There's a coherent Afghani identity, a national currency, they've been ruled by a central authority since the 19th century, there's even a national dress.
Do the women each take turns wearing it for one day?
I just don't see how anyone can claim that there's not a coherent Afghani national identity. We didn't go there to fight one tribe or another, we went there to crush the Taliban, the ruling Afghan government which attacked us on 9/11 via al-Qaeda proxies.
These two statements aren't in connection to one another.
Yes, we went to attack the Taliban, but that doesn't mean that there is a coherent Afghanistan.
When the US Army went to attack the Apache, there wasn't a coherent Native American community, then though the Iroquois Confederacy had been around for more than a century at that point.
I don't question why we went to Afghanistan, but like Iraq, it's a land populated by uncontrollable savages who've been engaged in battle with one another since before time began. There's no uniting them, no controlling them.
Frankly, we shouldn't have landed troops at all. Just blast the strongholds to powder, and if they try and put two bricks together again, blow it up too.
The problem American is facing in the post Soviet world, is that we believed our own bullsh1t about being the good guys.
There's a reason we out spend every other nation on Earth (and mostly likely all of them put together) on our military. Afghanistan would have been the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that.
Yes, we would have gotten the stink eye from the world, but W got us that for Iraq anyway.