If you think that what NATO has done in Afhganistan is close to what the Soviets did you don't know much about the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan.
Well we did end up establishing permanent bases in Germany of Japan whereas we voluntarily pulled out of Vietnam and have started a process to pull out of Iraq. It seems to me that the good war led to more imperialism than the bad wars. But anyway that's a digression. My point is is that I believe in just war and most people considered that WWII was a just war in terms that we responded to an actual attack and faced a foe and its allies who had and had stated a desire to continue to attack us. The Taliban allied themselves, gave aid and shelter to Al Qaeda who attacked us and plans on continuing to attack us. I would say that falls under the principle of a just war. We are talking about the same CIA that said that WMD in Iraq was a slam dunk? The CIA may very well be more powerful than we suspect but I'm not going to rely on speculation on what the powers of the CIA are to decide on whether we should or should not with draw from Afghanistan. In someways given the CIA's history in the 70's of destabilizing governments and assassination it might be much worse for us if the war on terror was left to the CIA. True, but in the case of Afghanistan not doing anything also led to terrorists attacks. Again I'm not a hawk and believe that the military should be used as little as possible but Afghanistan isn't like that. Diplomacy was tried in Afghanistan during both the Clinton presidency and just after 9/11. None of those worked. In fact a very strong argument could be made that leaving Afghanistan alone after the defeat of the Soviets led to the problems we face now.
The Taliban declared war on the U.S. exactly 8 years ago. They are Al Qaeda's friend, intertwined in ideology and practice. To leave Afghanistan is one thing. To leave Afghanistan to the Taliban is a whole another thing. We can't do that. This isn't a war to build democracy there...that's not the primary object. The primary object is to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda. That is not going to end soon, it will cost American lives and it needs to continue. Obama needs to remind us why we are there. It's because if we fail there, our security is lessened. It is a victory for Al Qaeda and they will return and begin plotting more attacks against us. We must send more troops into Afganistan and double our efforts.
Excellent post. For me, the only debatable part of it is troop levels, where legitimate arguments have been made from several camps.
Educate me with some numbers on the relative number of Afghans killed in their invasion or ours. You normally seem to be fact based, so am I. Your position is certainly more mainstream and may be true, too. Evidence? Also do you really think it makes much difference to the average Afghan if their family members were killed by the Russian or US invasion?
