But the hard work remains.
Possibly the biggest advantage we have is that inspite of Taliban/ObL propaganda (btw, anyone notice the very close coordination between them?)
they are fighting a far different war than the one they won with western help against the USSR.
In the USSR war, they were heavily assisted by the West and many Middle Eastern countries.
They were facing a USSR that was in decline.
They were able to control the land around Soviet occupied areas, as well as night superiority.
In this war, the tables are turned.
ObL/Taliban forces will recieve nothing like the level of support they received before.
Our side will control the night.
The Taliban is apparently choosing to defend key areas of importance. Afterall, they posture themselves as a government. If they abandon their territory,they will have an even more tenuous claim to legitimacy.
This leaves them on the strategic defensive, a situation they have not had to deal with.
The other huge difference is that the Northern Alliance is more than happy to fight the Taliban for us, allowing us to focus on occupying and securing very limitied and favorable postions, and to bring force to bear against them as wish, not as they dictate, while we in turn reduce Taliban/ObL presence in the field to little more than platoon sized small-arms.
The disruption to their global reach will be harder to measure.
We don't know what they have by way of WMDs, we don't know that they haven't co-opted non-Moslems sociopaths into their movement. Their are persistent and disturbing rumors of IRA terror mercenaries, for example.
We don't know they don't have an EMP, a nuke, large amounts of gas or biowar agents.
They keep manuvering this to be a grand gotterdamerung between Islam and everyone else.
They sound more and more like the NAZI fascists or hardcore Communists of the last Century, with their strange delusional worldviews they demand the right to impose on everyone.
In a perfect world, we would have precepitated the collapse of the Taliban in those early days when their cowardice was showing clearly. They have had time to impose discipline again and are digging in: a strategy that benefits us on the the Afghan front.
But they have also had time to seek back channels to their global assets. Additionally, most of the asets seem capable of fairly independent functioning. As we have seen, one group of 20 or so can effectively recreate Pearl Harbor. What other targets are they seeking even now, and with what weapons will they attack it?
It seems our only long-term success will come from fostering a changed islamic sorld, where the incessant whining and vicitmology practiced their is seen for the pathetic scam it is. To help each of the Islamic countries build a civil society where,as in the full bloom of Islamic culture, dignity, scholarship and the other elements of a civil society can flourish.
We must wage a successful peace.
And how to do this, I haven't a firm idea at all.

Ed