Reddit mentions of Afghanistan from the Cold War through the War on Terror

Shortly after 9/11, Barnett Rubin, a NATO expert on Afghanistan and a Professor at Columbia, was summoned to a meeting where he and a panel of fellow experts chaired by Richard Haass would brief the National Security Council on Afghanistan.

> Haass first asked the outside experts how the U.S. government should follow up on any military victory in Afghanistan. As we each spoke, a clear consensus emerged: the United States had helped create the current situation by its actions after the withdrawal and collapse of the Soviet Union. We claimed a victory and walked away. We treated Afghanistan as a humanitarian issue and provided no leadership or support for stabilization or reconstruction. The reaction after the embassy bombings was similarly one-dimensional: we focused on al-Qaeda, the direct security threat to the United States, not on the problems of Afghanistan. If we did not want to repeat the same mistakes, the United States had to engage, mobilize the United Nations, and lead an effort to establish legitimate government and reconstruct the economy.

> Haass asked for reactions. To people from the National Security Council staff, whom I did not recognize, immediately objected, "That's nation-building! We don't do nation-building."

Tell me again how the Bush administration was dominated by a Neocon Cabal?

From this book of his, which is turning out to be pretty awesome.