Peace Out

During the 2008 presidential campaign, liberal voters beheld Barack Obama and saw a man of peace. No, Obama himself never pretended to be a pacifist. But for some of his most fervent supporters, few things were more bedazzling than Obama's clearly stated opposition to the Iraq War in the autumn of 2002, and his campaign's emphasis on getting America out of that country.

But Obama's presidency has hardly lifted America out of war. In Afghanistan, in fact, he has gotten America in deeper. Since taking office, Obama has ordered an additional 21,000 soldiers to Afghanistan—lifting U.S. troop levels there to nearly 70,000 by the end of this year. And there's likely more to come. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, is reportedly preparing to ask Obama for as many as 40,000 more soldiers. And while the White House is debating its plans for Afghanistan, no one in the administration is ruling out an increase of that size.

Thus far, however, the political heat on Obama has been mild—a candle flame compared to the blowtorch of fury directed at George W. Bush's war in Iraq. Sure, Democrats in Congress have begun to ask skeptical questions. But so far their doubts have been aired cautiously, in forums like this week's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Afghanistan, where the committee's chairman, John Kerry, has merely raised concerns about the conflict without directly challenging his president. Notably absent are the sort of theatrical protesters who routinely disrupted Bush-era congressional hearings on Iraq. (At one 2007 hearing, a member of the infamous antiwar outfit Codepink lunged at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with fake-blood-covered hands.) By comparison, when it comes to Afghanistan, the antiwar left has been remarkably docile. There are no mass demonstrations in the streets, no vigils outside the White House, no shrieking activists haranguing startled members of Congress in Capitol Hill hallways.

What happened to all that outrage? There are four key explanations.

1. The first is the most obvious: The partisan factor. Liberals certainly don't like seeing more Americans march off to battle. But when it comes to Obama, the old saying seems to prevail on the left: "He may be an SOB, but he's our SOB." Antiwar demonstrators were eager to shame and embarrass Bush, but many liberals would rather apply behind-the-scenes pressure on Obama. With the president fighting to pass health-care reform, stop global warming, and reform the financial system, few on the left want to make inadvertent common cause with the likes of Glenn Beck in eroding the president's political capital.

2. Then there's what you might call the "good war" dilemma. During the 2008 campaign Democrats argued in near unison that Afghanistan was a worthy conflict, in contrast to an illegitimate and immoral fight in Iraq. Whereas the left saw Iraq as the product of Bush's sinister deceptions, the Afghanistan campaign has long enjoyed broad legitimacy thanks to that country's direct link to the September 11 attacks. When Bush cited 9/11 and Al Qaeda to justify fighting on in Iraq, the left simply got more angry. This time, the argument actually works. One case in point: liberals who opposed the Iraq War were emboldened by the support they drew from military veterans who hated the war. Today, the liberal veterans group VoteVets.org is quiet on Afghanistan, saying it acknowledges the strategic importance of defeating the Taliban.

3. To a distant American viewer, Afghanistan simply doesn't inspire the visceral horror of Iraq in its most violent days. Western viewers have largely been spared ghoulish videos of beheadings and charred bodies. Spectacular car bombings, which make for gripping television footage, are far less common in Kabul than they were in Baghdad, and there are fewer reporters there to cover them. In the Taliban, America is fighting a relatively defined enemy, and we don't feel caught in the middle of an uncontrollable civil war as we did in Iraq. Moreover, civilian deaths in Afghanistan, while troublingly high—they reached a peak of 261 in May—are dramatically lower than they were in Iraq in 2006, when there were 3,159 in July alone. And while U.S. casualties have risen to tragic new levels (77 dead in August), that figure peaked at 131 in Iraq in May 2007.

4. Finally, there's the fact that, to those who listened carefully, Obama did, after all, warn Americans that a hard road lay ahead in Afghanistan—and that he was determined to follow it. Some people may not have absorbed the implication of Obama's view that Afghanistan is "the central front in the war on terror," or his vow that he would quickly send more troops to the country. But it was clear where Obama stood then, and thus difficult for liberals to scream betrayal now.

Of course, a portion of the far left opposed invading Afghanistan from the start, and sees Obama as a tool of the corporate establishment. But even the ANSWER coalition, the hard-core leftist group that spearheaded huge protests in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, has had early trouble mustering substantial protests against a figure as popular among liberals as Obama. That's undoubtedly why antiwar leaders are increasingly shifting their message to target far-less-revered congressional Democrats. "It's not a frontal assault against Obama on our part," one ANSWER organizer recently explained to NPR. Likewise, a Codepink leader recently explained on the group’s Web site that "Congress, not Obama, bears a heavy weight for these wars." Unfortunately for them, it's a lot less fun for a young liberal activist to denounce Harry Reid outside the Capitol than it was to shout "War criminals!" at the Bush White House. There are, however, increasing stirrings on the left. Some antiwar outfits are showing defensiveness about their lowered profile—a sign of increasing pressure from their followers. ("Yes, Codepink is still here, still against the wars," announces a statement on the group's Web page. The group assures restless members that it has taken such actions as "holding a weekly peace vigil in Laramie, Wyo.")

Others are taking more action: Win Without War, an antiwar coalition headed by former Maine congressman Tom Andrews, has founded the Afghanistan Action Network, designed to mobilize opposition to a conflict, the group says, that "could become President Obama’s Vietnam—an unending conflict that could become an albatross around the neck of a nation and president we all need to succeed." Oct. 8 is the eighth anniversary of the first American airstrikes on Afghanistan, and some antiwar activists are trying to mobilize showy demonstrations to mark the occasion. But they may find poor turnout among liberals who still view Barack Obama as their potential savior.