A couple of things here...
Bin Laden may have been the primary target, but the initial targeting of Afghanistan involved more than just targeting Bin Laden... it was also about eliminating Al Quaeda's ability to use Afghanistan as a base of operations. If the U.S. had taken out bin Laden but left others to carry on his legacy, it would have been seen as a failure.
Secondly is True that Bin Laden was targeted in Pakistan without "going to war". But they were only able to do that after months/years of intelligence gathering was able to locate him. There is no guarantee that they would have been able to locate Bin Laden in Afghanistan using the same tactics.
Fair enough…. It was always going to be a large military response to take out the Al Qaeda. 20 years of war against the Taliban and they just step right back into power was quite something to behold though.
In my opinion... a military response to take out Al Qaeda was necessary under the circumstances.
That said, I do think there are some valid issues to debate... how long should the U.S. have left troops there, could they (meaning both the U.S. and Afghanistan) have done things to stop the Taliban, could the withdrawal been handled better, etc.
The biggest reason for the quick takeover by the Taliban seemed to be corruption and incompetence in the Afghan military.... Troops weren't given the proper support while money ended up getting wasted. Had the front line troops received proper supplies (and troop pay), perhaps they might have been able to hold off the Taliban. But then, there probably was no easy way for the U.S. to fix the issue without being seen as meddling in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.
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