Comments in slashdot by IgnoramusMaximus (692000)

If your friend shoots one of my family members and then goes and hides in your house, I'm not picking a fight with you when I come to drag him out. If you decide to get in my way, that's your problem.

Well, its a fine demagoguery you got there, but the actual reality was that the Taliban demanded to see evidence of Bin Laden's responsibility before handing him over (remember that Bin Laden is just a "spiritual leader" - read: "pontificating bore that talks hell of a lot but hasn't actually done much directly" as opposed to other, more hands-on operatives who worked out of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and, in the case of the 9/11 crew, Germany) and the USA flatly refused. Following which the USA invaded declaring any and all comers as "unlawful combatants" with no rights of any kind.

So to keep your analogy straight, you have a case of my friend showing up at my house saying that you are gunning for him, following which you show up with a box of explosives and demand that I hand him over or else "because he did me wrong!". And when I say "hold on for a sec, what proof exactly do you have?" you say "I don't have to explain myself to a non-human like you, far beneath my superior Manifest Destiny self! What I say goes or else! You got 10 minutes to comply!" and then set the bomb off 5 minutes later, killing my wife and maiming my kids, following which you get the biker gang down the street to help you rummage through and "govern" the wreckage. And so now you have two mortal enemies instead of one and not exactly what could be called a "moral high ground".

This is how the Afghanistan mis-adventure is seen by "the other side" and it is of little wonder that the fight will likely go on indefinitely, Taliban having quite a bit (and growing by many accounts) of local support and very able to present itself as the victims of a belligerent, arrogant, foreign, religiously-motivated, supremacist aggressor, victims who will defend their ancestral homeland, their religion and their "way of life" against that aggressor to the bitter end.

I'd say the odds of "victory" in Afghanistan for the USA are pretty much on the same level as those of all the previous Empires ... not entirely zero but any Vegas slot machine looks like a guaranteed retirement plan by comparison.