Would handing over a few people dismantled the rest of Al-Qaeda? How about the hundreds of trainees in training camps, ready to implement further terrorist attacks? Would the use of Afghanistan as a government-less country awash in weapons, funded by the proceeds from the drug trade, and fired by extremist ideologies, stopped on its own?
How has any thing in terms of Afghanistan not being 'awash in weapons, drugs and terrorism' changed since the US war and invasion?
It has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, and terrorism and AQ have in fact gained further ground in Pakistan, and the war has in fact acted as a catalyst for alliances between the Taliban, AQ and various other extremist groups.
The argument in favor of engaging with the Taliban after 9/11 was not simply about having OBL and Zawahiri put up for trial in a third country, but about using the anger and international support in favor of broader changes by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Once the AQ leadership had been put on trial with Taliban approval, there would be little reason to allow the lower level leadership to continue to operate training camps, and such camps, if they existed, could have been the target of air strikes under a UN mandate.
I fail to see how the situation could not have been many magnitudes better than it is currently had the US not chosen to engage in war rather than engage with the Taliban to bring about a negotiated end to holding the perpetrators of 9/11 accountable.
Global policy is not a popularity contest. The US presence in Iraq has probably prevented millions of more muslim deaths.
I fail to see how. Saddam had no WMD's, and was in no position to threaten any other nation militarily.
What we do know is that two unnecessary wars launched by the US have resulted in hundreds of thousands of innocents dead in a decade, and the toll continues to climb and the nations involved continue to deal with the repercussions, economically, socially, politically ..
Yes, the civil chaos and horrible misdeeds like Abu Ghraib are there, but the reasons for all those must also be debated.
The massacres of hundreds of thousands of innocents would have been avoided had the US not chosen to engage in war, invasion and occupation in Afghanistan - that remains the only salient fact here.
Because the majority of the blame lies in decades of dictatorships, society wide malevolence, and state sponsored belligerence locally, to which the US was forved to respond to after 9/11.
The US was not forced to respond to anything, it chose to engage in war, invasion and occupation despite other options being available, and the 'majority of the blame' in those 'dictatorships and society wide malevolance' also lies at the doors of the US, in that it has propped up and supported those very dictators and supported States such as Israel in continuing occupation and oppressing those it occupies for the sake of some mythological 'homeland for the chosen people'.
I have no problems speaking my mind, no matter what the topic, Sir. You, of all people, should have some idea by now!
You have no problems speaking your mind against Pakistan - I have yet to see you hold US transgressions and policy failures to the same standards as those you claim to hold Pakistan to.