we went in all those years ago in pursuit of a rational-realist agenda that mostly revolved around "Getting Bin Laden" and smashing up his enablers in the Taliban. Well, we blew the Taliban to hell (as much as we could find anyway) and sent Bin Laden to sleep with the fishes but all these years later we are still tied down in Afghanistan out of very real fears that a departure will only bring back the same old crowd of barbaric wowsers to power.
Somewhere along the line we crossed over the "fact-value nexus' and made ourselves responsible for delivering The Afghans from the clutches of a new class of oppressors....some of this comes from guilt some of it from overweaning ambition. But all the same it's gotten tangled together to create a perfect storm of procrastination, it's NEVER the right time to exit Afghanistan from a policy perspective.
The Kabul Government is never gonna be strong enough, or have enough popular support to perpetuate itself, four thousand more troops and who knows how many money grubbing contractors can't really change that.
We could stay thirty more years in Afghanistan and never get the right conditions to terminate that war, maybe we should start planning a right and proper "declare victory and get out" exit.
I hate to pull a "Stephen Kinzer" like this, but this comes from a sure knowledge that the manpower and resources dedicated to Afghanitan are gonna be needed elsewhere sooner or later....
Just Sayin'
I doubt any of this will come to pass under the present admin, but we should at least start the necessary logistical and diplomatic planning....
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