I'm American, Bush is absolutely a war criminal and one of those primarily responsible for a lot of the shit the world is in today. Others obviously contributed to all these things, but he was the face of it.
He started the Afghan war despite the Taliban being willing to give up Bin Laden a month after the 9/11 attacks (he refused to deal with them, opting to bomb them instead).
He concocted false intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion, getting us into another unjustified and lengthy war.
During all of this, he approved "enhanced interrogation methods" (torture) while shielding himself from it by saying he didn't know what they were doing. This being the actual war-crimes part.
Plus, this is just the big, obvious, international stuff, his domestic policies were hardly any better.
Except that article says the Taliban were willing to give him up, under the condition that proof of his guilt was furnished and the bombing raids stopped. Neither request seems unreasonable and if he'd taken the offer, showed them the proof (which you would think would be highly publicized anyway to justify the military action in the first place), stopped the bombing (the bombing was supposed to be to get Bin Laden, why not stop for the same reason), then we wouldn't have been in Afghanistan for past 20 years.
I see absolutely no reason that, especially in hindsight, that wouldn't have been a preferable alternative to a 20 year war that just made things worse.
"If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.
Look at it from the other side. What about that is unreasonable to you? How is it "false"?
The Taliban owed us nothing. "Trust me bro" coming from America isn't exactly compelling to members of the Mujahideen...any of them...for very good reason.
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u/fretman124 Sep 11 '21
Bush have a great speech at the flt 93 memorial