Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
This strategic argument has always intrigued me. After we toppled the Taliban and al-Qaeda and chased them into Pakistan, should we have simply pulled all troops out of Afghanistan and allowed it to collapse back into chaos?
is should we have gone into Afghanistan the way we did. Might it have been better just to reduce every AQ hangout in the country to less than rubble -- we knew where they were and pretty much who was in them. Unfortunately, despite the errors of the Carter, Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton administrations, despite the flaws identified in Eagle Claw, we had deliberately NOT developed a strategic raid capabiltiy for several reasons. Thus, to remove the AQ elements in Afghanistan, we had to use the capability we did have and as should have been expected when cranking up systems that hadn't been used for ten years or so with the concomitant skill decay; we screwed things up a bit.
What could we have done to ensure that neither returned to power?
Nothing then and most likely nothing now. Afghanistan is Afghanistan. It is not going to turn into the Costa Rica of South Asia. we can leave it better than we found it but we will never stay long enough to 'fix' it. Nor should we, not our job.
I think the course of action from 2002-2006 showed that "paying off the warlords", everyone's favorite do-nothing technique, wasn't going to work.
True and we knew that but given the resourcing and the flawed 'strategy,' the guys on the ground had little choice. They did the best they could with what they had.

The sensible thing would've been to severely clobber AQ in Afghanistan, bribe the Taliban to keep 'em out and not go to Iraq until we left there and were in Bush 43s second term. However, we needed to do something in the ME -- Afghanistan is not in the ME and the effect was not the same -- as all the hate and discontent came from there; Iraq was the spot; unpopular Dictator, geographically central, no major disruption of world oil supply. so the strategy was okay, the location was good -- but the timing was bad. The Army screwing the operation up didn't help. Iraq may still work out okay. We'll see in about five or ten years. Afghanistan will also probably be okay but little changed from its normative state which should be perfectly acceptable but is certainly not in accord with western values.

The fact that it is not a western state seems to befuddle many...

I think Bush knew that if he did not do Iraq or something like it, his successor probably would not and he thought it needed to be done. I agree with that, just wish he'd waited. Also wish the Army and Marines had done the post June 2003 stuff a little better. It would've also have helped had there been no Paul Bremer

Don't put too much stock in Bacevich -- he's a smart guy but neither he nor I have all the answers. Nobody has 'em. Bacevich does have an agenda, though, which is fine and his right but sometimes those folks with agendas can't see the forest. Sometimes their shattered dreams from earlier wars drive their thoughts on all wars. Often wrongly...