The Liberal War

The uproar against George Will for recognizing the futility of Afghan Reconstruction is as riotous as it is wrong. Once again, those who see nothing but disaster in prosecuting a war that 1) we cannot win, 2) has no clear objective, and 3) we cannot afford, are denounced as "un-American" and "traitorous." And we're supposed to believe the ones cheering on this war are America's friends.

God save us from such friends.

It's like those scenes in "Jackass" where the Evel Knievel wannabe hesitates as he balances in a lawn chair just before it starts to slide down the roofline of a three-story house. As he eyes the swimming pool far below, his "friends" and "supporters" yell, "Hey, man, you can do it! Ride that baby! Just because everyone else who's tried it ended up crippled shouldn't stop a real man!"

They're his friends, you see, because they have "faith" in his abilities.

A cracked skull later, a third of his friends are snickering, a third are gasping in horror, and the rest are calling 911.

Conservatives who still support the Afghanistan War need to absorb Gene Healy's warning about where we are now in what has become Obama's war:

It's not surprising that many see a parallel with Lyndon Johnson, another president of grand domestic ambitions who wrecked his presidency with an unwinnable war.

But there's another aspect of the LBJ parallel that deserves more attention. That's liberals' temperamental affinity for nation-building, which may help explain why Obama is doubling down on a bad bet.

Historian and Vietnam veteran Walter McDougall calls Vietnam the "Great Society War," one shaped by liberals' conviction that no social problem is too difficult for a determined and well-meaning government to fix.

Liberals know Afghanistan is their war. Read what Creative Loafing's John Grooms, who has never encountered an insult against the South he couldn't resist repeating, had to say last week about Afghanistan:

Our goal, remember, is to hammer al-Qaeda. So, let's hammer them: satellite intelligence, drones, missiles, whatever works. Our success in Pakistan shows that we can find these guys, even in the feared "border areas," so let's use our superior technology to nail al-Qaeda. If they pack up and run somewhere else, follow them and keep hammering them. That would seem sufficient for such a ragtag bunch.

That rah-rah talk sounds like it bled off the pages of the pro-war, any-war Free Republic, which calls itself "conservative," despite its blind support for the leftist goals proclaimed by the Neocons in their wars to promote the global democratic revolution.

Make no mistake: The current president and his supporters see their movement as the heir of the legacies of Lincoln, FDR, and LBJ. They intend to finish what LBJ failed to complete. It was during LBJ's administration that the domestic and foreign fronts of global reconstruction were pursued, and I mean, pursued vigorously. Vietnam might have failed, but LBJ's success at home gave us the Civil Rights Revolution, including Ted Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Reform Act, which is why we're currently undergoing a major demographic upheaval. Obama has made clear his intention to use his political clout to make that upheaval permanent with amnesty for illegal aliens.

And we all know how wars increase government's power.

Why do we want to support a regime that intends to channel growing government power into yet another crusade of leftist transformation at home and abroad?