Afghan War: Part of what the Iraq War cost us (1 of 7)

When Bush began the Afghan War in late 2001, he had an unprecendented level of international support. The United Nations authorized the intervention. NATO, for the first time in its history (and probably the last), had formally invoked the military alliance in defense of the United States in response to the 9/11 attacks. And the war in Afghanistan was generally regarded as a legitimate and necessary response to those attacks.

The Bush strategy in Afghanistan was to rely on the warlords loosely united in the Northern Alliance - which the US and most countries of the world still recognized as the legitimate goverment of Afghanistan - to overthrow the Taliban regime in Kabul through military action under close US-British direction, with supporting US-British airpower, and with the use of US Special Forces in direct combat against experienced al-Qaeda fighters.

But no large numbers of US troops were sent in for massive direct and immediate strikes against al-Qaeda concentrations. And, despite the rhetoric, the level of commitment to "nation-building" and building a strong government in Afghanistan that could effectively deny haven to al-Qaeda type groups can be seen in recent events. National elections just had to be postponed for at least three months because only a fraction of eligible voters are registered. The Karzai government effectively exist only in the capital city of Kabul. And that is only possible because of the NATO force there. Because the Afghan army is virtually non-existent.

The last I heard, Karzai himself is protected by American soldiers acting as bodyguards. He can't even find enough Afghans qualified and loyal enough to act as bodyguards for the country's chief of government.

Rummy and Paul Wolfowitz and the merry gang of neoconservative Iraq hawks were chomping at the bit to invade Iraq immediately after 9/11. In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush began his build-up toward war against the most vulnerable of the "axis of evil" he famously announced in that speech.

Going after al-Qaeda took a back seat to going after Saddam Hussein and his non-existent "weapons of mass destruction." Stabilizing Afghanistan and making it an effective state was never on the Bush Administration's agenda in any serious way.