So now we're told that al-Qaeda is not all close to the Taliban. Which raises the obvious question: why the hell are we in Afghanistan? Why is the US paying big money propping up the regime?
The New York Times reports of an NYU study which has found that there was substantial friction between the groups' leaders before the attacks of September 11, 2001, and that hostility has only intensified since then. It found that the Taliban did not know that those attacks on America were about to happen and that it had been manipulated by Osama Bin-Laden who was living in Afghanistan at the time.
In other words, George W Bush and his goons, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, were spinning a pack of lies. And unfortunately, the public bought it.
As explained in Wired, the US is running a big risk because it could kill and capture the Taliban leaders most willing to reach a peace deal. They will be replaced by a new generation of Taliban, "more ideologically motivated and less nationalistic… not interested in compromise or negotiations with foreigners." And al-Qaeda is reaching out to them, creating the potential for an "even greater international threat."
Quite aside from the loss of life, and about 40 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan in the first weeks of 2011, there's also the question of cost. Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could top $US4 trillion, money that could otherwise be spent rebuilding the American economy and creating jobs. So how many millions is that per soldier killed? And why are we there again?
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