I'm sure that in the aftermath of 9/11 most people who were less than enthusiastic about the war had a somewhat different body count calculus than those who supported it, placing a wee bit more emphasis on the lives of potential innocent civilian casualties than was allowable in our elite discourse at the time, but the point is that with hindsight it's rather clear that such people should have been listened to a bit more.
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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?
Umm, if anyone's listening, right now i'm saying "Don't go to Iran, bring the troops home, and train some special forces and law enforcement agencies to go after actual terrorists while working closely with our allies." It's a start, anyway. Once you're done with that, check back here and i'll tell you what to do next.
