Reply #5: It's Iraq all over again [View All]

[zipplewrath]

Look, one can make a case for having decided to go into Afghanistan originally. The Taliban was openly cooperative with Bin Laden and Al Queada. These were the folks that attacked us. The problem of course is that the Taliban weren't an "occupying force" like we are. Although they were in essence and "external force" they existed because there was a serious power vacuum in that country. The "northern Alliance" was a band of war lords on their best day. So if you pushed out the Taliban, what were you going to have left? And once again this was not well thought out. We should have gone into there, gotten Bin Laden and some others, and then basically worked with the Pakistans and Chinese to figure out what was going to happen from there. Very likely, it is to leave the Taliban in some sort of power as the closest thing to a "stable" power, but with no interest in particularly cooperating with Al Queada. Al Queda is a threat to more than just the US, but also many of the regional powers and we could have found common ground with those powers to keep them limited and contained. Instead, we got cowboy diplomancy.