How To Win In Afganistan Part 1

THESIS
In order to win in Afghanistan and interdict resurgent terrorist activity there, the United States should perform a holding action, through real diplomacy with the Taliban and by leveraging its use of Special Operations Forces who would be aggressively and continuously supported by a much larger conventional force (most likely an Aircraft Carrier Group) just outside of the country.

THE PAST
The United States invaded Afghanistan over eight years ago in an effort to either capture or kill Osama Bin Ladin. Unfortunately, that effort was unsuccessful, culminating in Osama Bin Ladins’ purported escape across the mountainous regions of Tora Bora over into Pakistan. Following this, for reasons I can only guess were borne of sheer desperation and embarrassment, the fight in Afghanistan was set aside by the Bush Administration and put on the back burner- as our forces were flung headlong into a conflict with the country of Iraq (over the supposed existence of WMDs there.) This then left Al Qaeda able to simply move into Pakistan uncontested, refitting and reconstituting their forces once there.
At the same time, as that Executive debacle played itself out, before the eyes of the world, the fight in Afghanistan degenerated into an ethnocentrically driven terra-forming project; which sought to radically alter the social and political landscape of that country. Eventually the effort in Afghanistan would disintegrate even further into fights with the local populace over their customs, as well as the political and social norms of certain groups (e.g., the Taliban) within the country.
At the same time, back here in the U.S., imprecise journalists and right-wing political pundits began confusing the term ‘taliban’ with the much hated and rightly maligned term ‘al qaeda’ in the media. This erroneous collation of the two terms produced an infectiously synergistic dumbing-down effect that wrongly oversimplified the situation, in the minds of the public, many of the political pundits and so-called journalist in the press. Once the language was controlled and co-opted (by those of the right) and the terms were made synonymous, it then became possible to justify the unnecessarily large and continued presence of our conventional fighting forces in Afghanistan.
But the truth of the matter is that, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not synonymous with one another. Al Qaeda is seeking global dominance and the overthrow of western society, while the Taliban (on the other hand) only seek to control lands traditionally their own and have no known aspirations to do otherwise. This may sound silly, that affixing two words to the same definition could lead a nation (along with its army) down a costly and deceptive course, but language is quite powerful.
And with this errant language, our former leaders foolishly expanded the scope of the conflict in Afghanistan- well beyond its original bounds and stated purpose (to capture or kill Al Qaeda and all those harboring these terrorists)- in order to justify our continued occupation of Afghanistan. As a result, the United States shifted its focus and began to make war not on Al Qaeda but on the Afghan population as a whole. This war was not fought merely by the bullet and bomb but with foreign concepts and ethnocentrically driven ideology as well.