At the time the Taliban stated repeatedly that they would hand him over if they were given enough evidence that he was responsible. While it turned out he was responsible, the US did not have that evidence (or atleast werent forthcoming with it at the time) and made very little attempt to negoiate. It seemed clear that they wanted Osama on a platter or it was all out war.
That is one perspective, another is that they were stalling in preparation for war. I remember all the arguments that the Taliban would play along if they were given evidence etc. etc., but even at the time I was skeptical of their sincerity.
Firstly, the Taliban didnt "have" him at all. If he was in their custody or was easily obtainable then fair enough they had that on the bargaining table. But he was in the middle of nowhere in hiding guarded by a host of his own devotee's as it were.
If the Taliban were not able to go in and grab him because he was pretected in a remote area, that also supports the argument that they were stalling. For it doesn't matter how much evidence they were shown if they did not have the capacity to go get him. I also remember them saying they didn't even knowwhere he was...., bullshit. They would have been watching him like a hawk. The fact also remained that he had attacked the USS Cole, Niarobi and Dar Esalam (sp) among many other targets throughout the Arabic world. I felt, at the time, that asking for concrete evidence considering the history was also asking for too much. They should have said, you can come into the country to find/take him, we will not stand in your way. But, if any of us or the civillians are harmed, then there will be consequences. This, I would feel is a more realistic scenario for the Taleban and therefore have deep seeded doubts that their offer to hand him over was sincere. I think they were buying time for him and themselves.
Secondly, there were other options than all out war. While not exactly ideal or particularly pheasable, they could have focused on surgical strikes to try to eliminate Osama.
They did not have the intelligence needed to make this a pheasable option.
All out war was not the only option, it should have been the absolute last resort and it wasnt. The US said "hand him over or be annhilated" and they were. Regime change is all well and good but it was clear that the Taliban had substantial support within it's own country in the south and would not simply dissapear once the leaders were taken out.
Ok, this then gets past the discussion of invasion and moves to the execution of. That is a different story and I think we can both agree that if they had thrown what they did at Iraq Afghanistan's way, things would have been very different today.
Osama had to be stopped. But he was not an iminant threat.
What do you mean he wasn't an imminent threat??!! He'd just attacked the US mainland killing 3000 civillians, had masterminded the spread of modern Islamofascism around the world and was threatening greater attacks! How is that anything else but an iminant threat??!!
He could have been contained and caught by other means.
That's a big ask without much intel and zero boots on the ground.
In reality all we seem to have done is move him a little to the east. Besides, it's not any one man that enables these acts of terrorism. His capture/death, in all actuallity, will have almost no impact on the occurance of terrorism in the name of Islam.
Once again this is two differing fields of discussion. 1. the execution of the invasion and 2. The causes of terrorism of which I have already written at length and I'd say that we agree on many root causes.
My point is that the invasion of Afghanistan was based on the premise of pursuing Osama Bin Laden, not regime change, and we seem to have forgetten that.
Not necessarily, they did openly state that they would take out the Taliban for housing and not handing bin Laden over and create a country that was not disposed to becoming a failed state/harbourer of terrorists. That was openly stated before the invasion.
Given the talk about Iran lately we seem to be gearing up for exactly the same shit over again. Regime change is not a premise for war. Hell, even the 1st Gulf war was widely disputed as justified yet Iraq actually INVADED another country. Now all it seems to need to go to war is an idealogical indifferance + the word "nuclear".
Yeah, not too many disputed it though. Of course teh few loggerheads within the UN did, but they did not veto the action. From memory, it was really only Yemen that outwardly opposed it..., and they lost their foreign aid from the US as thanks...
