Ive been offline and not around much lately so just finding this.
Kent, What I do believe is you have a naive view of the universe. Maybe half the people on the US payroll over there are former Taliban. Many of the Taliban are Pashtun, when this is all said and done we will have made deals with Pashtun. Karzai and family were a joke from the start, we should have made our deals with the Pashtun from day one. There are mostly financial reasons we did not, not moral or ethical reasons.
What many here tend to forget is I was part of the generation that viewed Russia and Communist as devils, I trained to kill them and believed we would be at war with them till the end of time. Back then even the right wing Christians saw the Russians as the Antichrist and preached and preached about them. Then a few years ago you guys hero George Bush looked into a Russians eyes and told everyone he was honest, could be trusted, that was a huge disappointment to me. Back then the Mujaheddin was a bunch of Commie killing freedom fighters and I still remember that.
I like fighting, on a personal level and a grand scale. I'm American and believe in America, I have not ever taken a side against America or the constitution. That said few Americans can stomach a war, they couldn't stomach what it would take to win a war in Vietnam and they cannot stomach what it would take to defeat and control south Asia. I have no faith in Harvard and Yale boys or their politics, they don't fight worth shit. What I learned growing up fighting in Little Rock is once a fight breaks out you fight to win today.
To get straight to the point siding with the Northern Alliance/Karzai to start a war with the Taliban was a giant fuckup but its done, no going back now.