You dodged the question and changed the goal posts. You mentioned an offensive. I asked who they would go against which would be a foreign force in their own country. I get it though. There is no good answer from your side.
There are ways other than occupation. Also, no one knows the true cost-benefit. But we do know the cost which is real and includes the lives of American boys and girls along with collateral damage of citizens in Afghanistan too. You don't factor them though I know because you don't care about them. Little cost. Hah. Send your son and daughter to die there and tell me how small a cost it is.
Granting this is true, how much destruction is enough? 20 years? 50 years? 200 years? You don't care about where Atta was trained but it is part of the equation. You also ignored another part of the situation. The Taliban did allow Bin Laden to live in Afghanistan. But he didn't live in Kabul. He lived up in the mountains where the Taliban didn't have that much authority anyway. He lived in a lawless area and when the US came in Bin Laden simply went into the mountains of Pakistan. But the US government considered it more important to rule over Afghanistan than go after Bin Laden in Pakistan. The US didn't treat Pakistan the way they did Afghanistan which was just as complicit even though one was called an "allie" and the other a "state sponsor of terror". None of it made any sense. Our government prioritized occupying a country ahead of bringing Bin Laden to justice, at least until Obama came into power and they went after him. But we got him. We got the people who killed Americans on 9/11.
I get you consider the Taliban involved. But can you describe how they were actually involved other than not hunting them down in the mountains? Did you know that the Taliban was willing to give Al Qaeda over to the US before the invasion started? They were, but that wasn't the military's priority.
Who cares? You do! You brought them up. I just commented on what you initiated. You used them as an example, so I showed how your example was bogus. You really need to go back and think about things because you aren't paying attention to what you are saying.
Last edited: Aug 14, 2021