Without total support from the Pakistanis in dealing with the Taliban in the FATA and the ISI completely declaring war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban and/or a very different war waged immediately after 911 by the U.S. and its allies there is no way to 'win' the war by 2005.
The way the war could have gone differently to allow for the near utter destruction of al-Qaeda and the Taliban is the Pakistanis and the Iranians to allow you to put troops on either border before the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Given how damn scared Mushie and Iran were of us after 911 its possible. Then start the attack with about 300,000 U.S. and coalition troops sometime in 2002 and attack from the West and East so that the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan are caught between two large ground armies and end up being mostly annihilated.
Some of them will survive and eventually try to fight on in the mountains for years, but it would greatly delay them being able to fully reconstitute into the kind of insurgency they reformed into 7-8 years after the initial invasion. Afghanistan's biggest problem after the invasion no matter what the U.S. does in 2001 is no infrastructure and a population that would take a generation to be able to educate to form into the quality of army that say Iraq had by 2007.
The grand mistake in Afghanistan of going with a light footprint with a heavy focus on bombing and not troops on the ground and not securing the exist routes of Bin Laden and his aids and the Taliban leadership going to Pakistan and Zarqawi and his aids going to Iran and then Iraq had already been made by the end of 2001. A greater focus on Afghanistan and no Iraq War would have made virtually no difference at all in Afghanistan after that point unless Bush decided to invade Western Pakistan were the entire Taliban leadership had gone and were reconstituting.
The way the war could have gone differently to allow for the near utter destruction of al-Qaeda and the Taliban is the Pakistanis and the Iranians to allow you to put troops on either border before the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Given how damn scared Mushie and Iran were of us after 911 its possible. Then start the attack with about 300,000 U.S. and coalition troops sometime in 2002 and attack from the West and East so that the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan are caught between two large ground armies and end up being mostly annihilated.
Some of them will survive and eventually try to fight on in the mountains for years, but it would greatly delay them being able to fully reconstitute into the kind of insurgency they reformed into 7-8 years after the initial invasion. Afghanistan's biggest problem after the invasion no matter what the U.S. does in 2001 is no infrastructure and a population that would take a generation to be able to educate to form into the quality of army that say Iraq had by 2007.
The grand mistake in Afghanistan of going with a light footprint with a heavy focus on bombing and not troops on the ground and not securing the exist routes of Bin Laden and his aids and the Taliban leadership going to Pakistan and Zarqawi and his aids going to Iran and then Iraq had already been made by the end of 2001. A greater focus on Afghanistan and no Iraq War would have made virtually no difference at all in Afghanistan after that point unless Bush decided to invade Western Pakistan were the entire Taliban leadership had gone and were reconstituting.
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