Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Wall Street Journal‘s favorite former Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, predicts that “Afghanistan will be a quagmire for Al Qaeda” provided, that is, that we don’t listen to the “whispers on both the left and the right [warning] that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, that we should abandon any hope of nation-building there, [and that] additional forces sent there will only get bogged down in a quagmire.” For us.

So, to clarify, it seems that Afghanistan will be a quagmire for someone, and ensuring that it is quagmire for the other guys requires that we send more U.S. troops, more U.S. civilian personnel, and more U.S. taxpayer dollars into the country.  Got it. (For reference, Merriam-Webster defines “quagmire“ as “a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position.”)  

Lieberman is not alone in calling for firm resolve in the face of “difficult, precarious or entrapping” challenges — firm resolve measured, as it always is for the hawks, by more troops and more money. Distressed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s suggestion that we need more achievable goals in the graveyard of empires, the Washington Post, called on political leaders “to make clear to the country” that the mission in Afghanistan “will require years more patience and sacrifice to get right.” 

It is premature to predict that President Obama will revisit his pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan, but I’m encouraged that the White House and the Pentagon are on the same page — determining the appropriate strategy, first, and then allocating resources commensurate with that strategy. (In other words, not falling victim to the trap that more troops is synonymous with success, and less troops is the equivalent of surrender.) The essential questions include “What exactly will these additional troops be doing?” and “How likely is it that they will achieve success where our efforts over the past few years have largely failed?”

For my part, I’m more convinced by the arguments of those who were right about Iraq before it was fashionable, and who know a thing or two about what sacrifice and firm resolve actually entails. On that score, I highly recommend Andrew Bacevich’s article in Newsweek. 

And for those of you who think that such warnings have only risen to the surface in the face of our recent difficulties in Afghanistan, I will merely point out that my colleague Ben Friedman was out in front on this issue nearly a year ago, and there have been cautious notes sounded on nation building in Afghanistan almost from the moment we went in.

Perhaps, now, someone in the White House is listening.