Suppose on September 12, 2001 you suddenly occupied the mind of GWB, you have all of the foreknowledge of upcoming events*. How do you respond to the attacks.
Obviously going into Iraq was a mistake.
But what about Afghanistan?
Right now it appears to be a quagmire with no end in sight, but was it necessarily that way?
Without the distraction of the Iraq war, and the squandering of international good will directed at the US, could we have actually won a lasting victory there?
If it was destined to be a quagmire no matter what we did, what should our response have been?
Targeted drone and missile strikes at Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, while leaving the Taliban in place?
Take no international actions instead treating it as an intelligence/criminal matter?
Any other ideas?
Caveat, you only have the knowledge that you personally have in your head right this instant, so no going back and looking each battle in the Afghan war and deciding what tactics would have worked better, and no looking up winning lottery numbers (but you can invest in bitcoin).
Afghanistan was probably going to be a mess no matter what (though somewhat better without the Iraq diversion), but there was no real alternative but to remove the Taliban government once it refused to either hand over bin Laden or let somebody come in and get him – that made them a pro-terrorist outlaw regime.
The Republicans have always had a hardon for the Middle East, undoubtedly fueled by the huge amount of money and power involved in their oil industry. Big Oil is a very important part of the rich, corporate fueled Plutocracy that actually runs this country. This explains our endless involvement over there in an effort to manipulate the region.
The best course of action, IMHO, is to ease tensions, reduce the level of hatred, and damage terrorist recruiting as a result. I don’t see that happening. I believe Trump wants a war with Iran. The Republicans just haven’t decided whether or not they can get away with it politically.
The Taliban sucked and the world is likely better off without them in power. I’m not a war-monger, but I’m not sure that Afghanistan was a bad decision.
Iraq is an interesting one though. I’m not sure what to think of it. It’s easy to say that Iraq was a mistake, but it’s hard to know what would have happened if we hadn’t gone in. Iraq could have easily become a different kind of Syria after the protests of 2012 (or maybe the protests of 2012 never would have happened) only without US investment to attempt to stabilize it and Iran and Saudi Arabia each pumping money and arms into their respective sides. I’m not sure that the outcome for Iraq would be better today without the war. We would have saved money certainly and American lives, but I’m not sure how one weighs whether something is cost effective or not.
Trying to say what the best thing is even in hindsight is very difficult. Once a path has been set in motion, the outcomes are too hard to predict. I know that in the case of Iraq, Saddam Hussein was bad, really bad and removing him from power was a laudable goal. I think that in hindsight, the Bush administration needed a better plan to win the peace and needed a better understanding of the sectarian tensions within the country. Giving a soft landing to Baathists would have been a good thing, but these are tactical nitpicks. I think what you’re really asking is what big, sweeping things should we have done to make the world better and respond to terrorism and unfortunately, I don’t think I have the answer to that question. The world is difficult and some things may just be inevitable.
This is not an original idea. It has been discussed at length by policy experts for the last decade and a half, and Afghanistan has been termed by history scholars as “The Graveyard of Empires” since the British won a Pyrrhic victory in the Second Anglo-Afghan War and the King’s Rifles had to withdraw from the country and cede local control to Pashtun tribes.
Many nations and empires had invaded Afghanistan, captured Kabul, and gained temporary control over critical strategic and trade routes like the Khyber and Michni Passes. None have succeeded in maintaining control over the entire nation or occupying it for more than a few years at a time.
The Afghans—or more properly, the multitude of individual tribes with no fealty to any national or imperial government—have never been comprehensively ruled by anyone, even Amanullah Khan or Zahir Shah, and the foreboding geography and harsh climate of Afghanistan disfavors invaders as we’ve come to learn.
The US can do a lot if it sets its mind to it. One of the problems post-9/11 was that emotional (over)reactions and wishful thinking about interventions weren’t going to be sustainable.
Bush’s cowboy swagger and the use of torture may have made some American feel safe (“We gonna show 'em!”) but it wasn’t worth it even from a purely US-centric perspective.
If the electorate is made to believe that an intervention is going to be relatively cheap, easy and short and it turns out not to be the case, it will likely erode trust and morale. The morale of the people being one of the elements in Clausewitz’s triad along with military and government. Being frank and a little pessimistic about the costs, difficulty and duration of the intervention in Afghanistan might have ended being more effective. If you want to con people into giving you a “Yes” right now without thinking much of the future, you promise more than you can deliver. If you want sustained support, you promise less than you can deliver. But you won’t get that kind of frank non-delusion and cautious foresight from a born-again oilman.
The notion that “Iraq was a war for oil” doesn’t make a shred of sense. For 1/10 the cost of the war in Iraq, America could have simply have extracted oil from its own land, its own oil shale, and off of its own coasts, with almost no lives lost.
To answer the OP: The suitable response would have been endless covert assassinations.
Assassinate Taliban leaders, then when they are replaced by new leaders, rinse and repeat. Ditto for Saddam and his henchmen, and for all of al-Qaeda’s leadership. Once they got the message that “Al-Qaeda’s No. 1/No.2/No.3 can be assassinated ad nauseam infinitum” that would lead to reduced enthusiasm for internal promotion with Terrorist HR.
Heh, that’s what I was thinking. We’ve been doing that for ages. There’s no shortage of people willing to die for a cause or who think that they’ll be the exception to being killed. Look at the list of Taliban leaders sometime. I think every one of their governors has been killed or captured, they’re on their third leader, almost every single high ranking official over the last decade has been killed or captured. They’re still going strong.
If those were poll options, I’d vote “Take no international actions instead treating it as an intelligence/criminal matter?” My longer answer would be: attempt to bring those responsible to justice through diplomatic measures, study what happened as a learning experience for foreign policy, and implement the handful of post-9/11 security measures that actually matter (instead of the theater that we actually implemented.
I don’t think the American public would have gone for such a restrained response, though.
Well, Iraq makes no sense even without hindsight. On that, I’d stay the course on sanctions and in fact ramp them up. Afghanistan though? Yeah, we pretty much had to do something there, since it was clear that the Taliban were harboring AQ and they pretty clearly told us to pound sand when we asked them to give us the AQ leadership and get them out of their country. I think we should have committed to a full blown invasion, instead of trying to do an invasion on the budget plan and relying on local forces. We know, with hindsight, exactly where ObL was in Afghanistan, as well as where most of the AQ leadership was, so we go all in on both the boots on the ground and serious air strikes using the best bunker busters and thermobaric munitions we had. We also go all in after the Taliban.
I doubt we ever could have made Afghanistan functional as a nation state, regardless of what we did, but we could have so devastated AQ and the Taliban that they would have essentially ceased to exist.
I think Bush could have done all of this. Not sure about the TSA stuff or homeland security…my WAG is that fear mainly drove that sort of thing, and the public wanted what they wanted…the illusion of security.
I’m suuuuuper ignorant about everything, so this will be awful:
Put troops on the ground in a position to engage in a ground battle with their army, and put their army to rout. Arrange for this to be an area where no civilians, cities, or villages are involved. Then leave, with a promise that if they make us come back, we’ll make them really regret it. And then don’t come back.
Isn’t terrorism at root because of cultural resentment? How do you stop that? Maybe (emphasis on maybe) you could pressure Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to stop funding groups that promote cultural resentment to keep the people in the mid east divided and conquered. Americans trying to figure out how to stop Islamic extremism would be like Chinese people trying to figure out how to stop the rise of the neo-confederacy in America. I don’t know if they can.
But I have no idea. I would’ve still invaded Afghanistan most likely. But not Iraq.
The only terrorist group this might have worked against would have been ISIS, since their eschatology involves a belief that there will be a cataclysmic battle at the Syrian town of Dabiq. So the United States could have conceivably amassed a conventional force with a nice complement of AC-130s, Apaches, etc. and then waited for ISIS to flock there, and then dispel their…uh, misconceptions.
The goal wouldn’t be to engage in a ground battle with Al-Queda. It would be to engage in a ground battle with Afghanistan, for overtly allying themselves with a terrorist group that perpetrated what amounted to a moderately devastating military attack against american civilians. I (as Bush) would openly declare that as an act of war, declare war, and then roll in the troops in force. The goal would be to make Afghanistan’s leadership shit their pants - and then we pull out, telling them that we’ll let them off easy if they play nice because honestly we’re not interested in destabilizing the region. (Yes, I’m aware the republicans will never reelect me for saying that. Small price to pay, since I assume I’m getting out of Bush’s head eventually and then his career won’t be my problem.)
Then, after we pull out, we’ll politely ask them again if they’re interested in cooperating with our efforts in capturing and trying the terrorists who they’re not allying with anymore, right?
Nitpick, according to the caveat in the OP, unless you personally know, without looking it up, exactly where Bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan in 2001, you can’t use that information. The goal is to keep it strategic rather winning tactically because you know every one of your enemies moves.