Reply #43: Probably not in a position, correct. The picture people have of the relationship here is bizarre

[HamdenRice]

I'm not motivated to actually get the links because frankly, DU has gone off the counter-factual deep end on this issue at this point, and no amount of facts, articles, links, etc., would change most people's minds.

The idea that the Taliban government had no responsibility for AQ or its role in 9/11 is simply too bizarre to contend with.

The Taliban government was extremely fragile when it captured Kabul. The population was relieved that the war was over, but the type of rural fundamentalism they imposed was not popular, and there was still a Northern Alliance and assorted warlords to contend with.

AQ was allowed in and became an extremely important military and financial asset of the Taliban government. The idea that the Taliban was not connected to AQ and therefore not responsible for AQ's role in 9/11 is absurd, but there's no point arguing that on this particular forum.

Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, was deeply in thrall to the ideology and support of AQ, and had adopted the ideology of global jihand.

One way of thinking about AQ in Afganistan under the Taliban is that AQ had become something like a militia within a lose confederation of religious and war lord militias.

Your question is a good one -- because it isn't clear that if the Taliban government had decided to "turn over" AQ or OBL they could have done so.

Ironically for all the defenders of the Taliban government, the international legal norms that justify the US invasion of Afghanistan exist in part because of US illegal behavior toward Latin America. In the late 1800s, when the US wanted to interfere militarily in Latin American countries, rather than do so directly, they would allow private militias to organize in the US and go on private "fillibustering" invasions of Latin American countries. One of them practically took over Nicaragua. We were still doing that crap with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

It was illegal when the US did it. It was illegal when Afghanistan allowed a "private" army of OBL to attack the US as well.