Center for American Progress's Lawrence Korb Is Wrong on Afghanistan

Lawrence Korb recently debated Katrina vanden Heuval in the second of three films for RethinkAfghanistan.com, a project of BraveNewFilms. Korb works at the Center for American Progress and is one of the driving intellectual forces behind the liberal embrace of the Afghan war under the Obama administration. He posted an addendum to his remarks, which reflect the bad assumptions driving liberals, and especially Democrats, to embrace military escalation in Afghanistan.

The single most important remark for understanding Korb’s support for war comes in the last paragraph of his post:

Despite the neglect of Afghanistan on the part of the Bush administration, we must remember that it is the central front in the War on Terror.

I must admit, I am exhausted by repeated attempts to pound this into the head of liberals, but here we go again: 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 progressivism, justice, and peace.

Recall George Lakoff’s excellent takedown of this metaphor in 2006: