Today I learned everyone was against the Afghan war from the beginning

[Emrys]

65. I think you're reaching with this guff about "flushing out bin Laden"

as a post-justification for the Bush regime/PNAC's opportunistic actions.

The military action in Afghanistan began in 2001. Bin Laden was ultimately killed in 2011.

That's a heckuva long flush!

It's almost as if there was little interest in bin Laden's whereabouts and survival in the intervening years. A cynic might say that's because he'd served his purpose and was of no further interest or use.

We were a tiny percentage as an opposition. We knew we were banging our heads against a brick wall at the time, but we still turned out and argued vociferously against the tactics adopted, the ignoring of Saudi Arabians' roles in the 9/11 attacks, and the total lack of an exit strategy beyond "ach, it'll all work out" (that last argument would be reprised for Iraq not long after).

"The vast majority agreed with it" was what we were up against. Vast majorities have been in favour of all sorts of things throughout history. Some of them have led to wrongs we're struggling to right to this day.

Anyway, as some replies under the OP show, quite a few who were in favour of some sort of action against al Qaeda (conflated with Afghanistan) were not necessarily in favour of the form of action that was taken.