Insufficiently:

Indeed. Within a few months, with literally a handful of operatives, the government of Afghanistan fell. Bin Laden and crew were on the run. If Afghanistan became another failed state, another group or the same could use it as a base of training and operations for something similar.

It has been written that Al Queda pulled off 9/11 with the intent of drawing the US into a conflict in the middle east, where the mujahideen would rise up and defeat the oppressor. Some have written that the US fell for the ruse, blindly to die in the graveyard of empires. They saw it as the conflict of the ages.

So, if you were to fight such a battle, where would you choose to fight it? In the mountains of Afghanistan, or the plains of Iraq?

Iraq has been a humiliating defeat for al Queda. Now they are regrouping elsewhere. Afghanistan was a good place in other times. I don’t think it is now. They will pop up somewhere else.

Derek