1) a) Yes.
The idea that the Taliban leadership was simply a host and not involved in Al Queda's mission is not supported by historical fact.
While Americans believe that the attacks started on the morning of September 11th, the evidence does not support that.
On September 9th two suicide jihadists blew themselves up and killed Ahmad Shah Massoud the leader of the Northern Alliance and perhaps the only person who had the credentials from earlier conflicts to unite the company. edited to add: The jihadists met with Mullah Omar the night before they carried out their mission. They were recruited by AQ to portray Muslim journalists outside of the country interested in interviewing Massoud but were operationally briefed by the Taliban who were the NA's enemies.
While I do not like Afghanistan/Vietnam comparisons Massoud was as close to Afghan's Ho Chi Minh as you can get. Today September 9th is a national holiday "Massoud" Day in Afghanistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massoud1 b) Yes
There is substantial reasons to continue our presence in Afghanistan, although any continuation should be well defined and limited term.
The reasons for this is that the Taliban/Al Queda goal is to cause massive disruption to the stability of South Asia.
An Afghanistan sympathetic to the Taliban/Al Queda is not simply a base for attacks against the US, but even more importantly as a base of attacks in South Asia, particularly Kashmir.
In Usama Bin Ladin's "Declaration of War" against the US he lists the presence of Indians in Kashmir as being only second to the Palestinian question as a main grevience against the US.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserverWe also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines
Significant AQ presence was confirmed by the media prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0702/p01s02-wosc.htmlNasir Ali, a wiry jeep driver, says Al Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan have arrived here in large numbers. He should know, he says, because he was the one who gave them a lift in from northern Pakistan after their escape from Afghanistan. "I, myself, drove three Arab fighters into the center of Kashmir," says Ali. "I carried them only part way in and their own jeeps met us and drove them the rest of the way. Hundreds have entered Kashmir in the last several months."
Mr. Ali, an employee for a private transport company, described in detail subsequent meetings with Middle Eastern fighters he admires. Ali's account, and several others gathered this week, of how groups of Al Qaeda fighters have infiltrated Kashmir present a harrowing prospect for Washington. Strategic analysts have long warned that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network is keen to exploit tensions between the two nuclear powers of India and Pakistan, whose governments both claim full rights to divided Kashmir.
A week-long investigation uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda and an array of militant affiliate groups are prospering inside Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, with the tacit approval of Pakistani intelligence. The evidence comes after recent statements by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that he had "seen indications that there are Al Qaeda operating near the
Line of Control" that separates Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, but that he had no hard evidence on numbers or location.
Senior officials in Pakistan called Mr. Rumsfeld's statements inaccurate and stressed that he had no real evidence. But the Pakistani military, which has begun to chase stray Al Qaeda elements in its tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, has been unwilling to crack down in Kashmir on Islamic militant groups that it has been pledging to eradicate since January.
Since the Taliban was removed from Afghanistan AQ elements in Kashmir have left and Kashmir has experienced remarkable calm.
Most people consider the Israel/Palestine theater as the most incidiary and the one most likely to create a huge ground war with millions of casualties. That is not the case. Pakistan and India is a much more likely location. Having come to blows many times Pakistan and India are more explosive, I would argue, than the Korean stand off, and this is AQ's real interest in Kashmir.
In the simple division of India and Pakistan a million people were killed. Both Pakistan and India are nuclear powers. AQ would love to polarize the situation, radicalize Pakistan and gain control of Pakistan's military power, including their nuclear weapons.
The 2008 attack on Mubai by the Lashkar-e-Taiba is an extension of this strategy. The terrorists came from a base in Kashmir. The Lashkar-e-Taiba have a long history of cooperation with both the Taliban and Al Queda.
The US strategy in Afghanistan by the President is intended to give the Afghan people time to establish a working government so that they can defend themselves against the Taliban insurgency. It is a limited worthwhile goal that will have (and already has had) in helping to maintain not only a peaceful but friendly Indo/Pakistan relationship. The fact is that India and Pakistan have never been closer in cooperation and relationship building at the leadership level as it is today.
The arguments that are made against any involvement are based on three commonly held premises:
1) Afghan has always been ruled by reactionary tribes man and uncivilized.
The fact is quite the opposite. Eighty years ago Afghanistan had the most liberal government in the middle east. In fact it became a Soviet satelite because it had a large indigenous Communist party that the Soviets could manipulate.
2) Efforts against insurgencies always fail.
The fact is most insurgencies fail. Just this last year the longest modern insurgency, in Sri Lanka collapsed. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia all successfully defeated insurgencies that were as strong as the Taliban is today. Cambodia's Khmer Rouge succeeded in taking over the country and then were removed by an occupation force by an outside army, the Vietnamese. The reality is that unless an insurgency can sustain a supply line from a neighboring country (like the Vietnamese did with China) then it is very difficult for them to actually overtake a functioning central government, although they can continue to inflict civilian casualties for decades, as the Sri Lanka "Tigers" (inventors of the suicide bomb vest) did until they were finally defeated.
3) If the US military leaves, killing and deaths, especially deaths of civilians will go down.
There is no evidence that this would be the case. I would argue that the Taliban are as crazy as the Khmer Rouge who before they took power were perceived as gentle social reformers so that Prince Sihanouk voluntarily returned to Phenom Penh and was followed, by his urging, by dozens of his relatives - almost all of whom were killed by the KR.
The above gives substantive evidence that the return of the Taliban and AQ would significantly destabilize the region with the possibility of a conflict that would not be measured in thousands of casualties but hundreds of thousands.
However if you take that out completely and say that there is no regional factor that it is simply a question of Afghanistan then there is still a compelling humanitarian reason for giving the Afghans time to establish a functioning self government.
The first is that it advances civilized rational human existence. For people who live in the US and the developed world this may seem like bull but I can tell you it is not. It is not simply the treatment of women but allowing ordinary people the benefits of civilizaiton. My neice in Thailand, who I helped raise, died of superstition. She had returned to her village and got married. A couple of years later she died of a "brain tumor". The reality is that she died of AIDS but even in Thailand, where there is considerable more enlightenment people die from just plain ignorance and shame. If we had known we could have helped. Think of the terror a young gay man experiences living in a Taliban controlled town.
The second humanitarian reason is that there are hundreds of thousands of people who have worked with us and believed us and it is reasonable to assume that they would end up spending decades in refugee camps should the government be taken over by the Taliban.
Between 1982 and 1985 my office assisted in the resettlement of 10,000 Afghan refugees from the Russian invasion, These were people who had some connection with the US. After I left another 80,000 Afghan refugees were resettled in the US. These refugees were resettled in better economic times and before 9/11. No one can credibly believe that with the current political situation that the US would be willing to resettle the hundreds of thousands refugees that our current involvement would create.
Now I understand and appreciate well thought out posters who disagree with the above and feel that we should leave now. Bigtree is such a poster. Frankly I wouldn't want to be apart of a discussion board that had only one opinion on the subject. I still have concerns that include; opium eradication (I am against it), creating an Afghan dependency, civilian causualties and the effects on those that carry the burden on our behalf. My work takes me frequently to Veterans Hospital where I find those that have sacrificed so much have a very clear understanding of the long term importance of helping the Afghans to self government.
The nearly daily insults from posters who have the opinion that there is no reason to be in Afghanistan frankly reveal a juvenile perspective. The answers to Afghanistan do not fit on a bumper sticker. Some of the posters here go to other sites have denounced me as warmonger, presumably because it is against the rules here. I wear their disdain with pride.
After spending 8 years in refugee camps I try and speak for those who would become vulnerable to becoming a refugee, no one else does.
2) Obviously this question is based on No answers on the questions above.
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