Yes. I expect we have a substantial cadre of potential suicide bombers here in the U.S.: parents of those killed in the terror-atrocity that was the attack on the World Trade Center. Every Afghan civilian killed by U.S. bombs--every Taliban recruit killed--has relatives. Whether the U.S. retaliation against the Taliban would scotch the snake or simply give the hydra more heads was a big and important question back in mid-September.
So far things look better than they might: the lack of second- and third-stage attacks (save by Richard Reid) suggests that the destruction of the WTC and the U.S. retaliation, taken together, have discouraged rather than encouraged the growth of Al-Qaeda. But it hangs in the balance. And were I running foreign policy, I would be doing a lot of things very differently...
Brad DeLong