I was totally for this in 2003. I was wrong. These guys are my generation basically. I am a shade older than they are but I had a bunch of friends and family that were involved in our Middle East adventures over the past 20 years and it has led me to a bit of a recalibration in how I view our role and the role of our military in the world. We are not nation builders. We can't export our way of life by the barrel of a gun to people who have a culture that is just fundamentally different from ours. Sadam sucked but what filled that power vacuum is arguably worse. In the case of Afghanistan, the guy we wanted was sitting in a compound basically protected by one of our "allies" in the region. We left and the guys we replaced walked right back into power.
We need to pick and choose where we are willing to spend our blood and treasure and when we do so, the gloves have to be off and there has to be a clear objective.
This was a big mistake. One I exhuberantly supported. I think this is what is giving people some pause about Ukraine when we hear the same people who argued us into that war basically saying "blank check".