United States casualties in Afghanistan top 1,500

Original mission was to get Bin Laden, not nation building. The human rights gains are a byproduct.

 

But to ensure that Afghanistan doesn't return as a safe harbor for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, isn't some nation building required?
The problem is, what kind of nation gets built? We could be there for 100 years and never move the rock another inch. The Canadians are set to pull out, and they've been with us there since day one.
We still may not comprehend the motivations and allegiances of the Afghanis, even after 10 years. I don't know if we ever will.
Maybe the best option is pull back but if Karzai lets go of the rope, have a quick reaction force ready to go in again to stem a Taliban tide. You could base them in Qatar and Kuwait and have some pre-positioned equipment in secure, secret places ready to be manned.
I've talked to several guys who have served in Afghanistan. They were all taken aback by how daily life for regular Afghans is over there. And they all said the same thing.
You can't bomb them back to the Stone Age. They're already there.

 

I also think this is a misconception. We have to build a little if we want the overall mission to have accomplished anything other than a dead Bin Laden. It just seems like the price we are paying is getting harder and harder to justiry. 10 years and we're not even close to handing power over?

 

That's revisionist history nonsense. First off, any time you remove a sitting government through invasion, nation-building automatically becomes a necessary part of the deal. So to say nation building wasn't part of our mission is absurd, we knew it would be an inevitable part from the moment when we sent ground troops into Kabul.

And, although killing Bin Laden was certainly one of our original war goals, it was hardly the only one. It was called the War on Terror, not the war on Bin Laden, for a reason. And it was made very clear from the start that our aims were far broader than merely getting one man, the purpose was to dismantle the Al Qaeda machine, and the Taliban government that gave them the safe haven sanctuary state in which to operate, so that they could no longer effectively plan and carry out major terror operations against us.

And if you told us on the day we first invaded Afghanistan that this war would end with the Taliban back in control of the Government, and Al Qaeda still with their sanctuary state, most would have considered that an unacceptable failure. We didn't JUST want Bin Laden dead, we also wanted the Taliban and Al Qaeda crushed with him. Unfortunately, we might end up having to settle on 1 out 3.

 

But al queda and the taliban are crushed. CIA has been negotiating with the talibon.
To do what you want means more soldiers killed.

 

All that is true. It does, however, basically mean an endless deployment, peace-keeping or otherwise.