When did USA invade Afghanistan? The last I remembered, more than half of it was still under Taliban control.
Why they did it? Many reasons:
- containment of China
- denuclearizing Pakistan
- resuming opium production
- building CAS pipeline to Arabian Sea, through Afghanistan
I think the US was well on its way in acheiving these objectives.
Now lets look at the results of their partial occupation:
- whole region destabilized
- Afghanistan in ruins, worse condition
- Taliban ruling more than half the country
- opium production in full swing (remember the Golden Triad?)
- new excuses developed (i.e. Pakistani nukes are not safe; do you remember how hard they tried to stop Pakistan from attaining the N-bomb? or were you too young back then?)
- Bin Laden forgotten
The proof that CIA came up with, regarding Al-Qaeda links to the 9/11 attacks are 100x more ridiculous than any conspiracy theory. Only fools like you and the American public would be willing to believe that out of hundreds of thousands of tons of debris (at ground zero), they were able to find passports of al-qaeda members.
Taliban were in control of Afghanistan for a long time, and the US did nothing. In fact, the Bush administration explicitly admitted live on TV (when they attained power) that these guys are not a threat to the US. So when did they become a problem? Lets take a look at these statistics:
Taliban exterminated the poppy crop in 2001, bringing its production to a grinding halt (sounds congruous to the Qing dynasty doesn’t it?); immediately after, the US invaded the country (remember the Anglo-Chinese wars?), and the following year, production was in full swing again (Tianjin repeated).