Originally Posted by kane

He says that the length of our stay in Afghanistan is a product of a few different things. First, invading Iraq when we didn't need to. By redirecting those troops and resources we hurt the war effort in Afghanistan. Also, Afghanistan kind of became the secondary war for several years (this is still under Bush) and it was essentially left to fester while we focused on Iraq. He criticizes Rumsfeld for being a bad leader who would not take the advice of others unless it was what he wanted to hear. In essence, he only wanted the best case scenario and if you tried to present something else he didn't want to hear it. So when things didn't go as planned he had to then regroup and come up with another plan because he wasn't prepared with a plan B from the start.

The other issues is that at this point the people of Afghanistan have not shown that they have the ability to elect a leadership that is capable of uniting various tribes, pulling the country together, and standing up to the Taliban. We have lingered in Afghanistan hoping that this would change.

At this point, he explained, there are three basic outcomes in Afghanistan. Best case scenario is that we can get an effective elected leadership there that can and will stand up to the Taliban and with our help they can turn the country around and make it a stable place. The next outcome is that they can't find that leadership and we end up there for years and years and years working to keep the Taliban from taking over again. The worst case is that we leave and the Taliban ends up taking back the country and things return to how they were before we invaded and all of this has been for nothing.

The Egyptians didn't need any help because the military stood down. They didn't have a well armed force actively attacking them and the country. Right now it is still not very stable, they are still trying to find out what they want from a leadership. It would be a different story if their was a military force working against the people. In Libya they had military help from the US. We gave them guns and we gave them air support. Also, as it turned out, the military resistance wasn't that strong or determined.

You can't say just because A and B went this way then C should go that way. Afghanistan is a different country and a different situation than Egypt and Libya. For one, we invaded it. Had the people of Afghanistan decided they were sick of the Taliban and they rose up collectively against it that might have been very effective and they may have been able to remove them from power. As it was, we rolled into the country and removed them by force. There are many Afghan people who don't like the Taliban, but they also don't like the US for invading their country.