It's really just a quick question. Poll below. There's so much running for political cover about it - when we oppose the Iraq war, we make it "okay" by saying we supported the military action against Afghanistan. Many of us did the same in 2004 in an attempt to prove foreign policy credibility (the unspoken bullying assumption being: the only way to have any foreign policy credibility is to support the war in Afghanistan). Poll and further thinking below.
There's of course a lot of room for nuance here. I personally did not support military action in Afghanistan because I felt we had not exhausted all other productive avenues yet. I very much saw the al Qaida thing as an international, cooperative law enforcement matter. Before we started bombing Afghanistan, didn't we actually see evidence of major diplomatic possibilities? I even thought I saw press reports about Afghan warlords offering to actually turn Osama over. I understood the emotional desire to turn Afghanistan into a parking lot, but I'm a big believer in making the solution fit the problem, and even today I don't know what the hell the problem was that we solved. Defeated al Qaida? Nope. Got Osama? Nope. Killed all the warlords? Nope. Annihilated the Taliban? Nope. Brought a pseudo-democracy to Afghanistan? Well, okay, but that seems like a solution to a different problem. Somehow I don't think that the reason 9/11 happened was because Afgahnistan didn't have Karzai in power. In what way did we "win", and why is it we should brag about supporting it?
So seriously, why do we hide behind supporting the military action against Afghanistan as some sort of political cover?
My own opinion, but I still believe we have a long way to go. All our protests against what Rove said just underscore our defense of a pretty lame Afghanistan policy. We're still manipulated into that one. I think the more honest response - even though it requires a bigger shift in debate - is that Bush's entire response to 9/11 was awful, that it should have been seen as a law enforcement matter, and that we should be investing more energy in trying to understand our enemy. When a leading Democrat can stand up and make the case that seeking to understand our enemy isn't the same thing as condoning or defending our enemy, then I think we will have made some progress.