Biden says he doesn’t want Israel to repeat America’s mistakes, so why is he supporting Israel as it does exactly that?
By Spencer Ackerman, The Nation
Imagine for a moment that America never invaded Afghanistan after 9/11.
Imagine that in an alternate universe a variant of George W. Bush decided to test the Taliban’s offer to hand over Osama bin Laden for trial in a third country in exchange for the ample proof the United States had of his culpability, rather than rejecting it as a cynical tactic to delay the war. Imagine that this ersatz Bush focused the US’s military, intelligence, and law enforcement powers, then at their post–Cold War heights, exclusively on the Al Qaeda leadership that designed and orchestrated the attacks.

At the time, it would have been supremely politically risky, given the bloodlust that had consumed the country. And the outcome of the approach would have been uncertain. There would have been relentless pressure on doppelgänger-Bush to escalate this more targeted response as it hit some inevitable snags.
We can only imagine this alternate timeline. But the consequences of the real-world decision to invade Afghanistan as the first act in a Global War on Terror are all too clear. We don’t have to imagine what choosing another path would have spared us. We would have been spared a futile, pitiless war that lasted two entire decades—a war marked by atrocities, one that by conservative estimates killed at least 176,000 people. We would have been spared a war that never had a coherent, credible plan for victory, despite the relentless prevarications to the contrary by an entire generation of US policymakers. We would very likely have been spared the Iraq War, as well, with its own abyss of agonies and futilities. We definitely would have been spared the decisive Taliban victory of August 2021.
Recent Posts
The Data Brokers Fueling ICE’s Deportation Machine—And The Union Shareholders Fighting Back
October 23, 2025
Take Action Now “As investors, we are thinking about this as a risk to our investments, but also as a social and ethical issue.”By Maurizio…
The Murdering Of Boaters Is Public, Not Secret
October 23, 2025
Take Action Now Murdering boaters is not legal or illegal depending on whether the emperor has called his victims “terrorists.”By David Swanson,…
Tensions In Latin America Rise As U.S. Threatens Venezuela & Colombia
October 22, 2025
Take Action Now “There seems to be a much bigger political context behind this than really going after drug traffickers, which seems to be … not at…
Still No Jobs Report, But The Labor Market Doesn’t Look Good
October 22, 2025
Take Action Now Donald Trump has made it clear he doesn’t care about rules and norms. We can assume that he has seen the report, and based on its…