Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Eight years after the September 11th attacks, we have an opportunity to reflect on that tragic day and the lives that were lost in the attacks. It’s also a time to think about where we stand on national security and what threats the terror networks that attacked us eight years ago pose today and how we can best address them.

And I have to say that I’ve seen some worrisome signs in how we’re debating Afghanistan these days that maybe we haven’t learned to move beyond the raw emotionalism and simplistic debates to assess what the stakes are and how we as a country can most effectively keep our country safe.

It struck me in some of the reactions I got to this brief appearance I had on NPR’s “Morning Edition” this week, in which I reiterated a lot of the points I made with Hardin Lang in this article for Foreign Policy.com.

One Hill staffer, who shall remain nameless, wrote: “Aren’t we in or out?” That question was perhaps the stupidest question I have seen in a long time on Afghanistan, and it comes from an intelligent, informed person.

The reaction reminded me of one important point I took away from the Iraq debates of 2005-2008. One sign that the wheels are really coming off for a particular national security policy question is when the wise women and men of national security start discussing a particular question in terms one would use at a pep rally for football game. When you start seeing a certain set of terms on your op-ed pages like “win,” “lose,” ‘victory,” or “defeat” in talking about conflicts like Afghanistan, you know pretty much that the person has crossed the line from doing policy analysis to policy advocacy.

When you see people debating things like whether Afghanistan is a “war of choice” versus a “war of necessity,” you know that we’re for the most part just dabbling in rhetoric and not engaging in a clear argument that defines what it is that we are trying to do, whether we have the means to achieve those goals, and at what cost.

Somehow editors of many leading newspapers have allowed analysts to avoid defining clear policy objectives for Afghanistan and arguments that make the case for employing available resources to achieve those objectives.

Afghanistan is not a football game, and policy analysts and public servants should avoid the “rah-rah” pep rally approach to debating national security. The current debate, to the extent that we’ve even had one, leaves the impression that it’s either full blown nation-building counterinsurgency in Afghanistan with the maximum number of troops or get them all out.

The range of policy options in Afghanistan is much broader than that –- and the variables are much more numerous than the number of troops the United States has on the ground, such as:

- What is the current nature of the threats posed by terror networks from Afghanistan? What are the most effective and efficient means to address those threats?

- How do Afghan leaders gain legitimacy and power to govern? What are ways Afghan leaders can work to settle their differences on sharing power – both the Afghan actors that participated in the political processes like elections and the actors that reject those processes and seek to exert influence by other means (like the Taliban)?

- What are the most effective ways to enhance the capacity and willingness of Afghan leaders and institutions to govern justly and effectively? What is the capacity of the U.S. and other actors from outside Afghanistan to achieve tangible gains in Afghanistan, and at what cost?

- How much should the United States versus other actors around the world shoulder the burden in Afghanistan? Why isn’t Afghanistan viewed by more countries as a global security challenge, as opposed to just a national security issue for the United States and some other countries? (A few months ago, for example, I asked the question – where is the Muslim world on Afghanistan in this piece)

That’s just a start at some of the questions, but it’s rare to find discussions in the op-ed pages of the leading newspapers. Les Gelb did a few months ago in the New York Times, and Chuck Hagel’s recent piece raised important points, and Nicholas Kristof did a fine job this past weekend, but the main debate as thus far centered on the important, but not the only question, of U.S. troop levels.

At this point in Afghanistan policy, my view is that it would be extremely unwise -– actually foolish -– to send more troops or money without a stronger commitment from Afghan partners to fight the narco-trafficking that fuels the insurgency and deal with the corruption that makes Transparency International give Afghanistan such a poor ranking, among other problems.

I don’t think it’s such a radical position -– we need Afghan partners with the same sorts of commitment to the objectives –- if we are going to have any hope of achieving progress in Afghanistan. And it would be unwise for us at this stage to send more U.S. taxpayer money and troops without Afghan leaders making a stronger commitment to us. Given what I heard from Stuart Bowen and General Arnold Fields, the special inspectors general for Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, in this panel I moderated here at the Center this spring, I have serious concerns about our government’s capacity to use these resources wisely in Afghanistan, even before we consider the problems associated with possible partners in Afghanistan who might not have the same commitment.

But the reaction I got from some people to what I thought was a sensible proposition – that we need partners in Afghanistan as committed to the sorts of things we want to achieve – if we’re going to have any hope of seeing our investments achieve progress.

As the Obama administration moves towards making its next decisions on Afghanistan, here’s a plea: let’s move beyond the cheerleading pep rally sort of debate that we’ve seen in the op-ed pages and media, a debate that barely rise above the ‘less filling/tastes great” dialectic seen in this classic commercial.

David Corn has some good thoughts on the Obama administration’s disuse of the “nation at war” frame, something that the Bush administration relentlessly used to justify everything from torture to tax cuts. While it’s of course important to remember that we have troops in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan, repeatedly declaring the nation ‘at war’ ““is an exercise in defining the country,” Corn writes, “and eight years after 9/11, Obama clearly wants to step back from turning ‘at war’ into an essential part of the nation’s self-image.”

While no citizen should forget that US troops are dying and killing in two countries–and that these wars need to be resolved — [there] is no need to make war a defining characteristic of the United States, not even when the threat from al Qaeda remains, not even on the anniversary of 9/11.

In a key moment in a January 2008 primary debate, candidate Obama answered a question about Iraq by saying “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place.” Obviously, it takes more than nine months of a presidency to change such a mindset, but, as with his administration’s re-contextualizing the fight against extremism as one of intelligence partnerships and global law-enforcement, and not unilateral military action, the president’s decision not to assert “nation at war, coming through” at every turn is a small but important move in that direction.

On a related point, I realized that I neglected to acknowledge something important in yesterday’s post theorizing about the effects in Iran of Obama’s outreach — and Bush’s belligerence — toward Iran: It’s not all about us. While arguments about America are a feature of Iranian politics, focusing too much on how this or that American policy or behavior affects Iranian politics really underplays the extent to which current political conflicts in Iran have been generated from within Iran. U.S.-Iran relations are only one aspect of the upheaval, which is rooted in disagreements among Iranians about what it means to be a modern Iranian, and what it means to be an Islamic state (and resulting in the efforts of a particular faction to settle these disagreements by force.)

Some Iranians, like Ahmadinejad and those around him, believe that the international community is irretrievably hostile to the Islamic Republic, and will do anything to undermine it, and thus Iran has to maintain an aggressive posture and never show anything that could be construed as weakness. Other Iranians, like Mousavi and many of those around him, believe that Iran can take a more conciliatory path while still staying true to the principles of their revolution. These sorts of disagreements should not be at all unfamiliar to Americans.

Most right-wingers and health care reform haters have at least conceded that there’s language in the House health care bill that explicitly excludes undocumented immigrants, but none of them are willing to swallow their pride and admit that Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) blow-up was also factually incorrect. Republicans incessantly continue citing “loopholes” that they suggest actually do render President Obama a liar, or at the very least, misinformed.

Wilson has accused “liberals who want to give health care to illegals” of using his opposition to distract from the debate at hand. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) and House Immigration Reform Caucus (HIRC) Chairman, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) have both suggested that President Obama was either lying or talking about “some other bill.” Former Gov. George Pataki (R-NY) says Obama’s comments raise “questions” and former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has also come out of the woodwork to say “Joe is right, Obama is a liar.” Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) said that he was outright insulted by Obama’s myth-breaking, and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), RNC Chairman Michael Steele, and many others have defended Wilson’s position by slamming Democrats for voting down stringent verification mechanisms. Watch it:

Democrats have made it pretty clear that they’re not interested in providing “illegals” health care. Their decision to vote against verification amendments had more to do with the fact that one would’ve given private insurance providers unprecedented access to the sensitive income and identity information and another would have blocked several categories of legal immigrants from receiving benefits. Nonetheless, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) have expressed that they’re willing to back down.

Baucus and Conrad should tread carefully. Not only would such a move validate the lies and fears that right-wingers have stoked in both the immigration and health care debates, it could also seriously hurt all Americans. When Colorado passed a series of stringent measures requiring applicants for most state benefits to prove their immigration status, it cost the state $2 million in its first year alone and — despite having promised to eliminate 50,000 undocumented immigrants from the state’s public benefit rolls — state officials could not prove that any undocumented immigrants were being denied public services. The Government Accountability Office further found that documentation requirements used to prove Medicaid eligibility caused thousands of eligible U.S. citizens to lose Medicaid coverage without saving taxpayers any money: for every $100 spent by taxpayers to implement documentation requirements in six states, only 14 cents were saved. Yesterday, Bilbray announced on CNN that the E-Verify program should be used to check eligibility. However, the Immigration Policy Center points out that the web-based program has a “high probability for database errors.” A human resources association claims that E-Verify has a 4.1% error rate — one that could grow if implemented on a larger scale and deny or dely health care coverage for a sizable percentage of the American population.

It would be one thing if such mechanisms were necessary to block undocumented immigrants from getting health care, but there’s several barriers already in place. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act prohibited undocumented immigrants from being eligible for most public benefits and codified procedures for verifying eligibility. There’s nothing in the bill that changes that or the stringent verification mechanisms in Medicaid discussed above. Tax policy experts have further pointed out that it would be difficult for undocumented immigrants to even apply for subsidies, because tax returns are required to determine a person’s eligibility and the few undocumented immigrants who do file taxes using phony Social Security numbers almost always use “personal identification numbers” from the IRS, which immediately flag their immigration status.

Health-care reform proponents claim that few undocumented immigrants enrolled in Medicaid even before proof of citizenship was required. If that’s true, Republicans are essentially belly-aching over a non-issue. Ultimately, a flawless verification mechanism simply doesn’t exist and it’s probably worse to deny hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of eligible citizens and legal immigrants health care coverage than to let a small handful of ineligible immigrants get health insurance that they need just as much as anyone else. After all, an effective health care system covers as many people as possible and as Matt Yglesias points out, it’s too bad the President and Democrats are getting pounded for doing something that they’re not, despite the fact that it’s actually not a bad idea if you care more about what makes economic and moral sense and less about what makes sense politically.