The tipping point in public support for America's war in Afghanistan may end up being a statement last week by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. He blurted out that the war in Afghanistan was "a war of Obama's choosing" and "not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in." Actually, President George W. Bush started the war in 2001, originally to go after Osama bin Laden and other terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. The effort expanded to become yet another unwise American nation-building operation that has been disastrous and deadly. President Barack Obama, however, has expanded the war in Afghanistan and even extended it into neighboring Pakistan.
After Mr. Steele spoke, Neoconservative leader William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, called the remarks "more than an embarrassment" and demanded Mr. Steele's resignation. And Talking Points Memo reported that, behind the scenes, numerous Republicans were trying to get rid of him.
Yet Mr. Steele remains in his post. "If they haven't gotten rid of him by now, he's safe," Justin Raimondo told us; he's editor of Antiwar.com and author of "Reclaiming the American Right," a maverick history of the conservative and libertarian movements. "It can't have escaped people's attention that Bill Kristol is attacking Steele, but Ron Paul is defending him – and he's still there."
Ron Paul, of course, is the libertarian Republican congressman who ran for president in 2008, warning then of the economic and military problems America now is suffering. "This is what people are saying in private, anyway, but they won't come out in public and say it," Mr. Raimondo said.
Americans also are seeing that the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war have been conducted at great cost, in dollars as well as in lives of Americans and others. The hundreds of billions of dollars spend on these wars has contributed to the record federal deficits of recent years.
"People on the streets recognize this – the tea partiers," Mr. Raimondo said. He said the tea partiers mostly have been focused on economics. But now people see that "we're bankrupt. Such people have more common sense than, say, members of Congress."
One local Republican who has seen what's going on is Assemblyman Chris Norby, R-Fullerton. Writing on Antiwar.com, he called on like-minded Republicans to "speak up. ... There are others who question an open-ended commitment of blood and treasure to prop up [Afghan President] Hamid Karzai and his illusory government.
"Ron Paul has issued a statement in support of our embattled party chief. Conservative commentators like George Will, Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan and the late Bob Novak long expressed similar concerns about open-ended nation-building experiments."
Mr. Norby, who traveled to Afghanistan in 1973, wrote, "Loyalty is to family and clan, not to a nation. Afghanistan has never had a top-down government and has fiercely resisted all attempts to impose one."
It is folly for America to remain in Afghanistan. America's longest war should go on no longer.