In October 2001, George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban surrender Osama bin Laden to the U.S., and rejected the Taliban's counter-offer to indict him themselves or extradite him to a country we couldn't influence. [Source]
Their refusal to hand him over directly was probably an aspect of the Pashtun concept of melmastya (hospitality).
However, we didn't understand this at the time, equated their "hospitality" as "harboring a fugitive," and thought (wrongfully) it would be easier/better to capture him if we just invaded the whole country. Metaphorically, we broke the vase to catch a spider that had crawled inside.
To say the least, it did not work out according to the plan. At some point, bin Laden escaped to Pakistan, where he was killed in 2011.
Looking back, I wonder what would have happened if we'd accepted the Taliban offer to extradite bin Laden to a country where we couldn't influence the trial.
We could have saved several trillion dollars, tens of thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi lives.
Yeah Saddam Hussein might still be in power, and yeah bin Laden might still be alive, but looking back twenty years later, but let's be REAAALLLY honest here:
Was the price of our vengeance worth it?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment