[sailaway21]

Seemingly lost in the non-debate currently taking place over Iraq versus Afghanistan is the relative strategic importance of each.

Afghanistan is a poor benighted country of little significance even in historical terms. It strains the mind to imagine Afghanistan as other than a third world country even fifty years from now. The words great Afghani cultural tradition ring hollowly. The fact is that were Afghanistan not the rental property of nascent Islamism the world would little care nor devote much time to contemplations about it's existence. Our sole goal should be to prevent it's becoming a renewed training area and staging ground for Islamic terrorism directed at the West. I suspect that nation-building efforts there are more likely to reveal the hubris of the neo-conservative philosophy than they are to implant the seeds of a recognizable democracy to western eyes.

Iraq, on the other hand, is at the virtual epicenter of what will likely be the most important world real-estate of the 21st century. And Iraq is far more important strategically. That is to say, Iraq is a strategic interest while Afghanistan is no more than a tactical field of combat. The western world has a vital interest in not only Iraqi oil but in Iraqi stability. That stability could be established in a democratic way, recognizable to the West, is the pipe dream of just a few years ago that is no longer just a flight of fancy. The implications for the region are enormous. The implications for the West might be cataclysmic. It makes perfect sense to imagine paying the price of long term US-involvement within Iraq. It may be of a higher priority to the US than a European presence. The relevance of NATO, or irrelevance, is painfully obvious and more pointed than at any time in the last thirty years of struggling for relevance.

The debate and wrangling over our presence in either of the countries is mere partisan politics with nothing of long-term strategic interest involved. It certainly reveals little, if anything, of what long term US foreign policy should resemble. It is grand-standing and posturing of the most craven sort because it ignores what are the real issues of the next decade and beyond. Will the US be required to continue it's transformation into Fortress America or will there be changes within the Middle East that obviate that need. Now that is something that we could and should be talking about.