Atrios on Afghanistan

Worth reading:

Discussions of the utility of the conflict always took a backseat to the perceived moral righteousness of it. Yes we were attacked. Yes that gave us the "right" to do "something" and perhaps something which involved civilian casualties. But, ultimately, we must look back and ask: what did we achieve? At what cost (to us and to others)? Was there a better way?

As has been the case for some many things these past years the choices were never "nothing" or "Pony plan." The choices were always "nothing" or "George Bush's plan." The failure to comprehend that simple fact has prevented members of our very serious crowd of pundits from listening to or admitting to the validity of criticism of so many things. Years later, opponents of the Iraq invasion are almost entirely absent from our mainstream our discourse even though they were the ones who were pointing out what was going wrong in real time even as the Weekly Standard cheerleaders were simply telling us that hope was a plan and that clapping louder was the best thing we could do.

[...]

For years it's been a verbal tic of many Iraq war opponents to assert "I supported the war in Afghanistan..." as a necessary prophylactic to charges of "unserious peacenik dirty fucking hippie!" The question is dangling, however... "should you have?" At the very least, shouldn't you have tried to open the door to critics who were less than supportive, not because they hate America, but because they were concerned that George Bush would fuck the whole thing up? Because it was hard to imagine that they'd actually go in and rebuild the place?