When A War That's Over Isn't Over

The U.S. officially ended combat operations in Afghanistan, the longest war in this nation's history.

But get this: More than ten thousand U.S. service personnel will remain in Afghanistan in a "supporting role" to train and "assist" Afghan security forces to help Afghanistan's government fight the Taliban.

So, there'll still be a war after the war?

Maybe it's in part because of the distraction of the unjust and unnecessary invasion of and subsequent war in Iraq, but we didn't exactly go about getting rid of the Taliban in the proper way.  After 9/11, we  ("we" being U.S. and other NATO forces) drove the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of power in Kabul and set up a new government there but didn't bother to drive the Taliban or al-Qeada out of power elsewhere.  Then-President Hamid Karzai was seen less as the president of Afghanistan than as the mayor of Kabul.  Imagine if we fought the Nazis in Germany the same way we fought the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.  Imagine if we drove Hitler and his high command out of Berlin, let him get away to hide out in the greater Reich, and set up a new German government in Berlin whose authority didn't extend very far beyond Potsdam.  Would you call that a winning strategy?       

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt called for shared sacrifice and a concerted effort to defeat the Axis powers.  After 9/11, when Congress could have declared war on the Taliban (which was, for all intents and purposes, the Afghan government on 9/12), with the legislature fully vested in its constitutional obligations as a check on the executive branch, and applied the same spirit to defeating "the folks" (as George Walker Bush called them on September 11, 2001) who leveled the Twin Towers in New York, George Walker Bush told us to go shopping and let the experts handle the "war on terror."  And then came more tax cuts, government overspending, and a diversion in Iraq.  If we went to war against bin Laden and chief Talib Mullah Mohammed Omar, the way we went to war against Hitler and Tojo, we could have been ended the war in Afghanistan a whole lot sooner.    

Yes, we kept troops in Germany and Japan after World War II ended.  But at least the actual fighting was over and the bad guys were out of the picture.