Reconsideration?

I've always held that our response to 9/11, ferociously bombing the already devastated Afghanistan, was wrong. After reading Daniel Byman's article, however, I am forced to reconsider my position. He states that one of the biggest blows to the al-Qaida network was the destruction of their supportive base in Afghanistan - including the removal of the Taliban.

So. Now I'm having to take another look at my beliefs about Bush's response & the invasion of Afghanistan. Maybe he was right - maybe we did need to go in there and bomb the crap out of civilians. Or maybe, the idea of removing the Taliban was right but the way it was handled was, not surprisingly, bungled (thus costing thousands of civilian lives).

I don't know, as I don't know the particulars about the battles and strategies and what finally worked. I know that the Taliban (supportive of al-Qaida) is now out but that the country itself has now basically collapsed and is in a state of total chaos (which might be a good breeding ground for more terrorists). Are the Northern Warlords any better than the Taliban? Maybe in the 'we don't support terrorism' scale but certainly not on the 'we can run a country' or 'we honor women' scales.

In all honesty, invading the country may have been the right decision. I just cannot bring myself to agree that bombing innocent civilians and pulverizing already pulverized cities was a good thing to do. If all we had done was send in black ops troops to take out the terrorist support network and run covert operations against the perpetrators, I might be able to get on board with that - I don't know.

What I do know is that we invaded, bombed, destroyed, and have now left the remaining citizens to clean up our mess. I have never disagreed that removing Saddam was a bad thing (even though I don't agree that stepping into another country's politics is appropriate) and I would not disagree that removing al-Qaida's comfortable base and group of supporters is bad either. My hope is that both removals will have long term, positive effects for the citizens of both countries.

However, I also cannot take either of those acts out of context. The removal of the Taliban was done at great cost to civilians who were already struggling in the aftermath of ten years of civil war. The removal of Saddam was done at enormous (and ongoing) cost in lives, materials, and international goodwill towards the US. In both cases, I feel it is necessary to look at whether the ends justify the means. In the short term, it appears so. My great concern is whether we will feel the same in the long term.