Withdrawing now, and chopping it up into regions won’t end the war; it’ll create several new ones, according to Donald Horowitz.
It is of course still possible to argue that withdrawal is preferable to an open-ended involvement, on the grounds that the high costs to us of involvement exceed the high costs of withdrawal. But the opposite position–which happens to be mine–is also tenable: The consequences of withdrawal are worse than the costs of continuing involvement. That is where the debate should be joined, based on a careful assessment of the comparative advantages of each course and of middle courses, such as partial withdrawal. That would be a serious debate, rather than the vacuous one that Congress has so far engaged in. Is it too much to ask that Congress rise to the occasion, as it did during the Cold War, and get serious about assessing the interests of our country?
Too much to ask of this congress?
Leave a Reply