While it is true that we should have left Afghanistan a long time ago there is a lot more about this whole chapter in our history that is also true, but seems to be completely forgotten.
As to whether we should have gone to Afghanistan in the first place... obviously we had to since that's where Osama Bin Laden was and the Twin Towers were still smoldering in a pile at his hands... We had to try to capture Bin Laden and that involved initially fighting the Taliban who were sponsoring him in Afghanistan. Again I will admit we should have left not long after we had proven that Bin Laden was no longer in Afghanistan.
But there's something else that needs to be at least noted as an historical fact. From the time we entered Afghanistan until we began removing troops from Afghanistan and moving them to Iraq everything trended in the right direction with our effort there in Afghanistan. The Taliban had become weaker and weaker in the the year and 3 months of our occupation. The fact is that there was a great deal of sympathy in the Middle East even from countries like Iran for us because of the horrific attack by Bin Laden on the World Trade Towers. We were in a better position to accomplish something good at that time. But when we made the decision to invade and occupy Iraq, which was a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the tragedy of 9/11, then we lost all credibility with all people. We lost credibility from our allies in Europe all the way down to the few hardcore Taliban who had seemingly laid down their weapons for that brief 15 months.
I cannot believe that the war in Iraq is not being discussed more as part of this whole Afghan withdrawal equation. Our Invasion and occupation of Iraq was just as a immoral as Nazi Germany was during World War II. There was nothing but evil selfish hatefulness in our assault on Iraq. It was the biggest mistake in US history, short of legalized slavery. Far more Americans were killed and innocent citizens killed in the Iraq War than in the Afghanistan conflict.
Because of the evil insane war on Iraq the USA has been seriously diminished in the view of the entire world and the effort to bring basic human rights to Afghanistan has been doomed since the horror of ‘shock and awe’. But it didn’t have to be that way….
:(
As evidence of my take on this great American tragedy I offer these two links from the Council on Foreign Relations-
Timeline of the Afghanistan War-
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan
Timeline of the Iraq War-
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/iraq-war
