The left is right about everything, even when I'm not

Like Matt, I had these exact same arguments at university:

For all that anger, though, I recall that I also took it for granted that "we" -- the country, the government, the military, the CIA -- at a minimum were going to manage to get the bastards who did that. It hasn't, of course, worked out like that. We got some folks, but the ringleaders got away. We toppled the Taliban, but didn't really finish them off. And I remember self-righteously assuring the far-left types on campus who opposed the Afghan War that of course the USA would be fully committed to reconstructing Afghanistan -- it was a case where our moral obligations aligned almost perfectly with our narrowest interests in safety.

It's not terribly common for me to be out-lefted on my politics, and I remember dismissing arguments that the US would do more harm in Afghanistan than good. But if the Bush Administration has proven anything, it's that you can never be too cynical about their competence.

Something relevant to Canadian contemporary politics, from Atrios yet again:

We truly had an opportunity to Do The Right Thing - the Grand Military Humanitarian Intervention that the Peter Beinarts of the world dream about - and we didn't in large part because the "liberal hawks" thought it was more important to head to Baghdad than to do it right in Afghanistan.

I don't entirely understand how this was possible. I suppose they, like Yglesias, were so convinced that of course we would do the right thing as anything else defied comprehension, even as unfolding evidence to the contrary was everywhere.

The war in Iraq, the war that Michael Ignatieff supported - does he still support it? - was not the great war for Civilization they hoped it would be. Indeed, that Bad War was waged at the expense of something that could have been a Good War. For that, if nothing else, Ignatieff and his supporters still need to answer.