1 is Beinart's caricature - evidence in support of 2.

1.  Afghanistan a mistake? -- it depends on how you want to ask the question.  I think a majority here say that it wasn't a mistake in terms of the goals that guided US policy in the fall of 2001.  But there have been lots of bad mistakes made since.  And where have we heard that?  Hmmm, maybe from ... John Kerry?

2.  Beinart an idiot? -- well, obviously, he's not helping himself out a lot with this latest piece

I'm gonna be nuanced here and say that in a way, I agree with those two statements, for the same reason: BushCo are almost 100% incompetent.  Given that, on the whole right now I still think attacking Afghanistan was better than not attacking Afghanistan, but my initial worries were all based on my view that BushCo would screw it up and make things worse.  (Jury still out on that, maybe?  Yes, helped vs Al Qaeda, but the drug runners are making a killing..)  

Likewise, I don't think the TNR guys are idiots but it was pretty dumb of them to not even seriously consider the possibility Bush would totally screw up things in Iraq and make the whole situation worse.  Also, in tone they are usually sour, and often ferociously negative, and they seem much more ready to bash fellow Dems/liberals than to stand up for anything.  If the objective is to build ourselves a clear set of principles to stand on, I don't see why that cannot be done without - as Beinart does here - going after some other segment of the left in the process.  If you support a Marshall Plan approach to fighting terrorism, than surely you can talk about that effectively without bringing up whatever Michael Moore supposedly thinks, or whatever MoveOn's people said four years ago.  (They probably forgot about the Afghan war thing themselves!)

(#2 is an issue of a few inflammatory remarks and overall tone as it is about complete agreement or disagreement over substance)

However, I think Bush waited too long to go after Afghanistan. And I think he did that because he really wanted to attack Iraq all along and had trouble shifting gears.

Any competent president, Democrat or Republican, would have gone after AQ in Afghanistan, then stuck around to do as well as they could with reconstruction, while using other resources (esp. non military) to flush out and arrest the remaining AQ members.

As someone who thinks Howard Dean's position (Afghanistan yes, Iraq no) is the only sensible one, I don't know, but I'd suspect that's a pretty common position around here.

That is, the people who opposed Afghanistan probably oppose all wars, and while there are chunk of people like that here, they aren't in the majority.

that a substantial majority did not support attacking Afghanistan.