mbs: Actually the period in question is roughly next April or so till about 14 mos from now. In other words, once U.S. forces have some time when winter in Afg is over (whenever that is), I would suggest an ensuing eight-month period provides some assurance the use of force 'worked.'
----------------
I'll wager you something different, since I am feeling particularly foolish and dismal tonight.
By next Spring, April or so, it will become apparent that several thousand Afghanis have died from continued military assaults by the US and its local mercenaries; that the Taliban forces will still control most of the regions they do now, bin Laden will still be at large. The general US military position will still be indeterminant because the US hasn't committed ground forces in sufficient strength to gain any head way. The US line will be, that this is a war against terrorism for the long haul, and harden its line of demanding public patience.
Meanwhile at home, the FBI case against Al Qaeda and bin Laden will be stalled in limbo, having gotten no further than a dead money trail. Bush will have started to fall significantly in the polls, and the various anti-war movements will be joining forces with a re-emergent anti-global crowd. The anthrax cases will be equally stalled out as the FBI insists there is a middle eastern connection pursuing every irrelevant lead in that direction, while more and more protest groups will charge the FBI with racist profiling and insist the real culprits are a domestic rightwing crank group.
All of this will be a devolving political nightmare for the Bush administration which will have become like molasses, slowly falling off a spoon, glob by glob, while the economy remains in an ever deepening recession.
In fourteen months, the war in Afghanistan will have become like the war in Iraq, cooled down to a trade and economic boycott with air patrols over some areas and occasional air strikes, some completely bogus interim governmental arrangement with the Taliban, only the personnel will be changed to pretend they were the good forces of the Taliban and had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Bin Laden will still be at large, but probably not in Afghanistan. Hunger and economic collapse will be masked over by selective international aid distributions to `protected' or bogus government controlled areas while thousands more will die off-camera, in misery and silence.
In other words this will have been for nothing.
Except there will be no more major terrorist attacks in the US during the period, so Max will win his empty wager, but otherwise the entire tableaux of the country will still be transfixed by WTC, sinking slowly into the mire of time like all empires have in the past.
For the next few years there will September 11, national day of remembrance, with specials on the WTC and the survivors, some more heroic stories and miraculous escapes, some recovery stories, crippled by tragedy they somehow made good, blah, blah, blah.
Chuck Grimes