Monthly Archives: May 2013

Our October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, less than a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, might seem like an unavoidable war because the Taliban had sheltered Osama bin Laden, and we could not afford to risk a repeat of that disaster. But a more careful analysis shows that our Afghan war, like the others examined in this series, could have been avoided. The trick is not to start the analysis in 2001, but in December 1979, when we started to arm jihadists who were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. One of them was Osama bin Laden. Continue reading →