Quote:
Originally Posted by ba1025
We had 6 years there but our attention was mostly on ****ing Iraq now the bastards who attacked us are getting sympathy from the gov???? BOOHOO IF THEY HIDE(laydown) THEIR GUNS THEY SHOULD BE WELCOMED????? We blew it. Our president hijacked the WOT as surely as those bastards hijacked those jets. If we start getting pressure like this from the Afghanis how the **** can we operate there????? Now the "Taliban" is a legitimate thing in Afghanistan. Maybe it's time for him to go, us to focus where the threat came from on 911 and finish "pacifying" the taliban/al queda in Afghanistan and Pakistan while we can
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BA,
the bad news is that the Taliban has been legitimate in Afghanistan for over a decade. When you are based in the largest ethnic group in the country, have the actual or
de facto backing of Pakistan & represent the closest thing to a solution the country has seen to the chaos of 30 years of war then you will always be a force to be reckoned with.
If you want to blame someone, blame the brilliant souls in the Kremlin who decide to invade the country, the Brilliant souls in Washington who decided to turn the country into a Cold War battlefield & especially the brilliant people in Pakistan who wanted to do a little empire building.
If you wanted to go further you might blame a nation that has allowed a situation to develop where fundamentalist madrassars are the only education in some parts - guaranteeing an almost endless supply of young 'Talibs'. Going even deeper you might want to cast a little blame at China & the US, happy to lavish billions on the Generals but uninterested in the people. This is the consequence of the 'realpolitik' that is so frequently used as a fig leaf for otherwise unacceptable policy.
In one sense you are right about the current administration. The reason the Afghan government still has to deal with the Taleban is that they remain strong. The reason they remain strong is that a) the opportunity to destroy them was missed; b) having survived the has not been the military force present to keep them weak; and c) 7 years after the US invasion Afghanistan remains a nation without an effective central government or security forces. A great deal of this is connected with the too hasty redirection of US effort toward Iraq and the lack of adequate postwar planning for that conflict. This has chewed up military & financial resources that could have dramatically changed the equation in Afghanistan.
As it is, Bush will leave office with two wars very much unfinished & two governments incapable of providing many of the basics (including security) in their respective nations. The only reassuring element in the current equation is that the next president will be a dramatic improvement. Pity about the last 8 years.