
There were many possible alternative responses. Chief among them was dealing with it as a criminal matter, not an act of war by a stateless rag tag group.
But before you or anyone else jump on that with Bushisms, I suspect that much of what you believe that justifies having gone to war is plain wrong. For example, that the Taliban "refused to hand over OBL". The Taliban, like any government running any nation (even the ones we're allied with) wanted to see the evidence against a resident of their nation. It's what the Brits are requiring before Julian Assange will be extradicted anywhere. Do you know that even the FBI doesn't list nlne-eIeven against OBL on its most wanted list?
To date, we have done nothing to prevent the situation that causes Al Qaeda's recruitment success. Think about that. We're no safer, in spite of the hundreds of billions of dollars we've spent. We're not energy independent, and we're still supporting the same brutal repressive regimes that have keep their people in poverty and despair. Al Qaeda does h8 the US government for nothing -- We would h8 anyone who funded our enslavement, too.
We are a nation of laws. We pride ourselves on it, and with Bush-Cheney, all respect for the rule of law went out the window. The world was sympathetic to us after n/ne-eIeven, in spite of our abusing our power in the world. When I think of the missed opportunities and the lost money, we really have no one else but ourselves to blame for our current mess.
Did you know, by the way, that when Bush gave Saddam Hussein that ultimatum ("You've got 36 hours to leave Iraq, or else"), not only was that against the law (Bush had no authority to be issuing ultimatums to anyone), Saddam was willing to go into exile. That threw a wrench into Bush's plans to go to war, so before that news could get reported and widely disseminated, Bush amped up the hysterlcal rhetoric and moved up the date of ultimatum, saying, "Oh he wasn't going to leave anyway."
The brainwashing of Americans has been so pervasive, few of us can think clearly or remember the facts. But facts have a way of persisting.
About Afghanistan
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