He didn't bang the drums of war... He didn't give into Jingoism or play upon mass hysteria. He asked tonight for the support of the American People to support a massively unpopular effort. He asked us to remember why we "as a nation" decided to wage war against a part of the population in Afganistan.
He didn't have the cassus belli of a Pearl Harbor... He hasn't generated a "Gulf of Tonkin," in fact if anything he has rejected these props to forthrightly ask the American People to continue an effort (perhaps ultimately futile) to defend our ability to freely pursue our livelihood independently of outside influence. This, ultimately, is what we are fighting for.
Will the people of Afganistan be allowed to decide their own freedom just as we are? Or should someone else decide this along arbittrary (or religious) precepts? Certainly I'd be happy to leave these decisions to others, but what if the outcome is that the will of those people is repressed? And ultimately we must deal with the potential outcomes of these decisions.
Does our military involvement in this region make it more or less likely that we can influence the outcome? We do not know... but I do not believe that the presence of a multitude of our most idealistic and committed citizens (who have all volunteered to serve our nation) can be a negative issue in this choice the Afgans (and Pakistanis) must make.
To me, the question of what to do now in Afganistan is not one of economic choice... (although this was alluded to in today's speech). To me, the decision of what to do in Afganistan is a moral issue. Can we, in all rectitude, legitimately abandon this country to it's demons without a full effort to 1) eliminate those elements that are hostile to the US, and 2) attempt to provide the afghani people a window towards modernity?