Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to re: another interesting factoid

You want to speculate about Afghanistan?

Well...

If we had put enough soldiers in Afghanistan to secure more than Kabul, the Taliban might not have made the comeback it did. The Taliban reestablished itself in a law-and-order move, because there was not enough of either.

What would Saddam have done? Pretty much what he had been doing. The Iranians wouldn't have the foothold they have in eastern Iraq. The Kurds would still have trouble.

Would bin Laden have been captured? Maybe. Would we have a democratic Afghanistan? Don't know. Afghanistan has gone its own way under a wide assortment of aspiring masters, going all the way back to Alexander the Great. The best chance was to give the Afghanis security while they still remembered how awful the Taliban was, and to give the women a chance to re-establish themselves in society. But we didn't do that. So we'll never know.

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