When the World Trade Center was attacked, some progressives went, almost reflexively, into antiwar mode. Most, however, supported military action, because the incineration of innocents in the heart of Manhattan was so appalling; because the Taliban regime was so brutal; and--somewhat less nobly--because dissent in a time of national outrage courted political isolation. After nearly six months, however, the Taliban is gone, policy is a mess, and the president should be fair game.
There was a road not taken--treating the September 11 attacks as acriminal conspiracy, not an act of war. September 11 was a failure ofintelligence, security, and diplomacy. The president might have responded bybeefing up security, intelligence, diplomatic pressure, and commando efforts.From the start, of course, Bush opted for war. Only history can judge whether theAfghan war was a bold stroke or a blunder, depending on the secondary effects.But that jury is still out.
Historical choices look inevitable only afterward. The Republican ultras ofthe late 1940s nearly killed the Marshall Plan and George Kennan's masterstrategy of containment--and that would have left America with the awful choiceof a Stalinist Western Europe or World War III. Lyndon Johnson might haverejected escalation in Vietnam and gone on to a second term consolidating socialreform and his Democratic majority. Neither policy choice was inevitable.Marshall and Kennan got it right; LBJ got it wrong. The seemingly easy ouster ofthe Taliban may yet turn out to be Pyrrhic, not because of battlefield losses,but as the opening scene in a wider folly.
After September 11, I backed military action, but with misgivings about theside effects. One concern was the risk of wider war and destabilization of SouthAsia. Another was the impact on the Arab-Israeli peace process. Yet another wasthat hard-liners would take control of foreign and military policy. At home, onefeared that the Bush administration would use the war to achieve an otherwiseunpopular domestic program and to crimp civil liberty. These misgivings,unfortunately, have been confirmed all too vividly by events.
Now that the shooting phase of the war is over, so is the doctrine thatpolitics stops at water's edge. Bush's axis-of-evil declaration, lumping togetheral-Qaeda, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, is insane. It has already helpedhard-liners in Iran to regain the initiative, and it could well set backdétente in the Koreas. The risk of war with Iraq is real. Evidently, Bush embraced multilateralism only as long as he needed it for the war effort. In thefirst months after September 11, Bush deserved broad, if qualified, support. Nolonger.
Revoking Bush's free pass on foreign policy willalso have salutary effectson the domestic debate. Democrats have been hesitant to fully challenge Bush'swarped budgetary priorities because of his presumed invincibility on the Afghanwar. But with the Taliban dispatched, there is plenty to debate on both foreignand domestic issues. The most important thing to challenge is the premise thatAmerica is now on a kind of permanent wartime footing to which all else must besubordinate. Even during the Cold War, something genuinely close to a permanentsecurity crisis, there were lively arguments about everything from nuclearstrategy to a broad range of economic and social questions.
The axis-of-evil delusion, at least, has emboldened a few congressmenand senators of both parties to criticize Bush. The issue of Afghan civiliancasualties has moved from the left press to the front page of The New YorkTimes. The administration lately has had to backpedal on the rights of POWs and on the scope of military tribunals.
The brief Afghan war is an accomplished fact, but everything about its aftermath is subject to debate. That includes the administration's multilateralrhetoric and its go-it-alone actions; its concrete plans for expanding themilitary, revamping the CIA, and reorganizing homeland security; and its peculiarconception of public health.
America will never be 100 percent safe from acts of terror. But that doesn'tmean we have become a garrison state with the rules of democratic discoursewaived. The moment for bipartisan triumphalism and unquestioning support for awartime commander in chief is over. Dissent should be back in fashion. Mainstreamcritics need to give voice to their private second thoughts, not just on Bush'sdismal domestic program or his odd global geography but on his dubious notion ofpermanent war.
