Why is there no rush for the US to leave Afghanistan?

[MuresanForMVP]

as evidenced by our inability to stablize/secure the region or our inability to capture the man responsible for heading the organization that killed 3K+ Americans on 9/11?

Which stellar part of the Special Operations success are you so proud of?

rb

[/ QUOTE ]

You consider a small Taliban insurgency, who perpetrate random RPG hit and run attacks a major destabilizing factor? Let's not get too outrageous here. In several months we crushed and ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan, instated Hamid Karzai as the leader of the new Afghanistan, and had Al-Qaeda on the run. We blew Tora Bora, when we could have had bin Laden, but that was more of a decision by commanders to use the Northern Alliance forces instead of the Rangers or SF teams. We did all this with only 300 casualties.

This war showed just how effective American Special Forces could be, in training and orchestrating a native force against an enemy. Along with the massive air support, you have basically the two ideal uses of the Green Berets. We won that war very convincingly, yet you chalk it up as a loss because of a minor insurgency, and the fact that we didn't get bin Laden? I'd say that bin Laden is more of a symbolic target than a practical one now, so I think that hardly makes this a failure.

[ QUOTE ]
A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks.

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.


The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah.

[/ QUOTE ] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm

So it could be said that getting Bin Laden was a secondary objective,no?