Would we be better off if the 9/11 war had stayed totally as special ops?

[guzzijohn]

From the view of an arm chair quarterback with a hindsight view I wonder if we would have been much better off and more effective if we had not gone to an open conflict with the Taliban, Iraq, etc. but instead kept it as a special ops and CIA type of war instead. Would it not been possible to still take out the leaders, put in some plants to bread mistrust and internal mayham? I feel that this would have helped to not alienate as many of the civilian population and would have kept infrastructure in place that would have caused much less disruption of daily life and less resentment toward the USA. This approached would have also saved us billions of dollars and many lives. It would be my guess that more than a few Taliban would turn on their brothers for a few million in American dollars and safe passage out of the country if desired. What you all think?
GuzziJohn

[SwampThing762]

If we did, it would be a very protracted affair.  Attrition would have eventually decimated our SF elements.   Thus, such a campaign would have been impractical.

ST762

[yellowtail3]

From the view of an arm chair quarterback with a hindsight view I wonder if we would have been much better off and more effective if we had not gone to an open conflict with the Taliban, Iraq, etc. but instead kept it as a special ops and CIA type of war instead. Would it not been possible to still take out the leaders, put in some plants to bread mistrust and internal mayham? I feel that this would have helped to not alienate as many of the civilian population and would have kept infrastructure in place that would have caused much less disruption of daily life and less resentment toward the USA. This approached would have also saved us billions of dollars and many lives. It would be my guess that more than a few Taliban would turn on their brothers for a few million in American dollars and safe passage out of the country if desired. What you all think?GuzziJohn

In retrospect... yeah, that might have been better. I haven't thought that out, but yeah, if they just went around killing the scoundrels instead of invading & killing tens of thousands of innocents, things would not doubt be diff. Not sure if spec ops peeps would have had the muscle and wherewithal to take on al-Queda AND the Taliban in Afghanistan, but I'm no specialist and can only speculate.

[wreckhog]

A $1 Billion bounty on OBL probably would have been a lot faster and cheaper in retrospect.

[Dee]

We would have been better off, if we had bombed the training camps into powder, with a warning we would do it again. We would have also been better off, if we had broken all ties with the perpetrator country, which was Saudi Arabia, and we would have been better off if we had let Iraq, get retribution from Kuwait for stealing their oil with angle drilling. We actually would have been better off, if we had minded our own damn business, and so would the families of many soldiers that were the sacrifice, in two wars that should never have been fought, and are still being fought, but not as wars.
We need to go back to the day, that if you want a war, you get on the lead horse.

quote,
"Politicians do all the talkin, and soldier pays the dues."
Merle Haggard

[yellowtail3]

Dee makes a couple more good points.

[BUGEYE]

If the CIA and the MASSAD had teamed up, it could have been done a lot cheaper.

[BBF]

.................... We actually would have been better off, if we had minded our own damn business, and so would the families of many soldiers..................

No doubt !!

[Pat/Rick]

I would settle for the TOTAL destruction of their infrastructure.

[BBF]

I would settle for the TOTAL destruction of their infrastructure.

You saw what happened after Big Rumbe II when you do this. The taxpayer(US) gets fleeced for the money to rebuild everything.