We can't leave because chaos will ensue. Only our beneficence and civilizing influence keeps the WOGs from slitting one another's throats for a biscuit.
The eighteenth and nineteenth century imperialists invoked moral arguments too, all the while raping and pillaging their way around the globe. Make no mistake-- U.S. motives in Afghanistan are no different.
Addressing your "points:"
Yes, chaos will ensue if we withdraw. That's what happens when we start unjust and terribly asymmetric wars for profit. We fuck things up, and they stay fucked up for a long while to remind us and the rest of the world that American exceptionalism is not a good thing. That's called a CONSEQUENCE, and if follows the general rule that actions have them. Sometimes we learn from them. Apparently that's not easy.
Chaos will ensue no matter when we withdraw, just as it did in the vacuum following the Soviet withdrawal-- it is just a question of when that will happen, and how many unnecessary deaths will be caused in the interim. The longer we wait for the inevitable, the worse the consequences will be. Remember Vietnam? Remember the Soviet experience in Afghanstan (and the British, etc)? It will not end well, no matter how long we prolong it.
You admit that we cannot undo what we've done. So why keep trying? It's time to admit the mistake and pack our shit up and go home, hopefully with some international mea culpa and some war crimes tribunals to help purge the bitter memory.
You refer to the Taliban having a "warm relationship with al Qaeda." There is no such "warm relationship." The Taliban is an entirely Pashtun movement, tribal in scope, with no international aspirations at all-- and it had even fewer concerns about international affairs ten years ago. I don't like the Taliban, but that's utterly beside the point. They are not only Afghanistan's and Pakistan's collective problem, they're well supported by many in the region, perhaps most, and besides, when did we become the arbiter's of other people's religion or politics? Oh yeah, that's the white man's burden again....
How much more revenge do you want against innocents for 9/11 attacks-- which NO AFGHANS participated in or had anything to do with? How many more people do you want to kill for something they had no part in? We have killed thousands more than were killed in New York City. What's the acceptable kill ratio for innocent brown people? When we reach 10-to-1, will that be enough? 100-to-1? 1000-to-1?
As for a "nuclear armed Taliban," you've made the case for preemptive warfare, i.e. the Bush doctrine. Because letting the fundamentalist influence grow in Pakistan might result in things we fear sometime in the future-- if they happen at all-- we have the right to go to war and kill people who haven't threatened us in any way, because if we don't kill them now, they might become a threat some time in the future. That is fucking insane. It's the classic justification for genocide, among other things. And it goes so hand-in-hand with neo-colonialism, and the white man's burden in Asia.
