I hate to be all Ron Paul-y here, but I can't help but point out that a much simpler solution to this problem than anything posted thus far is to simply not invade countries in the first place.
Afghanistan was the war we started to get rid of the Taliban and cripple Al Qaeda after they (Al Qaeda) blew up the towers.
People pretty much universally agreed (and continue to agree) that going there was a good idea.
edit: I don't mean to sound rah rah about war, it sucks that we're there and it sucks that we will be for a while. All I'm saying is it wasn't unjustified and there's no reason to sit back with the benefit of hindsight and say "We never should have gone in in the first place." Time is better spent figuring out how to fix the problem and get out. Any suggestions there?
People pretty much universally agreed (and continue to agree) that going there was a good idea.
I don't. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan, and the links between Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and OBL were tenuous at best and hugely overblown. As far as I can tell, our invasion seems to have affected an enormous increase in world opium production more than anything else. I don't know whom that benefits, but it sure isn't what I pay my taxes for.
Not quite: there was one person in the House who voted against the authorization of force in Afghanistan.
She is my representative :-)
And people continue to universally agree that going in there was a good idea? I mean, really? I grant you that nearly everyone was for it in the weeks after 9-11. Even I said something to that effect. But, hey, I was 19 and naive. Were the same thing to happen again tomorrow, I would not be so quick to judge, for what seemed liked a good idea at the time looks a lot more questionable 8 years later. Bin Laden is free, Afghanistan's cost to us in terms of lives and treasure grows by the week, the Taliban still rule large parts of the country, and Al Qaeda is not crippled.
I am not asserting that the invasion was unjustified, but you have got to admit that it's highly debatable whether the benefits outweigh the costs in this, the eighth year of the war.
Yeah, I agree that the costs are awful. The guys coming back aren't like they were when they left, for sure.
But how can we know the costs of not going? It's really hard to nail it down to any particular influence, but there hasn't been a domestic attack since 9/11, and it'd be foolish to say that the war in Afghanistan hasn't played a role.
Regardless, it was a hard choice, and easy to second guess. But that doesn't mean it's time to sit back and say "Yep, never should have went there in the first place." The better thing to wonder is "Where from here?"
it'd be foolish to say that the war in Afghanistan hasn't played a role
A role in what? Attacks on the US? That seems far from obvious. One thing that it certainly played a role in is opium production, which the Taliban prohibited. It certainly played a huge role (to the tune of billions of dollars), and big power shifts in the international drug trade...
Does the phrase "lives and treasure" weird anyone else out a bit? I know this is off-topic, but "treasure"? It sounds like we're losing pirate booty by the bucketful out there.
There was a great deal of opposition to a full-fledged invasion, just not on mainstream television networks. I personally remember reading about a lot of more peaceful alternatives that ranged from not actually invading, to targeting Osama directly, to accepting offers by the Taliban to hand Bin Laden over to an international tribunal or neutral third-party country.
God knows how serious the last offer would have been (perhaps it was a stalling tactic), but it would have been easier to find the man that way - assuming locating Bin Laden was the actual point behind the invasion. Regardless of how things play out now, claiming there were not alternatives to invasion only excuses the poor judgment of those who backed the war in the first place. These people need to be kept as far from government as humanly possible, not excused for the "inevitability" of the Michael Bay approach to foreign policy.
The papers authorising war in Afghanistan were on the President's desk on the 10th September 2001, waiting to be signed. This is completely documented and in the public domain.
The war had nothing to do with 9/11. It was completely pre-planned. The Taliban were promised a "carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs" if they didn't cooperate with the pipeline project. They didn't cooperate.
I could say a lot more -- especially about 9/11 -- but this isn't the site for it.
This viewpoint is very analogous to the Big Co. obsession with quarterly numbers. How many companies have screwed themselves by failing to look past next month's bottom line? Having a highly strategic location like Afghanistan controlled by a terrorist-run government bent on the destruction of the West seems like a bad idea long-term.
If we hadn't invaded Afghanistan, perhaps we'd have more money and fewer dead now. But I'd bet anything we'd be far worse off down the line.
So because it is difficult and fraught with past failure, we shouldn't do it? I don't really see how anybody could pose a logical argument for allowing a terrorist government to control a country.
We already completely dropped the ball on Afghanistan once and it wouldn't surprise me if we do it again, but if a country is being used to train an army of extremists bent on the destruction of the free world... well, somebody should probably look into stopping that. And I don't think saying "please" works on those people.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if we never invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban-controlled government, everything would be peaches right now. I certainly wouldn't have wasted a year of my life in the shit hole. But that seems like the riskier road to take, given what I've learned on the topic.
