The 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, occasioned retrospectives on both the attacks carried out against the US that day and on the wars that the US prosecuted in their aftermath.Ft In its editorial remembrance, the New York Times (9/11/26)—which played a critical role in dampening skepticism of the “Global War on Terror”—rationalized the cataclysmic violence the US unleashed after 9/11, and assigned greater value to American lives over those of other people.
Under the headline “How a Heroic Response Went Awry,” the editorial board asserted:
The war against the Taliban and the Qaeda forces there was a justified and necessary response to the attacks. Within months, the US military destroyed Al Qaeda’s camps (even if killing Osama bin Laden would take nearly a decade) and drove the Taliban from power.
To say that a policy is “necessary” is to say that there is no alternative. But there was an alternative—namely, reaching an agreement with the Taliban for bin Laden to be extradited from Afghanistan, a possibility that existed before and immediately after 9/11.
The US, however, did not pursue this option as seriously as it could have. As the Washington Post reported on October 29, 2001:
Over three years and on as many continents, US officials met in public and secret at least 20 times with Taliban representatives to discuss ways the regime could bring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice.
Talks continued until just days before the September 11 attacks, and Taliban representatives repeatedly suggested they would hand over bin Laden if their conditions were met, sources close to the discussions said.
Throughout the years, however, State Department officials refused to soften their demand that bin Laden face trial in the US justice system.
A CIA administrator was quoted in the report: “I have no doubts [the Taliban] wanted to get rid of [bin Laden]. He was a pain in the neck.”
In addition, a former head of Saudi intelligence said that, in 1998, the Taliban agreed to hand over bin Laden to Saudi Arabia, a close US ally; the source said that the Taliban changed course after the US fired cruise missiles at an apparent bin Laden camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, following attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania attributed to Al Qaeda (LA Times, 11/4/01).
Then, just a week after the US invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban offered to discuss handing over bin Laden if the US stopped bombing Afghanistan and provided evidence that bin Laden was involved in 9/11 (Guardian, 10/14/01).
In other words, far from being “necessary,” the Afghan War was a choice the US made when diplomacy appeared to be a viable option. And we now know that those 20 years of war had disastrous effects on Afghans (Jacobin, 9/11/21; Al Jazeera, 9/11/21), and resulted in the Taliban returning to power.
