From MSNBC.com



Questions for Debate: With an elected legislature and President, is the US work in Afghanistan complete? Do the restrictions being placed on the US forces by Karzai make staying in Afghanistan worthwhile? Can the elected Afghan government stymie any terrorist challenge that may emanate from there without coalition support?

Questions for Debate: With an elected legislature and President, is the US work in Afghanistan complete?Our work will nver be complete in afghanistan. I do however believe that American Soliders should have a limited link with the population

Can the elected Afghan government stymie any terrorist challenge that may emanate from there without coalition support?
It depends on if the terrorist support the new president. Of course they wont support the new president. We need to leave our troops in the country and teach the Afghanistani troops how to fight and battle, after we do that and they havea good standing army, then i support leaving or limiting access.

Well, Osama bin Laden is still at large. His whereabouts are unknown but many suspect he is still hiding along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Our mission going into Afghanistan was to find bin Laden. Having an elected legislature and President in Afghanistan doesn't change that.

Have we forgotten who is responsible for 9/11? Can you remember how long it has been since you last saw an in-depth article on the hunt for Osama? If we leave Afghanistan do we completely abandon our search for the person who planned the murders of 3,000 innocent people?

As Schmed said, when we catch bin Laden. It's also important the Karzai government be fully stable and able to handle the remaining terrorist threats. When all that is satisfied, it'll be time to leave.

Catching bin Laden was not the mission going into Afghanistan, at least to President Bush or the Department of Defense it wasn't.

(emphasis mine)



With an elected legislature and President, is the US work in Afghanistan complete?
Almost. I do not believe that Afghanistan is secure or stable enough to be a thriving democracy just yet. The Department of Defense has their eyes set on Afghanistan being ready by 2007.

Do the restrictions being placed on the US forces by Karzai make staying in Afghanistan worthwhile?
I think so, but only in terms of securing and building a healthy democracy. If the Afghans want to hamper the continued military effort, then the US needs to back off on military aid and push forward on developing infastructure, health, and the private sector.

Can the elected Afghan government stymie any terrorist challenge that may emanate from there without coalition support?
Not sure. By starting to pull some of the military portion now, we can find the answer to this though.

I'm surprised this doesn't have more responses...

I'll group all of your questions together. If Afghanistan has an army, police, and a good government, then I'd say we can leave. They probably have to continue searching houses, though, because that is the only way all the terrorists will be flushed out of cities. We don't have very many people there, I don't think, and since they seem to be alright, unless there is some hyperinflation I haven't heard of, we probably need to take the majority of soldiers out. There should be about 1000 there to aid for maybe 1 or 2 years longer, and people searching for Osama probably.

It seems that this post isn't very well typed, so I'm sorry.

With lawlessness rife throughout the entire region (Taliban are still the major force in many areas) and the increase in opium production i would argue that the job has really yet to be started let alone completed to the point of creating an exit strategy.

Some facts on the situation in Afghanistan from the UK.


Without the ability to search homes, those 18,000 troops have been compromised. Afghanistan has the right to protect their people's civil liberties though, so in my mind the only response is to leave the drug problem and Taliban to the new government to handle.

While you are raising a good point I do not believe you are seeing the full circle that this issue represents. You want to leave a new government, a baby in the eyes of political clout, in command of civil unrest with no help from the government who helped topple the old one. Forgive my possibly naive way of thinking, but how is that different from sticking a gun in the hand of an infant and expect it to defend itself against a fully grown predator?

Maybe the Taliban or drugs aren't mature in my analogy, but they present enough of a thorn in the side to cause a system of guerilla war. We cannot expect ourselves to go in, topple a regime, and then do nothing to in the way of helping government-shape. Some could argue we are making outposts in the middle-east, but we are simply making the beds we slept in by tying up the loose ends, as is our responsibility, before pulling out.

I would never condone the invasion of Iraq, or the resources used to rebuild it- but I feel the opposite about Afghanistan. Had we backed up the muhadeen back when they chased out the Russians, we probaby never would have had a Taliban. When you get a dirt poor and uneducated population like that, throw in some heavily fundamentalist beliefs, and a warrior culture, and a drug trade, you have a real mix for unstablity. AS much as anyone despises a dictator- it typically does make for long term stability for that country- as long as that dictator lives. They fought the Russians for 10 years, and each other for what, 20 years? Can't remember the timeline, sorry. In the end, only the strongest survived, and those strongest left were not nice poeple. You have various groups that need to make money so they can wage war on other warlords. For a slick operator like OBL, you just give them some money, and you can hang out with them LOL

Afghanistan we should stick with until they have an actual working goverment. I don't think Karzai will last long without the US- because federal troops will probably never really be loyal to him- they will remain loyal to thier tribes. Right now, the reality is, just like for the Russians, the pro-american forces control Kabul, and the warlords rule thier fiefdoms. I don't know if that is going to change much in the next 10 years or not- but I do know tha that afghani's are sick to death of war- and that may be the most important issue for that country of all.

Do we not remember what President Bush said a few days after 9/11?

On Sept. 13, 2001, President Bush said this to a grieving and shocked nation, "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."(source)

Or this:
Speaking with reporters after a Pentagon briefing on plans to call up reserve troops, Bush offered some of his most blunt language to date when he was asked if he wanted bin Laden dead.

"I want justice," Bush said. "And there's an old poster out West… I recall, that said, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.'"

Bush: bin Laden 'prime suspect'

Another question for you. If we were not hunting bin Laden at Tora Bora, then how is it that he escaped? Escaped from those not looking for him?

Documents Suggest bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora

If we are not hunting bin Laden then why are we offering millions in reward for his capture?

(CBS) Thousands of U.S., Afghan and Pakistani troops and who knows how many spooks and special forces teams have searched for him for more than three years now, with no success.

Now, hoping that plain old greed and publicity will prompt a slew of new leads, U.S. officials are blanketing Pakistani television with more "Most Wanted" ads for Osama bin Laden and his terrorists, CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports.

"You may get a reward of up to $25 million (and) be resettled to any new place with your family," the ads offer.

Upping the Ante in bin Laden Hunt

If getting bin Laden was not a goal of President Bush in Afghanistan, then why in 2004 did his spokesman say the following about bin Laden?

A month earlier, when asked if the United States was still actively looking for the ringleader, McClellan responded: "Yes, we are continuing to pursue him and he will be brought to justice."

Hunt for bin Laden Still On

If the Department of Defense didn't have a mission to hunt for bin Laden, someone should have informed the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan:

Bin Laden Hunt Continues 24/7, DoD Leaders Report
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10, 2004 -- The manhunt for Osama bin Laden continues "every day, 24 hours a day," the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan told NBC News this week.

Army Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, commander of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan, said "a very, very dedicated, highly capable element" is committed to the effort and they're "looking at the intelligence and … ready to respond."

Bin Laden Hunt Continues 24/7, DoD Leaders Report

If our Department of Defense didn't think we had a mission to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan, explain the following statement from the Secretary of the Army:

But four days later, on 10 April 2002, army secretary Thomas White said that one of America’s ‘strategic objectives’ in Afghanistan is ‘to get bin Laden…and we are pursuing that’ . Asked if the war on terror could only be hailed a success once bin Laden was found, White said yes – claiming that ‘no one said it was going to be easy’.

Has bin Laden bin Forgotten?



Leaving Afghanistan before we capture Bin Laden would be a grave injustice. How we can even consider leaving while he may still be in the border region is unconscionable. Army Secretary White was right--the hunt has not been easy. But we owe it to those who were lost on 9/11 to find him and bring him to justice.

Point taken schmed. I'm not trying to say that catching bin Laden is inconsequential. We obviously are trying to do that and should be. And while that still may be a main objective of the War on Terror, it is not currently the main objective in Afghanistan. The President of the country has asked that we stop searching homes without his governments permission adding enough red tape to the process to make the raids virtually worthless. Do we just give the elected leader of a democracy the finger and do what we want anyway? Should we waste valuable resources in a fruitless effort to make the American public feel better? What should we do?

V and CR, this democracy in Afghanistan isn't perfect. It's not going to be. I'm not so sure that having US forces all over the country is doing Karzai any favors though. He obviously is asserting his authority to show his people that he is not a puppet of the US. And as for the drugs and warlords, I have to say that it's not the US's problem. Afghanstan today is little different from Columbia in those regards. Those are problems for sure, but is it our responsibility to fix them? More importantly do we have the right to force policy changes and military raids that would be needed to fix those problems on the country? I'm not saying we should tuck and run. I'm saying that our boys need to work on the economic side of the fence since the military side is neither wanted nor appreciated.