Safer than al-Qaeda would like

The Sunday editorial regarding the 9/11 anniversary was rather disappointing. It suggests that the US invaded Afghanistan for "revenge". No, it was invaded to prevent al-Qaeda from using the country as a terrorist base to launch similar attacks. It further says that the US had two chances to get Bin Laden without going to war. One opportunity was an offer by the Taleban to turn over Bin Laden, but the author goes on to say that maybe the offer was disingenuous or an attempt to buy time (Gee, do you think?). The second opportunity was a supposed offer by Iran to track down al-Qaeda. It is unbelievable to me that anyone could seriously think after all these years that either the Taleban or Iran would ever have helped the US capture Bin Laden.

The article goes on to state that the US, having missed these two supposed opportunities, then embarked on conventional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands. While there have been deaths as a result of collateral damage from the war effort, the majority of the deaths were a result of the citizens of those two countries electing to kill each other rather than take the opportunity for nation building. The article does not mention that the regime change in Iraq resulted in the removal of a dictator who killed over a million people in the invasions of Kuwait and Iran, the gassing of the Kurds and his own people, and the routine torture and killing carried out over many years of his brutal rule.

The author claims that conventional war is counter-productive and assigns his own dubious views of US motives for these wars; but offers no other solution. Al-Qaeda would certainly have liked to carry out other attacks in the US but has not been able to so far, and that looks like success to me. It is unfortunate that the author used the anniversary of a horrendous terrorist act to advance questionable opinions in this editorial.

D C Brue

Chiang Mai