Monday, August 25, 2003

Revisionism

Lately I've seen a lot of people implying that after 9/11 there was substantial opposition to the campaign in Afghanistan. The latest is Daniel Drezner who says this:

On foreign policy issues, Bush will stick to policy positions even in the face of considerable public criticism. This swerved him very well in the Afghanistan war, when skeptics questioned the wisdom of attacking so soon after 9/11, and called for more boots on the ground when the initial bombing campaign seemed to produce meager results. The administration stayed the course on this, and was ultimately vindicated.


I know that during this time Andrew Sullivan had written his 50th column about the 5th column and there were of course some who questioned the wisdom of winning the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan by bombing the shit out of them, but on what planet was there "considerable public criticism?"