Afghanistan

[Banquo's Ghost]

Sure is, I don't think I wrote that the U.S was to blame for everything in Afghanistan, Kukri took up that argument.

Very well then, let me address your points:

The reasosn for invading Afghanistan were many and had been in the pipes for a long time, you guys loved the Taliban while they managed to keep the prospect of a nice little pipeline open.

I certainly don't know of any solid evidence that the Taliban were supported by the US government - except perhaps through studiously ignoring them. Before 9-11 Islamicists barely figured on any administration's radar, which is possibly one reason that 9-11 happened. However, if you have any reliable links, I'm prepared to be proven wrong.

You were even friends of Osama, I find it increadible that you think you were justified in devastating a country for the sake of catching a man you created...

Whilst it is true that bin Laden was funded and trained by the CIA, 9-11 changed everything. Even I think it was acceptable to attack Afghanistan in the hope of destroying his infrastructure and apprehending him. He is, after all, a major war criminal. It is completely unreasonable to think that any country could sustain an attack like 9-11 and not do something immediate and overt to retaliate. No government would have survived such a low-key response, however noble their intention.

In addition, I think you are guilty of some hyperbole - the country is far from being devastated as its exports of opium testify. It has not progressed much, however.

The Taliban had no way of bringing in Osama, and your government knew it, but that didn't matter because they had lost control and had outlived their use.

Whilst the Taliban were pretty much powerless to facilitate President Bush's demands, and those demands were entirely unreasonable in their scope and timetable, said Taliban made it remarkably easy for the bellicose nature of the neo-cons to find expression. If they had possessed the wiles of Pakistan's Musharraf (who was similarly threatened at the time) they would have allowed US troops to conduct a search and destroy mission and gratefully accepted the millions of dollars which would have followed. As with all extremists, however, they were much happier to see their country and countrymen burn for purity's sake.

Oh and it has been the U.S which has facilitated the druglords, the warlords and the rapists and thugs...

Here, we do not substantially disagree. The funding of warlordism is pragmatic, but entirely counter-productive to the stated aim of nation-building. However, nation-building was and remains, a misguided and amorphous aim. When bin Laden eluded capture, the United States and their NATO allies should have quit. The hunt for bin Laden would be better served by special forces infiltrating into Pakistan's North West frontier.

the western representative democracy has no figurehead, and suffers not from the cult of personality.
this cannot be said of al-quada.

knocking of OBL will be a major blow to the perceived virility of al-quada in a way that killing even Saint Obama never would.

Had bin Laden been killed or captured in the first year, you would have had some point. Al-Qa'eda has always been a hydra-like entity (if entity is the right word) and extremely disparate. It coalesced for a while around the figurehead of bin Laden and the "success" of the 9-11 attacks. Now it has decayed back into lots of local Islamicist groups with differing agendas and bin Laden's demise is largely irrelevant to them.

In the real world, al-Qa'eda is much more useful to the West as a soundbite "black hat" organisation (like SPECTRE but without the ugly women ) rather than being any kind of co-ordinated group whose leadership can be targeted or engaged.