Dear VE,

I think the "Why?" was made clear by the US in
their belief that they would go after the terrorists
and stop such actions in the future.
And being an ally - Australia supported
the US in this. I don't see how the US could have been
prevented from taking this action considering the September
11th attack.

My answer would have been quite different a few months ago. The events in Kabul have changed everything.

Prior to that it seemed clear that what had been learned is that west was at war with radical Islam - although I've argued that what is commonly called radical Islam is indeed true Islam. Its been called 'A War on Terror' but that was just a means to try to not say we were at war with Islam. (Terror is merely a tactic used by the Islamists - calling it a war on terror is like calling WW1 a war on trenches.)

To fight the war, we recognised we needed to carry the battle to the enemy in his homeland - consequently Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran. Islamists believe that Allah will grant them victory. We learned that we needed to disabuse them of that hope.

We learned that there were a large minority of Mohammedans in our countries sympathetic to the Islamists and that they needed to be separated from their most radical elements. It seemed that we had learned that this was going to be a long, generational conflict.

We seemed to have learned all that. Then came the Kabul debacle and it's clear that the west has decided to unilaterally declare the war and the effort over. All the efforts to defeat radical Islam are reversed. The Islamists are now reassured that so long as they remain in the fight, the west will eventually elect leaders prepared to surrender any gains.

So we learned and then forgot a lot. But we have learned some things that will remain. We have learned that radicals are in our midst and must be monitored and feared. We've learned that we need to be careful about the type of person we let in the country - 'Stop the Boats'.

The war on Islam is now morphed into the war against the authoritarian states allied to the Islamists. We learned and then forgot a lot. Over the net twenty years we are going to have to do it all over again.

Interesting topic.

After 9/11 the US withdrew most of its troops from Saudi Arabia as stipulated by Bin Laden in his manifesto.

What is interesting is that there is a fresh withdrawal going on right now of patriot missiles.

"The Pentagon is pulling missile defense systems and other military hardware and personnel from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East, according to a defense official, as it realigns its mission and forces to confront China and Russia."
http://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/18/politics/pentagon-remove-missile-defense-saudi-arabia-middle-east/index.html

Given the return of Afghanistan to the Taliban it may well be that the US isn't interested in maintaining an aggravation which may be a rallying cry for radical Islamist groups.

Indeed it may well be a lesson learnt.

One has to wonder if this wasn't part of the negotiations with the Taliban. Who knows?

And so on.
Foxy,
Yes, the trophy manufacturers are doing overtime as do the bravery certificate printers. The whole Hero industry is in overdrive.
The ones who did the selfless work will never get a mention.

It appears that we'll have to wait and see the end
results yet. We didn't have a choice in this
originally. What happens next - as Steele said -
who knows?

It does appear that this discussion is not going
to progress any further. Which is understandable.
What else can we do? And of course we would all
prefer to stop engaging in costly wars. Equally we
should be willing to negotiate an end to conflict
if we believe it might actually result in lasting
peace.

However, if we just walk away at all costs -don't
we send a signal to the Taliban and others a
message that they can return to their malicious
activity unabated? Didn't the Taliban sink
Afghanistan into poverty, violence, and religious
persecution and was also known to provide a safe
haven for al-Qaeda?

It is important to be attentive to the lessons
we've learned against terrorism moving forward.
We need to be on our guard - to try to ensure 9.11
does not happen again.