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The US was concerned about the Soviets and global communism when it got elbows deep in Japan. The US had no similar rival to fear that justified staying in Afghanistan.
It wasn't just a lack of will born out of some anti-colonial impulse, there was no interest. Americans would have been totally satisfied with a Germanicus-style punitive campaign.
This whole thing seems to have just been mission creep. If America had managed to corner and kill Bin Laden early on , would the US have insisted on bringing feminism and all that good shit?
Which, in hindsight, is I think all we should have done. Wipe out Al Queda. Wipe out the Taliban who protected them. Leave. The remaining Taliban, or at least whatever faction came out on top, would likely think twice before protecting terrorists from the US again. The US has an image of itself that we don't DO that sort of thing. But what we actually did was worse for nearly all concerned.
Most modern conflicts are caused by pride/patriotism.
The pride of the afghans who could not admit that their ancestral culture and religion was not conductive to human flourishing.
The pride of the americans who after going on a revenge rampage had to pretend it was really a civilizing mission, so stayed for 20 years and destabilized the region even more.
The pride of the africans who kicked out their colonial masters who could have kept the civil wars dormant and the economy running.
The pride of the russians who went chasing a revanchist dream instead of letting the gasoeuros flow.
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What strikes me the most is that I don’t know for certain that the Taliban ever learned the lesson: don’t harbor terrorist. The state department seems to think that they’ll be satisfied as the rulers of their little domain and we appear to be paying them millions of dollars a week to keep them mollified.
If Sarah Adams is to be believed, the taliban is actively working with AQ again right now. They (AQ) have been using Bagram, and all our infrastructure to train up a group of fedayeen that have already been inserted to the west.
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