Out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to their former president, Republicans have bound themselves to President Obama's counterinsurgency-cum-withdrawal strategy. They've done so because Obama's is an extension of George W. Bush's nation-building strategy, which we have pursued in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq from 2003.
That strategy has failed. The Iraqi government remains dysfunctional. Moqtada al-Sadr has returned to ensure instability and -- with others' help -- eventual dissolution. In Afghanistan the Karzai government cannot -- and in many instances refuses to -- establish the local governance to replace the Taliban where military gains are made. It's time for Republicans to put the war back in the center of American political debate and insist that nation-building be abandoned in favor of a strategy that will defeat the real enemy, not spend another moment fighting their proxies.
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