The best comment of all those I read on the article:
“When all is said and done, and who the heck knows when our glorious leader will be done (!), bin Laden must be reckoned the victor. He achieved his goal, weakening the US, diverting us from all other business – such as our abysmal trade deficit, the rampant fraud by our financial industry, growing divisions within our country, etc.- diversions that are costing us trillions of dollars. The US achieved none of its not praiseworthy goals: grabbing Iraqi oil, building a pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean through Afghanistan, and (ahem!) winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world.
By any tally, the late bin Laden won. Maybe he was killed so that he would not be able to laugh at us in a court-room!”
I’d state that glorious US leaders from now and before are both to blame for their miopia, first, at aiming excessive and ambitious objectives without any proper preparation, and then for trying to quit the place after a decade of useless excesses and bloodshed, with timid advances and any security or hope about the future for afghanis, women, or anyone from the west who decides to go there and visit the place. I still remember an old Reader’s Digest travel book from my father, and Afghanistan was promoted as a place to discover when it used to be a place where visitors could still find something to explore without feeling to be about to die.
Now they will leave a country ruled by a corrupt and deceiving govt., with too many warlords, opium farmers who are re-introducing heroine in our homelands, and talibans just taking their time while pushing out the infidel crusaders… and women just know what they must expect.
Maybe malalai Joya (http://www.malalaijoya.com) can give a better look on it from an afghan liberal woman’s point of view.
Why did the U.S. Fail in Afghanistan? | Stephen M. Walt.
Al-Must'arib (the vocational Mossarab) 