Because only empires try to hold on to their old client states. Humble little nations do not act the way we are acting in these countries. It is awful what will happen there when we leave. But at some point we have to leave, and then the awful things will happen. We, the USA, will never stop insurgents or terrorists from existing, given how bad we are at it. So whenever we pull out, it will be terrible. Why keep (accidentally) killing so many innocent people in the mean time?
Below, I want to expand on these very basic arguments and see if we can really answer the title question without big assumptions or partisan arguments. I want to say from the outset that I really want to know where people agree or disagree with these questions or potential answers. Because I am honestly trying to figure this out for myself.
A few basic facts: One of our satellite states just held a "failed" election in which our guy won again. He won't allow for political parties, so young men with guns have nowhere to go if they want to leave the violent Taliban leadership and enter government. He will get killed by the Taliban though, if he pushes too hard against them. And he needs warlords like his brother in his cabinet, or they won't protect him against the Taliban.
Q: Why is the situation so bad?
A: Because empires always suck at running their former provinces - which Iraq was, for us. We toppled its government in 2003, we had a "provincial government" with a viceroy - L. Paul Bremer disbanded the Army - huge mistake that essentially created the insurgency there. We did the same thing in Afghanistan with Karzai - he was the American choice to run the country. Then we let the guy we put in power run for President, in the theoretically democratic election. It is as if L. Paul Bremer had become Prime Minister of Iraq after some elections. Not really something the empire should let happen.
I don't have confidence that our government and military (as entities, reaching far beyond leaders like Barack Obama or Robert Gates) understand that there is no Democracy in the current Afghanistan, where people don't have TVs or NPR. Afghans probably did vote for Karzai in fair numbers (if not a majority), but only because they haven't had time to listen to Fresh Air's interview with Jane Mayer. Their Wi-Fi hook up has been on the fritz lately, so they haven't been receiving NPR podcasts, and their member station has been doing pledge week, so they couldn't hear it at 3 pm as they usually would. Right. Folks voted for whichever guy they had heard of before. Similar to here in the US, but exponentially less informed, if you can imagine. The country is a case study in why a real democracy needs a real media with the infrastructure necessary to give people information.
Our attempts to get our guy in Kabul to cut it out with the corruption have been unsuccessful - mostly, methinks, because this is the first time the President has indicated he will not deal with this bullshit. Try to picture the-former-president-who-must-not-be-spoken-of, calling Karzai and getting into the weeds about good governance. Hah. So yes, maybe there is hope on the sole issue of corruption, if constant pressure is applied by the current administration. But even calling that an uphill battle is being too kind - anti-corruption attempts are hard to pull off from the outside, even when done correctly. Pulling foreign aid strings from afar does a piss poor job of forcing action - see our resounding successes in creating good governance in Africa, after years of American foreign aid that never meets up to our promises, because we lose the attention span if there aren't troops to think about (and even then...). Too much talk, too little real money or commitment from the powers that be.
Q: Isn't there anything we can do to win over there, like a civilian surge or legitimate political, voter-endorsed reforms?
A: Theoretically, there are things we could do in Afghanistan that would win for us. But continuing the existence of Drone bombings will not win for us. It will kill far too many innocent human beings while trying to kill very few al Qaeda leaders who can be replaced anyways - all they're doing is sending people to die, it's not a hard job for the new guy to take up. And with each easy suicide bombing, the Taliban can help stop entire elections. Meanwhile, our best ideas for how to pull out seem to involve those deadly and poor-intel-prone drones. And they might very well be completely illegal in a way that means the world views our actions as criminal in a very real way. It seems almost a given, that the world thinks we're crazy to try remote-control bombing a population into success.
I'm open to ideas that involve throwing tons of civilians at the project. My problems with that potential solution is a) we are bad at international aid (assuming it can ever be done correctly); b) civilians get killed without heavy military protection (which, we know, only draws more insurgent fire). It 'only' takes the murder of one or two aid workers before NGOs pull out, then where are you? c) The military currently thinks it can do aid and rebuilding successfully, because guys like Petraeus come from a school of thought that simply says the military has done nation building and counter-insurgency poorly in the past, not that it can't be done. This, from men who run a military full ground troops who would have a hard time disagreeing with the claim that there is a strong religious element to their violent work over in Afghanistan.
It would be great if we could get Afghan civilians more involved in rebuilding (anyone know of some shovel-ready projects in Kandahar?), but how? Unless we stop killing their friends and family with drones, etc., it's hard to imagine getting a large slice of the population to sit permanently on our side, against the Taliban. We act like banks putting people in foreclosure with one part of their corporate arm, while another part of the company tries to keep the family in their house. Sure we're building roads. Then we're bombing them in search of an amorphous Al Qaeda leadership group.
I want to close with the following long-form quote that, I think, is almost prima facie evidence against the occupation or surge or whatever of Afghanistan. Someone did a web-only interview with Bill Moyers last week. I'll provide a link in the comments, as I think the statement should first stand on its own and it is easily accessible from PBS's website. They said the following to Bill Moyers:
My biggest wish is that if Americans-- that every American in sort of a national collective exercise would spend just ten minutes thinking about the following question, which is:
Suppose there was a Muslim country that invaded the United States with 150,000 troops, and proceeded to occupy our country for the next eight years: dropped bombs on wedding parties, slaughtered men, women, and children who were innocent. Created prisons in our country, where they arrested American citizens and put us for years without charges. Created an overseas island prison where they shipped some of us to without any recourse whatsoever. And at the same time, were threatening to do that to several other Western countries. How much rage and anger and a desire for vengeance and violence would we feel towards that country that was doing that to us?
I mean, just look at what the singular one-day attack of 9/11, the kind of anger and rage it unleashed. And I think if Americans were to think about how we would react towards other countries, and what we would want to do to them, if they were doing to us what we are now doing to them, I think a lot of light would be shined on what it is that we're really achieving in terms of our national security.