Would your opinion on Bush would've been different if......

[Seamus Fermanagh]

My preference at the time, having accepted that the US needed to take action to demonstrate that it wasn't to be sniped at without consequence, was for a big noise punitive-style strike, followed by leasing out the war to reasonably friendly local agents. If another OBL-type figure arose as a result, it would be unfortunate, but you can't entirely control these things, and shifting funding to another faction would effectively take care of this. Britain never completely had Afghanistan under its control during the Great Game, and I don't see any other foreign power ever doing so either. The USSR probably had the best chance, and we know what happened there.

I think that that was exactly the Bush43 admin goal, but the chap they'd decided to back in the local follow-up to a punitive strike got sui-whacked.