Tora Bora Revisited

From the Executive Summary:

On October 7, 2001, U.S. aircraft began bombing the training
bases and strongholds of Al Qaeda and the ruling Taliban across
Afghanistan. The leaders who sent murderers to attack the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon less than a month earlier and the
rogue government that provided them sanctuary were running for
their lives. President George W. Bush's expression of America's desire
to get Osama bin Laden ''dead or alive'' seemed about to come
true.

Two months later, American civilian and military leaders celebrated
what they viewed as a lasting victory with the selection of
Hamid Karzai as the country's new hand-picked leader. The war
had been conceived as a swift campaign with a single objective: defeat
the Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda by capturing or killing bin
Laden and other key leaders. A unique combination of airpower,
Central Intelligence Agency and special operations forces teams
and indigenous allies had swept the Taliban from power and ousted
Al Qaeda from its safe haven while keeping American deaths to a
minimum. But even in the initial glow, there were concerns: The
mission had failed to capture or kill bin Laden.

This failure and its enormous consequences were not inevitable.