Afghan War: Part of what the Iraq War cost us (5 of 7)

The timing is important. Already by mid-2002, al-Qaeda was spreading out from its relative concentration in Afghanistan and becoming a more diffuse group, perhaps more a movement than any kind of hierarchical organization. Even a much more massive direct attack by US forces on al-Qaeda wouldn't have put an end to our problems with Islamic terrorism. But it was an opportunity unlikely to present itself in that form again with al-Qaeda.

In this 2002 article, Nicholas Lemann interviewed a number of foreign policy "realists" (moderate pragmatists) on their views about the "war on terrorism": The War on What? New Yorker 09/09/02:

The realists agreed wholeheartedly with the Administration's decision to use American military forces to remove the Taliban government in Afghanistan from power, because the Taliban was harboring Al Qaeda, our attacker. And they agreed that the campaign against the Taliban was a big success. But they were not particularly sanguine about American progress against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. "When I put together the evidence, it's not going very well," Van Evera said. "We've nailed eight of the top twenty-five Al Qaeda leaders. We need to roll up the entire leadership. They're still capable of launching attacks. They've attempted about a dozen since 9/11."

Barry Posen, [Stephen] Van Evera's colleague at M.I.T., who specializes in military analysis, maintained that the mop-up campaign in Afghanistan had been severely hampered by American unwillingness to use ground forces, because of fear of casualties and because current American military doctrine overstresses the benefits of air power. "It looks like we missed a number of opportunities," he said, "and the reason was that we didn't want to take risks. Tora Bora was a disaster, universally acknowledged as such, and never explained. The idea that casualty aversion could play a role here— it's extraordinary. If that's true, something's really wrong. The American people would have paid hundreds of dead to get the Al Qaeda leaders.["]