******** Wow, where to start with this?
First, this was not c case of a sovereign nation attacking the U.S. What justified the bombing of Afghanistan was the political, and not altogether obvious, conclusion that the Taliban was repsonsible for the 9-11 attack. Now, I may have been snoozing at the time, but my recollection is that the "left" was asking for an explicit connect-the-dots on this very point. In fact, this is the case against John Walker -- show that his allegiance to the Taliban is sufficient to make him complicit in the 9-11 attacks. So, there has not yet been a case made to prove the point Berube takes as axiomatic.
Second, the need for nation-building assumes that you are going to obliterate the country, which assumes (at least in self-rightous America) that you are justified in obliterating the country. So, who is out there taking the positions (1) we must rebuild Afghanistan and (2) we must not obliterate the Taliban? You are committed to (1) only if you are committed to obliterating the Taliban -- a political conclusion for which there was little (if any) real debate in the U.S.
eric
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