The fact that Osama and Taliban were hand-in-hand was known from Day 1. Going after Osama without breaking Taliban's neck in Kabul would be nonsensical. The Americans knew that.
Post 9/11, the Taliban had offered Osama up if the Americans were willing to have him tried in a muslim country. Even a US ally like Saudi Arabia or the UAE would have been acceptable. But for reasons best known only to Bush and his clique, this offer was refused. Bush then said that he would "smoke'em from their holes". Thus far, Osama, Zawahiri and Mullah Omar have not been "smoked", and it's been about 10 years.
Well, running away from Afghanistan too would not be a great idea, isn't it? We all understand that Afghan dynamics are too complex and need cohesive thinking on part of NATO in general and US in particular on taking this forward.
The only solution now is for the US to withdraw its military, keep a punitive presence in the Arabian sea and a minimal presence in Afghanistan, and pump in significant amounts of money ($15-30BN) over 5-7 years to rebuild Afghanistan and to allow Karzai to keep bribing warlords and the Taliban to prevent his otherwise imminent demise. NATO can not win in Afghanistan. If the NATO leadership had had the good sense to simply conduct some punitive airstrikes and then play the rest of the game with money alone, they would have spent only 2% of what they've spent on the campaign thus far and would have probably been in a better situation.
I never said Taliban left, I just said their rule in Kabul was uprooted which broke their backbone, forced their leadership to get dispersed (and perhaps hide in mountains!) and possibly wrecked many of their other terrorist plans.
The Taliban never had any global aspirations. It is Al-qaeda that has that sort of intent. Today the US is talking peace with the Taliban. No Taliban terrorist plans were wrecked because the Afghan Taliban - as said before - did not pursue global jihad. The Taliban were terrible news for Afghanistan, yes, but they didn't pose a threat to the west. Now, the Taliban have actually been emboldened by the failure of NATO to win a military victory in Afghanistan, and they have developed a blood feud with the US. None of this was necessary.
The very fact that despite Al Qaeda releasing several tapes periodically threatening the West of more 9/11 like attacks but since they have failed to do so until now means that that US operations have worked until now.
Bali bombings, London and Madrid attacks etc. etc. How quickly it is all forgotten. All of this happened after 9/11.
Wasn't preventing another 9/11 type attack also a priority?
The stated priority was to capture Bin Laden. In this, NATO failed. As for 9/11 type attacks, these occurred in Europe, and since NATO is responsible for European safety, to that extent, the campaign has been a failure even in that respect. It can be argued that European participation in NATO's Afghan activities have actually worsened security for all these states.
Finally, more US and western troops have died than the number of casualties due to 9/11, and the US is not any safer today since the war in Afghanistan has caused mass radicalization.
Given Afghanistan's landscape, the fact that the Americans are killing terrorists for the last 10 years is no small military achievement.
The net number of "terrorists" have actually increased since America started its operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. More people have been radicalized than Osama could ever hoped to have achieved on his own.
Finally, all your commentary clearly indicates that you don't understand the situation, so no point debating this with you any further.
