Debating Afghanistan

I find it fascinating that the various people involved in debating our Afghanistan policy are getting increasingly vehement and public. Obviously this is an issue on which powerful people have widely diverging views are not afraid to let anyone know what they are. The news that the key figures on Obama's National Security Council were all leaning toward sending more troops has been followed just a day later by the news that our ambassador to Afghanistan opposes them. I think it is to Obama's credit that he is allowing this debate to go forward. I have complained before that our government regularly takes momentous decisions without thinking them through (the Bay of Pigs, the invasion of Iraq), and since there doesn't seem to be any particular urgency about this I think the drawn-out discussions are a good thing. Even though I still think Obama will in the end side with the theater commanders and send more troops, which I think is a terrible mistake. He is just too moderate to do anything so radical as walk away from a war he has said is "necessary."

Meanwhile, I have to wonder why the health care debate has to be all about cost and how everything will be paid for, but this doesn't seem to be an object when it comes to wars. It seems to me that any war worth fighting is worth raising taxes to pay for it, and if people don't want to pay those higher taxes, they don't really support the war, and ought to shut up and go home.