Brooks and Marcus on Health Reform, Afghan War

JIM LEHRER:

And to the analysis of Brooks and Marcus, New York Times columnist David Brooks, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus. Mark Shields is away.

David, speaking of Afghanistan, public opinion polls in the United States show support for that war is diminishing. What's going on?

DAVID BROOKS, columnist, New York Times: Right. Well, politically here at home, this is going to be a tough — I think quite a flashpoint issue. Right now, the majority of Democrats think the war is not worth fighting. The majority of Republicans think the war still is worth fighting.

But when you get into a political tussle, what's going to happen, you're going to get the left of the Democratic Party wanting to pull back. You're going to get the right of the Republican Party not wanting to support Barack Obama's war. And you're going have a left-right coalition against people like Jack Reed, Senator Jack Reed from Rhode Island, John McCain, Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, sort of a center group that's going to support the president, but this will be very tight and I think one of the big flashpoints of the fall.

JIM LEHRER:

Do you agree, a flashpoint of the fall?

RUTH MARCUS, Washington Post:

I think it could be a big flashpoint of the fall. It depends on how things develop there. But if it goes badly, if the troop levels turn out not to be adequate, if they ask for more troops, this could really be a flashpoint on the left, because what you have now is unhappiness with much of the administration's policies from the left in terms of Guantanamo detainees, the civil liberties issues of the war on terror. You have unhappiness with the way the health care fight has unfolded, with abandonment or seeming abandonment of the public option.

And now to have ousted, from the point of view of the left, one president and dealt with his war only to have another — and President Obama is doing exactly what he said he was going to do during the campaign in Afghanistan, but I think there's not a lot of, well, patience for that on the left.

DAVID BROOKS:

Right. And General McChrystal is going to come back in a few weeks and maybe not officially put the Obama administration in a corner by listing troops that he wants, but it's clear that they're going to ask for an increase of either 12,000 troops or up to 45,000 troops, in addition to the 60,000 there. That will be a very tough call.

JIM LEHRER:

What about Richard Haass, Richard Haass's piece — op-ed page piece today? He's a former Bush I administration official, now head of the Council on Foreign Relations. He says Afghanistan is not a war of necessity. Do you agree with him?

DAVID BROOKS:

Yes, I don't know what the jargon "war of choice, war of necessity" — I mean, to some extent, Abraham Lincoln had a choice before the Civil War. I mean, that's what they had an election about. So there's always war of choices.

But he is right in that op-ed piece to point out that it is a tough call, because it is going to be extremely expensive. The military people want to stay there a long time.

On the other hand, he comes down on the side that it is still a choice worth making, because we abandoned Afghanistan once. There is a high likelihood, near certainty that the Taliban would take over, because they're so rich now, if we left now. And what would be the repercussions of that?

So it's worth reminding us that we have a choice, but to me the choice is still one worth making.

RUTH MARCUS:

I think it was a war of necessity that has now morphed into a war of…

JIM LEHRER:

Going back to 9/11, you mean?

RUTH MARCUS:

Yes, exactly. I mean, it was necessary to oust the Taliban. It was necessary to respond to the attack. I think the quintessential war of necessity is the Second World War, where you — whatever it takes to defeat that menace is required.

Here, it's a much, much tougher choice. Afghanistan has consumed many, many different invaders, occupiers, liberators, whatever you want to call them, and public patience with it could be running quite thin. Yet the risk of abandoning it once again is also very — it's a very unpleasant set of choices that are going to confront the president.