I would only say to avoid morbid and macabre celebrations of the deaths of anyone on any side, because it cheapens life.

As for young patriots who continue the struggle, I hope you are also including those who resist deployment to Afghanistan.

Yes, maybe the only true post-moderns. But it is not the first time that an heavily armed giant army gets owned by less numerous poor villagers, and it happened not only in Afghanistan.
But fore sure, this place is particularly not a good one for an empire. In what was called “Bactria”, Alexander the Great himself tried, but “never successfully subdued the people” (from wikipedia article about “bactria”).

I really shouldn’t have to worry about what’s going on in other parts of the world any more than I care what my neighbors do in their own houses. Unfortunately, America’s global interconnections make me accountable for all kinds of imperialism, some of which I’m probably not even aware of. At least consumer products in a store are things I voluntarily purchase. I could decide not to buy certain products if I don’t like what’s going on at the production end. Taxes, on the other hand, are pulled out of my direct deposit every payday to go to whatever damn cause the government wants to support. The system puts a huge burden of guilt on Americans who just want to live their lives in peace without worrying about what’s going on in other parts of the world.

At some point, for as much as people in the West may hate the Taliban, they will have to admit that there is something definitely special about poor villagers who fought off the Soviet Union, and then took on an even mightier military superpower, and ran them both into the ground. This is the complete reverse of the classical modernization theories, and the older cultural evolutionist theses that underpinned them. The Taliban may be the only true post-moderns, for having buried that which proclaims itself as modern, progressive, etc.

Thanks for this analytical summary. There is another interesting analysis of these matters in a recent commentary from Immanuel Wallerstein, “U.S. Internal Politics and its Military Interventions”, 15th september 2009. Quote :

“The Democrats seem to be stuck with the label of being less macho than the Republicans. So it’s very simple. When Obama makes his decisions on these matters, it’s not enough for him to analyze whether or not troop escalation in Afghanistan makes any military or political sense. He worries above all that he himself, and more broadly the Democratic Party, may be labeled once again as the “sell-outs,” the “doves,” the ones who “lost” countries to the enemies – to the Soviet Union in the old days, to the “terrorists” today .”

And on a slighlty more optimistic (?) note :

“ If the United States loses too many more wars, its citizens may wake up to the realization that U.S. military interventions abroad and incredibly large military expenditures at home are not the solution to their problems, but the greatest impediment to U.S. national survival and well-being .”

Source : http://fbc.binghamton.edu/265en.htm

Or how war abroad is fought for petty domestic stakes, with NATO client-states following the lead. What a tragic mess (or is it a farce ?).

I think it is more than a shame that it must take more wars and countless deaths, destructions and waste of riches for the american citizenry to “wake up”.
It may help a bit if more professional journalists could end up their decades-long and comfortable snap, and start to get the facts straight, that is, to do their job.