During a speech before the Veterans of Foriegn Wars conference in Phoenix, President Barack Obama reiterated his commitment to fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, calling it a "war of necessity."
Oh yeah. Afghanistan. For a while there, so much debate centered on Iraq that Afghanistan felt almost like an afterthought.
Frankly, I got irritated in recent years when supporters of the war on Iraq would respond to any questions or criticism about it with an outpouring of rhetoric about coddling terrorists, media bias and abandoning our brave young men and women in harm's way.
After that, critics were supposed to be shamed into dropping the underlying question: Why did we invade Iraq to thwart an imminent attack on U.S. soil that turned out to be bullsxxt?
But I digress. I was talking about Afghanistan.
Other than a few dyed-in-the-wool peaceniks, nobody seemed to have a problem with that invasion. The attack prompting it sure as hell wasn't some hypothetical abstraction, as anyone around on Sept. 11, 2001, can tell you.
And the threat of al Qaeda in Afghanistan wasn't some phantom of conflated and distorted intelligence reports. Those guys were really over there and trying to kill us.
Personally, I have no problem with the U.S. military's presence in Afghanistan then or now. And yet, I can't help but wonder if it's going to cause us more trouble than even Iraq did.
Historically, that area of the world has been a sonofabitch to occupy, let alone control, for military powers from the British Empire to the Soviet Union. It's functioned as a black hole in which lives, resources and aspirations disappeared without a trace.
So if we're there, it better be out of necessity.
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