I first posted the link to the final debate video in my post on this blog titled Final Debate in Massachusetts Senatorial Special Election.

On the Worcester T & G message board, I got into a discussion about something that Coakley said during the debate.

The anti-Coakley crowd pounced on what they thought was a big gaffe. We argued over exactly what she said, but until this morning I had not understood exactly how good her comment actually was.

The conversation with the moderator, David Gergen went something like this (as well as I could transcribe it):

Coakley: If the goal was and the mission in Afghanistan was to go in because we believed the Taliban was giving harbor to terrorists, we supported that. I supported that goal. They’re gone. They are not there any more. They are in Yemen, apparently Pakistan. Let’s focus our efforts in where al-Qaida is and not …

Gergen: Would you then send troops into Yemen where al-Qaida is?

We went into Afghanistan because al-Qaida had a safe haven there and they used it to plot the attack on 9/11. We wanted to eliminate the people who planned and helped carry out this attack.

So now, we are bogged down with thousands of troops in Afghanistan out of the fear that al-Qaeda might come back to Afghanistan if we left there. Did anybody but Martha Coakley make the connection that the failed Christmas bomb plot was similar to what drove us to Afghanistan, but it did not come from Afghanistan? The plot was hatched in Yemen.

The plot could have been foiled by good intelligence and police work instead of using our military, but it was not foiled that way.

Perhaps we have our focus in the wrong place. Well, what do you know, that is what Martha Coakley said.

Good out of the box thinking Martha.  Prior to this exchange I had been a reluctant supporter of President Obama’s plan to escalate the troops in Afghanistan.  Now I am beginning to have third thoughts.  While we worry about al-Qaida’s possible return to Afghanistan, they have already moved their base of operations.  A military response to al-Qaida is never going to be nimble enough to get the job done.