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sebster wrote:

dogma wrote:Well, sort of. The point was that the public probably wouldn't have accepted special operations, and air strikes given the severity of 9/11.

I mean, this is an event that provoked dancing in the streets when the head of the perpetrating organization was killed roughly a decade later.

I think the public would have accepted whatever got Bin Laden. I don't think if Bin Laden was killed we would have heard anyone saying 'well sure, but I still wish they'd deployed conventional ground troops'.

The point is that if Bin Laden was killed but Afganistan was left as it was to train another generation of terrorists then the US would have been no safer, and that was intolerable at the time. So it made sense to overthrow the Taliban, and install a government that won't allow terrorist training camps.

It would hav e been much harder to launch suffiicent special forces to do so. Remember BL went to Pakistan only after being chased out of Afghanistan. I'd proffer everything was great right up to Tora Bora, then it went to .

dogma wrote:

sebster wrote:
I don't think, however, Afghanistan was a mistake in conception, merely one in execution. The stumbling block has always been Karzai, not the general impossibility of having a modern government more popular than the Taliban.

I don't think they can really be separated. It was always going to be very hard to establish a modern state in Afghanistan, and I think the US was influenced by hubris (not necessarily on the part of the state) in its decision making at the time.

As much as I hate to say it, I think Karzai is going to be the one who allows Afghanistan to prosper. This is a guy who will not utterly pander to the Americans (but he has them to thank for his position), and is willing to reach out to powerful factions and warlords within Afghanistan to weld some sort a peace. A true nationalist, he is probably going to allow the Taliban back into the fold of governance once the Americans leave because it is better to embrace your brothers than push them away, especially since the major difference between the government in power and the government in exile is who hates America more.

We jumped into Afghanistan when the public sentiment wanted revenge, and the politicians took advantage in launching two successive wars, a global campaign against terror, and a redirection of international efforts and a shift in the paradigm of how we interacted with other nations.

For the USA, this has not been its worst war. I'd wager Vietnam was far worse in the complete and utter loss Americans achieved there, or the War of 1812 where we had our capital burned down by the enemy. Hell, even the Bay of Pigs as an operation all go higher than the Afghanistan war in terms of total failure.

The only thing I am concerned about now is if we pull all our boots off the ground, does the remaining and lingering resentment mean the enemy takes the battle to our embassies and our home soil yet again? We're pulling back funding on security, and it will only mean that our ability to defend ourselves will decrease as time goes on.