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Following the September 11th attack on New York City and the Pentagon, the Bush administration delivered an ultimatum to the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan, demanding that they either hand over Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, or face attack by the United States. Bin Laden had been living in Afghanistan as a guest of the Taliban since 1996. The Taliban agreed to try bin Laden in the Afghan Supreme Court if the United States provided evidence of bin Laden's involvement in the attack. The Taliban's position was articulated by Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salem Zaeef, who stated:

The Bush administration appeared uninterested in any option other than attacking the impoverished but strategically important central Asian nation. Addessing the U.S. Congress on September 20, 2001, President Bush, describing the alleged perpetrators of the attack as the "enemies of freedom," stated:

In his speech, Bush asked people to make two leaps of faith: first, to assume that the attackers were who the administration said they were in spite of an absence of evidence, and second, to assume that the attackers' motives were those imputed to them by the administration. Bush asserted:

We know exactly who these people are and which governments are supporting them.

On the same day, the FBI was expressing doubts about the identities of the alleged hijackers.

The air attack on Afghanistan began on October 7, with an intense night-time bombing attack by U.S. and British forces hitting at the heart of the city of Kandahar. 3

In March of 2004, a citizens' tribunal in Tokyo found U.S. President George W. Bush guilty of war crimes in the attack on Afghanistan. The tribunal, consisting of five judges, reached a unanimous conclusion. The judges are all professors of international law, and represent four nationalities, with one from each of India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and two from Japan. 4

The British lawyer who served on the tribunal, Robert Akroyd, described some of the ways in which the U.S. military ran afoul of international law. He noted that Bush, who claimed the military actions were in self-defense, failed to discriminate between legitimate objects and civilians, using "indiscriminate weapons such as the Daisy Cutter (a huge conventional bomb), cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells."

1. Taliban defies Bush as debate rages over bin Laden's fate, Middle East Times, [cached] 2. The algebra of infinite justice, [cached] 3. Afghanistan wakes after night of intense bombings, [cached] 4. Citizens find Bush guilty of Afghan war crimes, [cached]

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9-11 Research: The Attack on Afghanistan