A couple of days after Defense Secretary Gates said in a speech that “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,” Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, another leader I respect, has been backing him up. On Hardball with Chris Matthews on Monday and during a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Tuesday, Webb expressed the view that our current approach in Afghanistan and Iraq is “not a workable model” for fighting terrorism.
Here is what he said on Hardball: “I wrote a piece a day after 9/11, talking about my views on how you should fight international terrorism. I had one paragraph that said do not occupy territory, because in a situation such as international terrorism, you lose your maneuverability and you create situations where you have to go on defense to defend the territories that you occupied. So looking forward, what Secretary Gates is saying has a lot of wisdom to it. . . . There comes a time, too, when you have to recognize that we’re in a little bit of mission creep in Afghanistan. There’s only so much we will be able to do until we leave. The best way to address international terrorism is through mobility and through maneuverability.”
On Morning Joe today, Joe Scarborough, a critic of our involvement in Afghanistan, spoke to NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd, who reported that there were a lot of private conversations about pulling the plug in Afghanistan. Gates has given the president some cover, and Webb is helping. Todd says the three men who would need to be convinced are Senators McCain, Graham and Lieberman.