The Afghanistan War: Absurdity or Necessity?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Considering we can't even get the Taliban out of there in the first place, are you (GD and BTD and any other Afghan war supporters), suggesting even a permanent U.S. presence would keep them out of there forever?

I don't know that I am a supporter. My point was more that the glib assessment of, 'Well, there's no Al Qaeda there NOW, mission accomplished!" is shortsighted and disingenuous. It's not a fair assessment of the risks of leaving. I might still support a path that has us leaving shortly, but not because I think we've solved the threat of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

As the discussion turns away from exacting justice for the crime of 9/11 and more towards how to clean up the aftermath of justice, and therefore turns more towards the human rights question, I fell that puts it more into a NATO/UN scope. I have little confidence that the international community will step up to the plate on that, but I think the US position should be that the responsibility lies there. There will be the obvious pushback of, "Umm, but you created the mess, why should we clean it up," but I think the US needs to frame it as, "We legitimately displaced a human rights-violating regime, it's the international community's place to ensure a successful rebuild that doesn't return to the abusers we dislodged." A tough sell but it makes more sense that us playing nation-builders.