Let me preface this by stating my opinion that the biggest military failure of the post 9-11 era was letting bin Laden escape to Pakistan. The whole point of the exercise was to put his head on a spike. Given that we failed at that, let me ask what is the importance of Afghanistan now? I have long scoffed at the myth of the fierce Afghan warrior, rebuffer of the British Empire and the Soviet army. My opinion is that each of those great powers took the country over easiliy, looked around, and decided there was nothing there worth fighting to keep. I think the US should consider doing the same. Why would we send troops from Iraq to Afghanistan? Iraq is much more important strategically. Iraq becoming as liberal as Jordan or Turkey changes the region's entire balance. Afghanistan becoming another Athens does nothing. I am under no illusions that Iraq has been "fixed" by the surge. Only time can do that. I fear that if we withdraw too many troops, we will lose Iraq, and eventually lose Afghanistan to the Taliban as we discover its worthlessness, like so many powerful nations before.
Afghanistan is important because it has long been and will continue to be a center for extremism. We need to give up achieving a victory there...it's not going to happen. What we need is a long term plan to manage the region and isolate the extremism. It would be nice if it were more of a world effort, since the entire world has a stake in what happens there.
If we would ever find/switch to an alternate source of fuel, we would never have to speak/send troops to the middle east again. They could be extremists and no one would give a ****.
The problem with Afghanistan is that there is no central government capable of controlling the entire country. Even when the Taliban was in control, the northern alliance offered a strong resistance. Now, Karzai's government is facing the reverse problem, in which they "control" Kabul but little else. Because of the inability to control the entire country, there is a lot of room for extremists to set up their operations without government interference. This is what happened after the Russia-Afghanistan war. Once the Russians left, there was no single authority strong enough (other than the sympathetic Taliban) to control bin Ladin and his followers. That is the risk of pulling out now - if the US leaves, those sorts of operations will likely pick up steam again. However, the problem remains the same - no one authority will be able to control the entire place. The OP is right in that the lack of desirable natural resources contributes heavily to this problem - if there were oil, a lot more countries would be interested in maintaining stability, and there would be domestic resources to make that possible. Unfortunately. all that's there is opium, which presents its own problems.
I'm okay with pulling out, but what do we do if the Taliban takes over again and invites al Qaeda back? What are we going to do, fight them with drones? Invade them again? Because I think it's likely the Taliban would do just that. The government of Iraq might be able to survive on its own. We'll find out soon enough. But Afghanistan? If we leave, the bad guys will be back in control in no time.
I wasn't talking about the army. I was talking about places like the communities set up for american oil workers in saudi arabia that seem to piss extremists off. If we move to an alternate source of fuel, we can just not be involved with the middle east at all. If they get nukes or Iraq's WMDs turn up (oh they're out there) and they still want to kill us, we can nuke them first and it won't matter because we won't have anyone over there and we won't be nuking anything we need. If you are worried about 9/11s we can just ban all immigration from the middle east. (See y'all read me wrong. I'm a true conservative not a republican.) If we have no one over there (AS IN CIVILIANS but army too), we don't need them for anything, and we have preventative measures from allowing them to attack us (no immigration/we can always nuke them), I don't give a **** if the extremists are in charge. They'll probably kill each other by starting a nuclear war with Israel before anything would happen to us. I also never said I was opposed to US soldiers killing muslim extremists for oil. I just feel there is a better solution that would cost fewer american lives though I know it will never happen. Also oil is bad for the environment and cellulosic ethanol isn't so my plan saves the planet too.
I think the question of "Why Afghanistan" is a good one. We should ask that question about any foreign involvement and we should ask it more than once. Just because this is a campaign I support does not mean I think it's naive or stupid for citizens to keep questioning and re-examining our intentions. I think we stay in Afghanistan because the attitude toward our involvement there is different than other places we have gone adventuring. We supported a popular uprising against a government that the people wanted deposed. If we can make the lives of Afghans better than what they had before, we can use their country as the base for operations against the forces that mean harm to both the Afghan people and the people of the United States. In short, we started off in common cause with the Afghans. Further, the world generally has supported the efforts to aid Afghanistan and fight against the terrorists who use that land as a base. We have almost fumbled away our best chances for success there, but I get the impression that the efforts of our far flung and isolated groups of soldiers have done brilliant work to keep our efforts and intentions alive.
It appears to me that the biggest problem there is that there is no meaningful commerce. Can any self sustaining industry exist in Afghanistan? It seems that the agro business always reverts to opium when allowed. What can the average Afghani do to make a living and support a family besides be a mercenary or a opium farmer?
What are we going to do to stop the Taliban from taking over? We aren't going to rebuild the country at a cost of $1 Trillion. So how long are we going to have a presence? For the next 20 years, I don't see Afghanistan's economy stabilizing unless we pump a lot of money into it. Education sucks and there is no industry. So there is no rebuilding to be done, only building. And I would argue that Afghanistan is more strategically important to Europe than the US. Why not let it be a UN mission? If we have troops there, let it be a small force. A total pull out is unnecessary and we might have a need to be there for logistical reasons, especially with Pakistan's problems as they are. Nonetheless, I see no reason for a huge force. And if we are going to put a lot of money into a country, why not Mexico. The people like us. They are on our border. They effect our lives directly. They already have some infrastructure. Afghanistan, not so much. It is building a country from scratch.
