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Originally Posted by kutulu
I'd rather not be in Afghanistan but the fact is that we started a war over there and toppled the government. Are we supposed to half-ass our way through the war and then just take off?
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Actually, we interrupted a civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. The government was already a joke, but the NA actually looked like the odds on winner of the conflict. Had the Taliban lost, the NA would have created a moderate government of the kind we would like now, but would have done so in a way that can't be associated with Western influence.
If we left tomorrow, Taliban from Pakistan would push West, but it's entirely probable that the former NA, now represented in part in the new Afghani government, would take up arms again and the civil war would continue. In other words, Afghanistan would be in the same place in 2010 that it was in 2001.
We've already half-assed the war, and it's clear there's no chance of us full-assing it because we don't have enough troops or the will.