Why stay we did our best lost brave lives but we are feeding corruption and for what?
Yes the Taliban will come back but a few bombing runs will keep them under control.
We can not win the hearts and minds of these people some will always find reason to hate us.
In Iran right now, without our interference, that we know of the people are working towards getting more freedom.

We owe it to the civilians we put in the firing line for helping us. No idea how they thought they could ACTUALLY insert democracy into such a place, but we did, and invaded them for it.

Really, I don't have issue with sending the fundi sections of the mid-east back to the 1300's as it will keep them down for awhile longer, but I do have sympathy for the civilians who will have their heads hacked off when we leave.

Really, one bullet would've instigated civil war there and had the same effect as we're seeing now and we'd have deniability.

Belly

We went into Afghanistan because our political leadership calculated it was a good way of winning influence in Washington. That policy is now long past its use by date.

Withdrawal of the coalition forces will eventually result in a return to power of the murderous Taliban This will turn Afghanistan into a hell on Earth for Afghan woman who don't have it too good now anyway. This is regrettable but it is none of our business.

Let me repeat that.

What Afghans do to Afghans in Afghanistan is NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. Even if they torture and enslave women - which is what the Taliban did the last time they were in power - it is none of our business. We are in any case powerless to do anything about it.

I am spelling this out because I want to anticipate in advance the "humanitarian" arguments those who think we should stay will undoubtedly make.

AFGHNISTAN IS NONE OF OUR BUSINESS.

Afghanistan is not worth the life of of one more Australian soldier or the expenditure of one more Australian dollar.

We should leave today.

Agree entirely Belly and lentaubman, and I believe that we would better nurture peace and stability by setting an example of non-interference. Personally, the wellbeing of those in ONE (always rather fundamentalist) country is not worth the security of the rest of the Middle East, the Western world, and generally the entire world that sees many nations with deep Islamic-Non relations and could use the reprieve of the absence of something that could radicalize, or instigate further conflict.

For what?
-The Taliban are ALREADY committing abhorent crimes under our WATCH, so the "brutal taliban returning" is really rather redundant. Furthermore, they're spreading outwards and annexing places in Pakistan.
-The government we're dying for is almost as bad, and willing to ally with them anyway
-Washington rewarded us for our bloodshed with trying to dump some Gitmo inmates on us (some allies they turned out to be).
-And those spooky countries to the north, I hate to break it to everyone, are actually fairly well-off, mostly democratic nations to which we are important trading partners to, so the idea that any of them would invade is flat-out stupid.

Afghanistan why stay?

Belly, I suspect that we'll stay for as
long as the US tells us to. Our government
has made that commitment and the current
government intends to keep it.

All over the world, hundreds of thousands of
scientists and engineers devote their skills
to planning new and more efficient ways for
humans to kill one another; millions of
workers labour to manufacture instruments of
death; and tens of millions of soldiers train
for combat - and some as we've seen actually
go to war.

From a moral and even an economic point of view,
this vast investment of human ingenuity and energy
seems a tragic waste. Unlike other economic goods
like cars, or computers, the weapons of war are
used to destroy economies, not build them. And looming
over all these military preparations and counter-
preparations is humanity's ultimate threat, the
unleashing of full-scale nuclear war.

All we can do is apply pressure on the government
to get out of Afghanistan and hope that with enough
popular pressure things will change over time
under the influence of new government policies.

King Hazza,

You are right. The Taliban are committing atrocities as we speak. However I think we have to face up to the fact that it will get worse when (not if) the coalition forces leave. We'll have more of this:

"The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. They dragged her to a mountain clearing near her village in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, ignoring her protests that her in-laws had been abusive, that she had no choice but to escape. Shivering in the cold air and blinded by the flashlights trained on her by her husband's family, she faced her spouse and accuser. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Later, he would tell Aisha's uncle that she had to be made an example of lest other girls in the village try to do the same thing. The commander gave his verdict, and men moved in to deliver the punishment. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose. Aisha passed out from the pain but awoke soon after, choking on her own blood. The men had left her on the mountainside to die."

See: Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007238-1,00.html

Critics of any withdrawal will point to this. That's why I want to emphasise the point.

What Afghans do to Afghans in Afghanistan may be regrettable but it is NONE OF OUR BUSINESS.

I feel the greatest sympathy for women in Aisha's position but I think the fight is not worth the life of one more Australian soldier. The Afghans will have to work this out on their own