"Actively raiding training camps, hideouts, etc. would have been a start."
Yeah. That worked so well for Bush. Glad we nailed the bastard...
It was chosen because it risked fewer lives. You saw that in Bosnia. How many Americans were killed in that campaign? Oh yeah, zero. And it was successful. You should be proud, that was the whole goal of smart weapons which Carter kicked off and Reagan promoted so heavily. To reduce or eliminate the need for boots on the ground.
A campaign like you detail risks lives. As we have seen. And it has been no more effective, now has it? While it is true that doing nothing would have accomplished the same, well, you have a point. But dinging on Clinton because he thought that pure air attacks were going to be as effective and less risky than raids is, well, disingenuous. If you read the 9/11 Commission report you will see that a lot of factors were weighed. Before we went into Afghanistan and Iraq you might have made the argument that they were too cautious with American lives. Given how we still haven't nailed bin Laden, despite using those methods, I'd say that argument should be put to rest. Whether Clinton was lucky are smart isn't really relevant. The fact of the matter is he was right.
At that time, only a couple of dozen Americans had lost their lives to Islamic terrorist attacks. To do what you suggest would have meant many more soldiers would have died than that. At that time, our own domestic whackos had racked up a much larger kill card than that. So, which was the larger threat?
Just restricting the issue to Afghanistan, we have had how many causalities and spent how much money to accomplish what Clinton did with those 75 cruise missiles? And those cruise missiles didn't help bin Laden recruit people or raise money, our fumbling in Afghanistan has done both. |
