Reply #72: a threat per se? not really.

[northzax]

no. that's a pretty obvious statement. Somewhat surprisingly, I am not all that concerned about a tribe of barely literate goat herders being much of a direct threat to the United States.

What is a threat to the US, and to the world as a whole, is a failed state, intertwined and directly adjacent to a patchwork nuclear power. nothing good comes out of a failed state, especially one that won't be left alone by neighbors to fall into the abyss of hell by themselves. Someone is going to have direct influence in Afghanistan. Would you prefer the ISI out of Islamabad? Maybe Putin's nice friendly chaps from Moscow? Tehran? Afghanistan is bordered by five states, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Turkmenistan. What do those five states have in common? only one is nominally a democracy (Pakistan) although it is only kept secular by the military. One is openly fundamentalist and hostile to the West (Iran, for very good internal reasons, perhaps) three are run by strongmen (the other three 'Stans) with those as neighbors and local powers, Afghanistan doesn't have a realistic chance in hell of joining the 19th Century, let alone the 21st. someone's going to run the place, and I think the US is a lot closer to having the interests of the average Afghan and the world as a whole in mind than, say, Mullah Omar. Failed states cause chaos, not just internally, but in the surrounding states as well, none of which are all that stable to begin with. (much of which, frankly, is our fault as well from mistakes gone by)

that's the threat, the indirect one from the ensuing chaos.