Sometimes the truth hurts. I understand why Republicans are furious with Michael Steele. Bill Kristol pointed out that when it comes to war, Republicans believe that the country must remain united behind a U.S. President, even if they despise him. To Republicans, partisanship must end at the nations borders. That is why they supported Bill Clinton when he launched an attack on Iraq during his impeachment trial. It is also why they are supporting Obama today. This is a significant contrast between Republicans and Democrats, since Democrats have no problem at all in undermining a Republican President, regardless of consequences. With regard to Richard Nixon and later Gerald Ford, the Democrats in congress literally engineered a defeat. With regard to George Bush, they did everything possible to undermine him, including numerous votes to cut off funding, even though most of them had voted to authorize the war.
But with regard to Afghanistan, Michael Steele may have got it right. He just did a lousy job of making the case. I believe that George Bush knew from the start that he could never succeed in building a nation in Afghanistan, but he could remove the Taliban from power and could deal a significant blow to al Qaeda. During the Bush administration we built very little in Afghanistan and mostly kept a limited force there to keep a lid on things. Democrats claim that Bush should have concentrated on Afghanistan rather than Iraq, but perhaps Bush never intended much more in Afghanistan, because he knew Afghanistan was very different. Obama came in and decided that that the real war against al Qaeda was in Afghanistan, even though al Qaeda had been thrown out of Afghanistan by Bush. It was Obama who decided to make this the front line of the war on terror and who has given orders to our troops designed to win the hearts and minds of people by refusing to fire back.
If Bush had stayed in office, I do not believe he would have sent many more troops to Afghanistan. I think he would have opted for some version of the status quo: enough troops to keep the Taliban and particularly al Qaeda out of power, but no major commitment of forces. Unfortunately Bush will not say, because unlike Bill Clinton, George Bush refuses to undermine a sitting U.S. President. In any event, Steele may be more right than not. We did go into Afghanistan for the right reason, we needed to remove the Taliban from power and we definitely had to destroy those al Qaeda safe havens. But, we did not need to try and bring civilization to a part of the world that has resisted it for over 2,000 years.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/07/06/michael-steele-right-about-obama-and-afghanistan-war/
TDM