George Will: Time to Get Out of Afghanistan

2 years ago

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Washington Post columnist and longtime hawk George F. Will declared in today's paper that it is time for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan. Beginning with a gruesome e-mail from a Marine who describes a friend's legs being blown off, Will sums up the situation bleakly: "Nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try."

The Afghan government controls only a third of the country, a nation that has never had a central government and has long been wracked by poverty. And Will points out overcoming a "culture of poverty" took years when targeting just a small area of the South Bronx in New York City. He writes: "Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor is squandered."

"I share many of these sentiments," fellow columnist and war supporter William Kristol blogged in response, "but they are sentiments. It would be better to base a major change in our national security strategy on argument -- especially if you're advocating a change from a policy that's been supported for eight years by a bipartisan consensus, and that involves the area that was the staging ground for Sept 11."

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Filed Under: Breaking News, Terror, National Security, International

Tagged: afghanistan, breaking news, breakingnews, george will, GeorgeWill, war on terror, WarOnTerror, washington post, WashingtonPost

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