Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
Speaking solely to the point of the Taliban being afraid of American kinetic power, why on earth would they be afraid of that if they managed to retake Afghanistan? They would have just beaten us having taken everything we could have thrown at them. In any case, little black helos and drones need bases close by, cruise missiles haven't scared them in the past and the Pak Army may object to us overflying their country to get to Afghanistan. The Taliban ain't so scared of us now, if they prevailed I don't see them being afraid at all.
I look at it from the perspective of exactly what you reference, but I don't think that the Taliban would necessarily fear us. In fact, I don't want them to fear us. That causes irrational decision-making. I want them to respect a capability to deliver a blow to a concentrated body of Taliban leaders (and I think concentration would be required if they chose to try to exert power) should we decide to do so.

Killing the Taliban inside Pakistan tends to pose drama, but in the under-governed expanse of Afghanistan, the challenges become less pronounced to a degree.

And Entropy brings up a point I was thinking, but did not articulate. The Taliban will be hard pressed to run Afghanistan in the future, so coupling the Taliban with trans-national terrorism presumes that they will have the ability to influence the scenario in the first place. Sooooo...maybe that means we can worry less about the Taliban inviting terrorist commandos in, and get back to basic containment and counter-terrorism.