I never thought I'd say this, but I actually agree somewhat with BillO there in the first half. Part of what the NATO forces are doing in Afghanistan is actually to help build and protect clinics and schools. These schools are among other things giving education to girls, which the reactionary forces in the country are trying to stop at every turn. I fear what would happen to them and the rest of the Afghan people if NATO just up and left.

Ralph Nader fell into O'Reilly's trap of accepting his framework for the debate. The 'taliban' is actually a myriad of opposition forces. It's not a uniform force. The sad reality is that NATO is fighting the same warlords they're arming in a lot of cases.
Max Weber had a brilliant realization when he said (paraphrasing); in order for a state to be viable it has to have a monopoly of violence. The police and army need to be controlled by one central state. What NATO did in Afghanistan, by their short sighted tactics, was to ensure they lost the peace from the start. They armed dozens of separate warlords and reinforced their tribal reigns. So even if the taliban was instantly eliminated, now then the next phase will be a civil war for power in the country. Western countries are now in the process of listening to their political leaders giving excuses rather than realizing the complete tactical disaster of the situation. Excuses like it's for democracy when the last two elections were totally rigged (the first one with the help of the US), or that it's some kind of feminist mission when the people being armed and backed are at the extreme end of patriarchal.

I don't bother getting into these discussions because I don't agree that we should ever have gone in there in the first place. We simply told Afganistani leaders to hand over Bin Laden or will bomb you, and we refused to give evidence about the crimes he committed. This isn't a conspiracy thing, the CIA stated plainly they had no evidence to present, so we just demanded it and then bombed them. It's an extremely colonial view we've taken to assume that we own the world and you have to do what we say. There are no laws but what we say, and even those laws don't apply to us. You could name more than a few people considered or convicted as international terrorists that we're keeping. Is it right for Afganistan to tell us to hand them over without evidence or they'll bomb our people. Not in any sane persons view.