"What if the US Didn’t Go to War in Afghanistan after 9/11?" Topic

"Rather than launching a war that proved to be disastrous, an alternative reaction to 9/11 might have been to expand police and intelligence operations and to work with sympathetic allies to pressure the Taliban, which had little or nothing to do with 9/11, to dismember al-Qaida and to turn over its top members.

Several conditions were favorable to such an approach.

First, Taliban rule in Afghanistan was quite unpopular and far from secure. After its takeover in 1996, it had afforded peace and a degree of coherent government to Afghanistan after a horrific civil war. However, by 2001 its popularity had declined due to its chaotic and sometimes brutal rule — and perhaps due to its successful effort to crush the lucrative opium trade in the year previous. The depth of the unpopularity is suggested perhaps by the fact that its poorly trained forces, which a few years earlier had united the country by conquering or bribing the warlord bands that had been tearing the country apart, now mostly disintegrated. Some foreign fighters did resist the American invasion, but few Afghans joined them except under duress. The rather ironic parallels with the precipitous collapse in 2021 of the corrupt and incompetent U.S.-sponsored Afghan regime are striking…"

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Armand

The British had the right idea in Imperialist times. Go in. Conquer Kabul. Blow stuff up. Then leave. None of this "nation building" nonsense.
"I want the head of Osama bin Laden. Countdown starts … NOW! You know what we can do. Clock is ticking."

Who is the moron who thought that we could make Afghanistan a Liberal Democracy???
This might be the 10th time I've demanded that all "diplomats" assigned to serve in this area (most of them probably studied Metternich, Bismarck and Talleyrand…) read Flashman. Kipling.

I'm with John the OFM. I have a degree in history and did all the reading.

The author clearly didn't go through the period as it existed in the several years before 9/11 and then afterwards. The relationships on the ground are far more complex than he describes and it depends on what part of Afghanistan where loyalties to Taliban leadership lay. Kabul was the prize of the warlords, the strength of the Taliban laid to to SE and middle and southern areas of AF as well as into certain parts of Pakistan. Bin Ladin and his lot well understood the lay of the land in SW Asia.

Let's be brutally honest here.
"Afghanistan" is a fictional construct. Look at that little appendix squirting out the top right.
It was designed by a bunch of drunkards after passing out after lunch of heavy …. Indulgence. 🤷
The borders make no sense. The various areas are mutually distrustful. They never got along and never will. Watch "The Man Who would be King". It's fictional, but accurate.

Thanks

Armand