I admittedly don't know enough about Afghanistan to blog about it as an issue, but here's something I've noticed about the "Get Afghanistan Right" effort from an organizing perspective: outside of groups that are centered around a specific conflict, such as Iraq or Israel/Palestine, we don't have a progressive foreign policy infrastructure. As Alex often points out, arguing that we need to pull out of Iraq to escalate in Afghanistan might be a strong argument for withdrawal from Iraq, but it doesn't fit as well as a component of a comprehensive progressive foreign policy strategy.

We need progressive foreign policy institutions that formulate policy, lobby, blog, take electoral action, and work the media. Labor and environmental groups, despite all their faults, are good at this. They create arguments, give them credibility among a wider audience, and ultimately see them turned into real public policy. We might not know what environmental or workers rights fights are going to look like in 10 years, but we know that we're going to have them. Progressive institutions that comprehensively address these groups of issues are almost always key players in individual issue fights, even without knowing what these fights will be in advance.

How "credibility" is determined in the foreign policy world is deeply flawed -- there's a tendency in our discourse, even on the progressive side, to fetishize "manly" individuals and positions. That's fine for individual issue fights or elections, but bowing to these narratives doesn't work as a long-term strategy. Although "chickenhawks" is a useful term that has helped us identify hypocrisy and win elections, the underlying attitude behind the concept can easily be turned against progressives (i.e. weak whiny liberals who aren't serious). This isn't to say that "tough" positions don't have merit, but if we consistently turn to them for validation it skews our thinking and ultimately affects our policy views. We need institutions that understand how to shift the consensus and give progressive foreign policy positions credibility without needing to seek legitimacy from "tough" individuals.

The lack of such an institution is part of what makes organizing opposition to escalation in Afghanistan difficult. I'm in no position to argue whether escalation in Afghanistan is the right thing to do, but I do know that there's a large portion of the base that opposes escalation and isn't represented institutionally. Although existing progressive foreign policy orgs are excellent at what they do, they either have too narrow of a focus, come from a mindset that is incompatible with the progressive base, or are too afraid to come out strongly against the incoming administration.