riedel:
Bin Laden's goals remain the same, as does his basic strategy. He seeks to, as he puts it, "provoke and bait" the United States into "bleeding wars" throughout the Islamic world; he wants to bankrupt the country much as he helped bankrupt, he claims, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Now, notice that when Korb writes, "On the other hand, Afghanistan is a war of necessity. Our only choice after the Taliban refused to stop providing a safe haven and support for Al Qaeda was to go after those responsible for the attacks of September 11th," he conflates "to go after those responsible for the attacks" with "a war of necessity." There are only two groups of people who should be enthused about such a conflation: the radical Right and terrorists like Osama bin Laden, both of whom find this frame convenient for advancing their agendas.
Korb never says the words "War on Terror," but his reasoning assumes the frame. Korb's and others' inability to shake this frame has me wondering whether some members of the progressive foreign policy community have Stockholm syndrome. When Korb last trotted out his justifications for escalation in Afghanistan using this frame, I wrote:
The War on Terror is a metaphor designed to bludgeon the progressive movement to death. Write that in stone. Tattoo it somewhere on your body where it will hurt. The phrase "War on Terror" blunts dissent, it undermines progressive values at home, and it plays directly into the hands of al-Qaida's propaganda. People who perpetuate the War on Terror metaphor are, knowingly or not, undermining progress, justice, and peace.
The War on Terror frame is dangerous, and the policies that emerge from it make us less secure while failing to stop terrorism. Given the effects of the frame on American domestic policy and politics, though, it's not surprising that Surgers are the only ones left supporting the War on Terror centerpiece in Afghanistan. What's stunning is that an outfit like the Center for American Progress allows the preferred framing of this fringe group to show up on their letterhead.
One more thing. Korb ends his piece thus:
Peter, Paul and Mary put it well when they warned us some 40 years ago, "when will they ever learn?"
Now, I know Larry just plucked a random song out of the air that contained a line useful for making his point (George Bush did the same thing all the time with Bible verses). The thing is, Korb could not have picked a worse lyric to make his point. Here's the full song, minus all the repetitions and the "long time passing" and the "long time ago":
Where have all the flowers gone?Young girls have picked them everyone.Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the young girls gone?Gone for husbands everyone.Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the husbands gone?Gone for soldiers everyoneOh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone?Gone to graveyards, everyone.Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the graveyards gone?Gone to flowers, everyone.Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the flowers gone?Young girls have picked them everyone.Oh, when will they ever learn?
When will you ever learn, Larry?
(Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You can learn more about the threat the Afghanistan war poses to our security at Rethink Afghanistan, or by watching the latest segment, "Security," on YouTube.)