One of the goals of the so called War on Terror from the very beginning was to catch Osama Bin Laden, the terrorist who did this to us. The Bush Administration made bringing Bin Laden to justice a primary goal of the Afghanistan war. I’ve always thought this was a mistake.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Bin Laden is a good guy, or that he shouldn’t be tried for his crimes. I hope he is caught and tried for his acts. But to make the finding of a very mobile insurgent leader the aim of a WAR is horrible strategy. Really, once we made it clear that the US wanted Bin Laden’s capture to be a goal of the War on Terror, all Bin Laden has to do to make us look ineffective is to not get caught by US forces. Indeed, he pretty much booked it to Pakistan as soon as it became clear that the US was invading Afghanistan, and he’s laughing at us from another country as we speak. Unless our intelligence community gets a good tip, we won’t get him.
Instead of making catching Bin Laden a goal, we should have simply made breaking up Al Qaeda the goal. THAT is something we achieved, or at least a goal we’ve made progress on. We’ve disrupted Al Qaeda, and while I suspect that they will rebuild and figure things out, our goal should be to make life hard for them, not to catch their leader. If the intelligence community gets a good tip, go for it! Get him! That would still be a great victory. But to make finding him central to the war aims is a bad idea that, as we can see, has hurt our aims and reputation in the Middle East.
I think the massive distraction that was the Iraq War was part of the problem for not catching bin Ladin and our struggles in Afghanistan.