Ken:
Anything Mr. Rumsfeld says is primarily intended to make Mr. Rumsfeld look good. In this case it is "See! If we'd done what I wanted to do we wouldn't be in this mess."
There was no chance we weren't going to stay in Afghanistan in some measure after the anti-Taliban forces kicked out the Taliban with the help of US airpower. It was felt that one of the primary reasons 9-11 came was because AQ found a congenial home in Taliban run Afghanistan and one of the primary reasons Taliban was running Afghanistan was because we stopped paying attention to the place after the Soviets left. So we were going to stay on.
If we hadn't stayed on, the Taliban would have been back shortly since they just moved across the border. That would have amounted to trading a raid for a raid leading to more raids probably. Sort of medieval.
I don't think NATO's involvement is inimical to NATO's interests at all. It is critical if NATO is to survive as an alliance. Refusal of the alliance to support its most important member in the face of an attack would have meant the end of the alliance. Involvement in Afghanistan may be inimical to individual country's interests, but to the alliance, no.
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