Woodward, Resilience, and Virtues of Partisan Foreign Policy

On the National Interest's Skeptics blog, I have a new post about my lack of outrage over the revelations in Bob Woodward's new book about Obama and Afghanistan.

Unlike John Bolton and Heritage, I don't think that the President's comment that we can withstand another terrorist attack like 9-11 is offensive. After all, we can, and saying so doesn't mean you want to try it.

As I put it there:

What’s truly outrageous is the notion that the only valid response to terrorism is cowering fear at home and endless warfare abroad. Somehow, for much the right, crediting our enemies with the ability to wreck our society is required, and it is verboten to say that we are something other than a pathetic, brittle nation that cannot manage adversity.

I also fail to get upset about the President's worry that expanding the war in Afghanistan would alienate his base. Politics not only doesn't stop at the water's edge; it shouldn't. I'm not sure exactly when popular checks on the war-making power went out of style, but I think we could use more of that in Afghanistan, not less. If pandering to the base can get us out of there one of these years, pander away.

The solution to bad policies is better politics, not no politics, to paraphase.

*I also recommend Paul Pillar's post on the same subject. He says that the real news here is the Pentagon's refusal to offer the President a policy alternative between population centric counter-insurgency and exit.