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From where I stand, the invasion of Afghanistan was an almost unqualified success. We swept away al-Qaeda, swept away the Taliban, kept bin Ladin on the run, mended our wounded pride, and demonstrated to foreign leaders that they didn’t want to harbor terrorists that would attack the USA. It was the extended occupation that was the problem.
I don't think you can divorce the invasion from the occupation. Once the invasion happened, the occupation was inevitable and unavoidable.
I also do not consider 'mended our wounded pride' to be a valid objective for a military operation.
I think if you had asked even the most ardent American patriot on 9/12/01, “Do you think we should invade and occupy Afghanistan for the next 20 years?” he would have looked at you like you were crazy before answering “No. We’ll just bomb the shit out of them.” We could have gone in, bombed whatever we felt like bombing, taken out the Taliban leadership, hunted down al-Qaeda without letting Pakistan know, and left. We didn’t have to try to form a modern Western democracy out of illiterate goat herders, child rapists, cousin marriage enthusiasts, and Islamic fundamentalists. It’s not like we didn’t have plenty of historical examples to warn us against getting bogged down in Afghanistan.
As for wounded pride, I suppose I just agree with the old adage, “war is politics by other means.” If the offense is great enough, war seems like a pretty reasonable response.
No, I don't think you could have. I think that's the same kind of 'hard man' fantasy that gets you Trump saying they should just tale Iraq's oil or whatever other nonsense.
Pragmatically, the question is whether just bombing Afghanistan and leaving would meaningfully contribute to fighting al Qaeda or global terrorism, and the answer there is "no". Sure, you could try to take out the Taliban leadership and then leave, and what do you think happens in Afghanistan after that? Just blowing everything up was not a solution.
Politically, is that something that the US could viably have done, considering domestic pressures, the ideological and cultural mood in the country, and the international situation? I do not think it could have.
I think that killing tens or even hundreds of thousands of people over twenty years is neither a reasonable nor a moral response to September 11, all the more so because the the majority of those casualties had nothing to do with September 11.
It couldn't be done by air. But the US could have invaded, killed Al Queda in Afghanistan, killed all the Taliban who protected them and their subordinates a few levels deep, and then left -- basically a punitive raid on a massive scale. The new Taliban that would take over after that would likely get the message, and if they didn't the lesson could be repeated. I think this is basically what we should have done, but only in hindsight.
Has "mowing the lawn" proven an effective strategy for Israel?
Better than not mowing, which is what lead to the October 7 attack. But the US had an easier task -- we didn't need to convince people who considered us our sworn enemy to be destroyed at any and all costs not to attack us. We just had to convince people who hated us but mostly wanted to run Afghanistan not to attack us nor give shelter to those who would.
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Why should anyone believe this? History (including American history) is filled with examples of successful punitive expeditions.
Something having happened at some point in all of history does not mean that thing was politically feasible for the United States in the early 2000s. Just bombing Afghanistan into rubble and leaving, even if that had been sufficient to achieve American strategic goals, is not something I think was ever realistically on the table.
If it was not politically feasible, then do you agree that not invading was also not politically feasible?
...and what exactly do you think would have happened if the US hadn't occupied Afghanistan? Do you think Congress was going to impeach Bush? Reagan managed to respond to the killing of 220 Marines and the near-sinking of a warship by Iranians without invading Iran or being impeached. I agree that after 9/11 Americans wanted revenge but I don't follow your idea that the Americans somehow lost the social technology to "blow stuff up and leave" during the Clinton era.
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The great lesson of the Trump administration is that something is only off the table until it isn't.
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