Afghanistan is not only President Obama's war, but also what he now calls "a war of necessity." For the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard N. Haass, who was head of policy planning at the State Department in the run-up to the Iraq war, who voted for Mr. Obama, Afghanistan is a "war of choice, not of necessity," that he fears we will learn to regret. This also reflects public opinion: Half the American people are against the Afghan war.
Mr. Haass' latest book, "War of Choice, War of Necessity," makes clear that Iraq was a war of choice, not necessity. It also was a huge distraction from the Afghan war, which got shortchanged as hundreds of billions of dollars were poured into the Iraq conflict.
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