Status quo ante bellum

"My last post has generated considerable interest from all over the blogsphere, providing me a great opportunity to restate a few of my firmly help beliefs about Afghanistan. One of the first and most contentious of my views is that al Qaeda and their Taliban allies will never again run Afghanistan no matter what happens from this point forward. Status quo ante bellum means “the way things were before the war” and it is not possible for the Taliban to ever get back to that point. This is important because you will still see articles in the press emanating from Washington saying that they will. I base my reasoning on four years of traveling about the country and talking with local people. The Taliban were ultimately despised for their self righteous cruelty, just like al Qaeda in Iraq. They filled a power vacuum back in 1996 bringing justice and the rule of law to a country with no infrastructure, no central government, no functioning economy, and ruled by warlords who had varying degrees of competency and cruelty."
FRI