Xenophon
Gone and forgotten
Very cute.Since you seem woefully ignorant of recent (and not so recent) history.Once again....when and how?
IN the late 70's the USSR invaded Afghanistan to protect their Border from Islamic terrorists. Jimmy Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics in retaliation (which had the positive aspect of not costing government money). When Reagan came to office he funded a resistance movement. When the resistance got rid of the Soviets, they made Afghanistan a fundamentalist Islamic state in a more or less permanent posture of Jihad; those are the Taliban. They committed a lot of atrocities including the gratuitous destruction of ancient cultural artifacts (two giant Buddha statues among others).
All the above is far enough back that some might call it ancient history.
Then on September 11, 2001 Islamic terrorists attacked the US killing thousands. You can easily find this if you search the web for 9/11. This is the 3000 dead which were referenced.
Al Quaeda, in their typical fashion, taunted the world to let us know they were responsible without actually claiming they had done anything.
It was firmly established that the Taliban ruling in Afghanistan had helped train,fund, and deploy the terrorists. The US got a consensus among the nations of the world and went into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and destroy Al Quaeda.
We have yet to leave.
And completly wrong.
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a failed communist state they had controlled as a puppet, NOT to fight Islamic terorism.
The Soviets never had a problem with islamic terrorist due to their extreme habit of massive retaliation, it was only AFTER the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 that islam became a problem for the new Russian federation.
The Taliban was created in 1995 by PAKISTAN to fill a power vacuum as the Northern Alliance (the side the US backed) and the Southern Pashtuns (Islamic fundies) who favored Iran and are ethnically linked to Iran.
The Taliban movement was welcomed at first because it cracked down on lawlessness, its excesses were not understood until it became a national Afghan movement.
When Sudan decided to expell Osmama Bin laden in 1996 the Taliban accepted him as he had formed and lead a group of Islamic fighters against the Soviets (his leadership was so bad he nearly got them all killed, but he was renown for NOT taking any US money or support).
Right before the 9/11 attack Bin Laden's Al Qaeda murdered the head of the Northern Allinace in a suicide attack (2 of them posed as reporters and blew him up with a camera.
After the 2001 terror attack on the USA Bush asked that Bin laden be expelled from Afghanistan, the Taliban was willing to discuss it but not seriously, so the USA turned to the now infuriated Northern Alliance (who were the famous mujadeen of the 1980s) and promised them air support and logistics if they expelled the Taliban.
This was done quickly and in dramatic fashion in early 2002.
It was AFTER all this US forces arrived on the groud and our troubles started.
We are now considered an occupier and the enemy, the US should withdraw immediately.