Jeff Jacoby has a nice piece up describing the Obama / GOP alliance for Afghanistan. I find the spectacle sad but educational: Bush, because he was by and large principled (even when I disagreed with him) — and somewhat awkward — helped bring out the moral bankruptcy of his opponents.

Throughout the 1990s, I heard complaints that George Bush (I) hadn't "finished the job"; he'd abrogated his responsibility to the world by leaving Saddam, who was a huge and dangerous threat to the mideast, according to detractors like Al Gore. So Democrats voted in favor of the Iraq war. Later, the memo became: "we're against the Iraq war, and always have been." Democrats portrayed themselves pro-war hawks, with the Iraq war (a "war of choice") a distraction from the real war in Afghanistan, which they were heartily in favor of all along.

But now another memo has been issued, apparently:

Democrats on Capitol Hill have begun to distance themselves from Obama on the war. Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, claiming that "our military presence in Afghanistan may be undermining our national security," wants the troops withdrawn. Massachusetts congressman Jim McGovern complained last week that "we're getting sucked into an endless war here." Two Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee -- Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island -- are signaling that any presidential request for more troops in Afghanistan "probably will run into resistance," the AP reported over the weekend.

So what will the new 'narrative' be? That we shouldn't have removed the Taliban from power in response to 9/11? That the war could have been won, but Bush lost it? (That's going to be harder to sell with Obama's troop escalations.) We'll see.