There wasn’t much factual info there to fact check. Is al Qaeda damaged? I’m willing to believe they are with their spiritual leader and charismatic Caliph, Osama bin Laden dead and with the CIA now having all the intel they found in his compound. The only strategy we ever had in Afghanistan that ever made any sense was the original one Bush announced of tracking down the leaders of al Qaeda and the Taliban and arresting or killing them. For whatever reason, George W. Bush decided not to actually follow through on that when he let the whole bunch slip through our hands at Tora Bora, refusing to commit any US Special Forces to contain and get them. I think he had his eye on the war he really wanted to fight in Iraq, and getting bin Laden at that moment would have robbed him of the Boogeyman he used to lie us into that war. So that strategy was long dead before Obama inherited the war.
When he inherited it, we were just in a holding pattern there with about 35,000 troops sitting in bases and leaving the countryside to itself. Obama set a nation-building strategy and ramped troop levels up to over 100,000 to do it. He took the fight to the Taliban instead of sitting on base waiting for the next attack. It’s sort of transitioned from Nation Building to counter insurgency and it sounds like now it’s heading for counter terrorism only, training an Afghan national army in a country where no army has ever existed and 95% of the people are illiterate.
The fact is we are not going to stay forever, and when we leave, the Pashtun tribes that form the Taliban will rule. I would like to think that in our negotiations with the Taliban, we are telling them that when we leave, they’re going to need to keep terrorists out, and leave Pakistan alone. I’d like to think we’re telling them that if they let another 9/11 happen, our intelligence services will know who’s harboring the terrorists, and this time we won’t invade, we will carpet bomb their tribe into non existence. I’d like to think that. But I don’t think it. If that were so, we could announce a draw down now ending some time next year with no troops left And since I heard 2014, I don’t think those negotiations will go anywhere but down the toilet.