I've never made any secret of what I think should have been done. I think the effort should from the start have focused entirely on finding and destroying the Taliban and AQ, with no effort at all to govern or to build a nation, beyond providing opportunity for Afghans to figure out for themselves what they wanted as a government.
Dayuhan, on this I agree on all but one point: Why do you include the Taliban on your target list?

I suspect if we would have been even a little bit more savvy on the nature of Afghan culture and Pashtunwali, that we could have worked a deal with Mullah Omar regarding his AQ guests that would have resolved much of this before it ever really began. That is equally true of what President Clinton did/failed to do prior to 9/11 and what President Bush did/failed to do after.

We have made this all about us as we choose to understand and define the problems on our terms. But of course, as you well realize, it isn't about us at all. Nor is it about Islam. We brought this to the people of Afghanistan and dragged them into our world. Now they are making us deal with theirs.

A lot of bad understanding and bad decisions have been compiling for over a decade now. There is no graceful way to walk away from that. Now we worry more about our grace, and our honor. This is one where need to just swallow our pride and walk away. The reasons we use to justify why we must stay were never accurate, so there is no reason we should allow them to hold us there any longer. That is one comment that Clint Eastwood probably got about right in his conversation with a chair the other day.