Liberals Turn Against War in Afghanistan, Too

When the Iraq war was going badly, Bret Stephens writes in the Wall Street Journal, American liberals always defended efforts in Afghanistan—the “good war” the US couldn’t afford to lose. But now many of those same lefties say it’s time to bow out instead of getting bogged down in an unwinnable effort—just another case of liberals insisting any conflict is doomed to become “another Vietnam.”

The Taliban may be re-energized and corruption might plague all parts of government—but the real US achievement, says Stephens, is that Afghanistan is not a terrorist haven. “It was probably inevitable that the left would turn sharply against the war,” he writes, but we need to learn that not every conflict is doomed to become “a bloody, stalemated, morally and politically intolerable Sartrean nightmare.” (More liberals stories.)