As someone who was solidly against the war back then, I’m remembering the emotion and shared trauma and still unclear that a longer, deeper debate would’ve changed things. Now that it’s super unpopular and President Bush has continued to own the war, a lot of people are let off the hook who weren’t exactly models of sense and sensibility 8 years ago.

I think to say we didn’t have debate because it was “unpatriotic” is to rewrite history and ignore all the people who didn’t participate in the debate because they felt somebody had to pay. Let’s face it, that’s not a particularly novel human reaction.

Maybe debate would’ve changed things. Maybe Hussein would’ve tripped, died, and left a succession crisis resulting in a democratic overthrow in 2003. Maybe he’d have declared war on Iran again and we’d be looking at full scale war in the gulf, the world will never know.

Generally, I don’t think much is to be gained by counterfactuals beyond feelings of smug enlightenment. I care much more about gleaning lessons from the past and working to apply them prospectively than I do trading stories about how much better off the world would be if people had done things my way differently.

KvH might as well have said, “well if Belichick had made another play, the Pats would’ve won.” Sure, but he might still have lost. Counterfactuals and monday morning quarterbacking make for conversational fodder but nothing useful. That’s all I’m saying.

Happy Thanksgiving, North!

Now how things would have gone had we not invaded Iraq and only had Afghanistan to focus on? I don’t know. Things would be a lot different if Saddam were still sitting in the middle east thumbing his nose at us and the Iranians.