Unfriendly Fire: Michael Tomasky Attacks Michael Moore on Afghanistan

Micahel Tomasky accuses Michael Moore of being a fatuous blowhard for criticizing the war in Afghanistan as a doomed imperial adventure. Now, Moore can be a fatuous blowhard, but Tomasky doesn't make the charge stick this time. 

In his open letter to President Obama, Moore warns that Afghanistan has been nicknamed "the graveyard of empires."

Tomasky sneers:

I really don't see what America's mission in Afghanistan has to do with what the British did or what the Soviets did. People love lazy historical parallels, and have a tendency to have over-learned the famous Santayana maxim and believe that invoking it makes them sound smart. But every historical situation is different. Why wouldn't someone with Moore's lefty politics be righteous in the conviction that we owe it to the Afghan people to try to help them establish a proper nation-state for the first time in their history?

Moore doesn't spell out the historical analogy, but the common threads seem obvious to me: The Afghan people have historically been implacably opposed to foreign occupation of any kind and they've been very good at resisting it.

It's not just a matter of tradition or national pride, Afghanistan is full of seasoned guerrilla fighters who cut their teeth opposing the Soviets. They're pros. Also, time is on their side. We can leave any time, but they live there. They don't have to drive us out, they can just harass us until we get bored and leave.

Furthermore, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a lot of people in the Muslim world saw it as struggle of Christendom vs. Islam vs. occupying infidels. As a result, Afghanistan became a destination for would-be jihadists from all over the world. That's how Osama bin Laden got his start. If our goal is ultimately to marginalize Islamic extremists, we should be wary about escalating the kind of fight that galvanized them in the first place.

Moore also touches on longstanding cultural barriers to imperialist Pygmalion projects in Afghanistan. Maybe Moore and I are wrong about how much Afghans want to become a modern industrial nation state, but it seems like there are any number of powerful interests opposed and not a lot of countervailing enthusiasm for the project.

Historical analogies are always inexact. Maybe there are reasons to be more optimistic about the current occupation. But at this point, we're not just speculating about how things might turn out. We've been occupying Afghanistan for the better part of a decade and it doesn't seem to be working.

Tomasky accuses Moore of letting his "knee jerk" anti-imperialism overshadow his liberal values.

"Why wouldn't someone with Moore's lefty politics be righteous in the conviction that we owe it to the Afghan people to try to help them establish a proper nation-state for the first time in their history?" Tomasky wants to know.

I am so sick of hearing this straw man argument from liberals. They point to a desirable goal and accuse us of rejecting it, even though nobody actually objects to the war because they hate women's liberation and clean drinking water. The point of contention is not whether a stable and democratic Afghanistan would be desirable, but whether military occupation is a good means to that end. 

It's like saying, "You'd think a lefty would want to put out this fire." Well, yes, we lefties like firefighting, but the question is whether it's a good idea to try to put out this blaze with gasoline.