For the better part of 10 years now I have been saying that our operations in the region are fundementally flawed. Our engagement doctrine in the US is based arount the idea that there will effectively be "good guys" in any conflict we get involved in. The idea that the most we'd ever have to do is remove an oppressive regime and liberate an oppressed people. The possibility of a confrontation with a culture that is xenophobic and beyond reasoning with (for religious reasons) was not considered as part of our morality, as was a situation where a culture itself (a set of beliefs held by a people) rather than a goverment or party. What's more after World War II we looked at the carnage and decided to try and put laws into place to prevent something like that from happening again. The idea being that if all went according to plan there would be no need for carnage on that level as there could never be another culture akin to the Nazis.
To put things bluntly, we were wrong. Simply put we put the Taliban into power because they opposed the Russians back during The Cold War. We excpected them to be our friends, and at least back us, so we turned a blind eye on their civil liberties abuses. 9/11 and their attitude towards Al Queda when we asked for their help showed this to hardly be the case.
Being the good guys we went into the region and insted of simply wasting everyone, decided to try and keep things stable while picking out the terrorists and removing the Taliban goverment. The tool we chose to do this with was "The Northern Alliance" who were the former allies of the USSR, and as anyone who remembers the Cold War even vaguely can tell you, an even bigger freak show than the "Taliban Freedom Fighters" we backed.
You really can't deal with the problems in the region because when you get down to it, it's about the beliefs of the people. We knew right from the beginning there was a problem when Afghanistan formed a new constitution specifying it would be an "Islamic State" as opposed to seperating the church and state. What's more, things like "starving one's wife" are pretty much what the people there themselves believe in, and the leadership is indicative of this fact. This shows pretty much how the people there think. Things would be very violent and anti-US (more so than it is) if we didn't effectively have a gun to their head. Right now pulling out of the region with a culture that xenocidal would be a mistake and akin to putting a gun to our own head since we'd be basically turning our back on terrorist retaliation.
As I've said before, rather than worrying about the stability of these regions, and the "rights" of the civilian population and such, we should have pretty much entered with the attitude that the whole culture is borked. Their cultural issues are their own to get over in their own time, but in the meantime we have our own interests in making sure they don't mess with us. We should have pretty much come in guns blazing, wiped out as many people (including civilians) as we could along with what passes for their infrastructure (farms, livestock, huts, etc...). Leave them with like say 4% of their population still enjoying oxygen and massive clouds of radiation/toxic chemicals/biological weapons through the mountains killing off the actual terrorist fighters and leaders hiding out there, and basically leave behind giant hellish death field.
Inhumane? Well yes, but modern standards what I have just suggested is totally immoral, and there are tons of "laws" against it, which admittedly were written without this kind of situation in mind.
The way I see things is that if you've got a nation reduced to less than 5% of it's population, suddenly needing to scramble to rebuild even basic housing, and adapting to extreme enviromental hazards, they are going to be too busy keeping themselves alive to
worry about terrorism. Especially seeing as while you watch them rebuild it's much easier in that state to come in and kick it all over again if they don't start to change their attitudes (ie your not going to let them start building up terrorist training camps, or hold giant speeches screaming 'kill america'. Word of that gets out, in come a few more planes with Daisy Cutters).
Oh sure, the people in the region will hate us, but in the end I can live with that, I'm all about removing the threat to the US more than anything. They can hate us as much as they want as long as they cann't do anything about it. Unfair? Well honestly we didn't force them to fly hijack a trio of planes and attempt to crash them into our seat of goverment, our central military command, and one of our major centers of international trade (having hit 2 out of 3 of those targets). Plus we also gave Mullah Omar an oppertunity to live up to The Taliban's alliance with the US (since we helped them, and put them into power), he's the one who decided not to turn over Bin Ladin or help with Al Queda.
For all stories about Taliban or Al-Queda oppression both groups have massive grass roots support against the US/allies. One of the reasons why we have to look at the whole situation is bad, and you have to basically rip out all of that grass BY it's roots in order to expose the bad guys. We're just too moral to blacktop our lawn basically.
Such are my thoughts, I expect many to disagree. Such sentiments are typically not popular when I express them, but honestly the sheer passage of time has not made me feel any safer (unlike many). I am very concerned about what happens if we leave these groups pretty much as they are in either Afghanistan OR Iraq (never mind places that have been affected by this like Iran or Pakistan) and simply pull out.
Truth is I'm all in favor of a withdrawal from the region, but only after leaving behind a ton of ordinance. I'm not talking "Shock and Awe" but "Death and Destruction".
