The Age of Empire ended with the Victorians. Since then it's been much more common to set up client states by influencing elections and applying media and political pressure. Indirect military action (e.g. Nicaragua) has been tried too, but the outcome is rarely conclusive.
So military adventuring hasn't worked well. That doesn't mean it couldn't work in Afghanistan, but it would mean a draft in NATO, the complete decapitation of the Taleban hierarchy, and support from the surrounding 'Stans to make sure that the remaining survivors aren't given a safe haven.
None of these things will happen.
But the real problem is that strategically, the invasion has no point. Politically it looks like an example of the US deciding to throw a random country against the wall and getting its arse kicked instead - as it did in Vietnam. Morally, it's ridiculous - the most powerful country in the world bullying the smallest.
The bottom line for NATO is that even if all of the allies committed all of their resources to the war, it still wouldn't be won, and it would barely make an impression on the resources the US has available to it.
So squeaking from Gates about allies who don't want to commit is self-serving nonsense. If there's a solution at all - which there may not be now - it's certainly not a military one.
Politically it looks like an example of the US deciding to throw a random country against the wall and getting its arse kicked instead - as it did in Vietnam.
If you look at history there probably arent two worse countries to throw against the wall than Vietnam and Afghanistan. Both have constantly been invaded and occupied for the last milenium, and have a history of resistance of any and all occupiers as part of their national myth. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
National Review: Jonah Goldberg quoting Michael Ledeen in 2002 ... here is the bedrock tenet of the Ledeen Doctrine in more or less his own words: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." That's at least how I remember Michael phrasing it at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute about a decade ago
