Let the Taliban have Afghanistan !

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 69% of U.S. adults say the United States has mostly failed to achieve its goals in Afghanistan but most forget that the goals of the U.S. in Afghanistan were to degrade the capability of Al-Qaeda and prevent it from inflicting harm on Americans.

That goal was accomplished on May 2, 2011 when Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States and co-founder of Al-Qaeda was killed by U.S. forces during a raid on his compound hideout in Pakistan. From that day on not one more American should have been injured or died in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, which recently overtook control of Afghanistan is a distinct terrorist group from Al-Qaeda and should not be conflated with the group that attacked America on September 11 2001. The Taliban is a Sunni Islamist political movement that governed Afghanistan from 1996 until they were overthrown in late 2001 during Operation Enduring Freedom. The ideology followed by Taliban is a combination of Sharia Law and Pashtun tribal codes, sharing some concepts of jihad followed by the Al-Qaeda group.

While this video ( https://youtu.be/IHbmkt7qscc ) is a bit dated it’s a good description of the differences and similarities between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda which we should all keep in mind when we discuss the “goals” of the U.S. in Afghanistan. Our fight has always been with Al-Qaeda. The Taliban just hapened to get in the way.