Spree, I agree with your premise. I believe we never have finished the job in Afghanistan. We removed the Taliban sure, but their leader the Omar, many of his friends, and Osama are still at large.
We have left an unstable Afghanistan, with a questionable future. For a fraction of the costs in men/women and money we have wasted in Iraq I feel we could've finished the job in Afghanistan, captured Bin Laden, and stabilized Pakistan. Instead, Bush, Rumsfeld and his cronies ignored many in the Pentagon, and let many of the main players escape into the border areas. Without getting into too much detail about the logistics and stategy failures of our plan...we were late getting in there, had ignored the problem for too long and had limited intelligence, and by them time we responded to 9/11 with force, it was too late, and not enough. We screwed around dealing with satisfying the Northern Alliance, while we ignored the southern Afghan/Pakistan border areas until it was too late.
Now, the problem is magnified. You have an unstable situation in Pakistan, whose President is in a very precarious situation, with limited control over the border/tribal area (which should've been saturated with special forces long before any bombing started IMO, like beginning on 9/12.)
To complicate the situation, the opposition to Pakistani rule in those areas has now had plenty of time to consolidate. Right next door you have the Kashmir situation, the separatists, and an India which is hostile to Pakistan....both countries of which have nuclear capability.
This is a very complicated and confusing situation...can you imagine how confused Dubya and Rummy are when Powell and Rice try to explain it to them? LOL! Of course Cheney is only concerned about the Oil reserves, or lack of in the area, which probably explains our inept activities there.
Later and Best, bulldzr
Later and Best, bulldzr
"So often times it happens...
that we live our life in chains and we never even know we have the key." The Eagles
AI
