Terrorism can’t be defeated by military means | Letters

Twenty years on, readers discuss events in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the US

Jonathan Powell makes some good points (The lesson we failed to learn from 9/11: peace is impossible if we don't talk to our enemies, 10 September). However, when he says: There was no real alternative to going after the leadership of al-Qaida" and there was no real alternative to taking on the Taliban themselves", I beg to differ. 9/11 was a crime, not an act of war. It was not committed by, or in the name of, the Afghan people, who would go on to be slaughtered in so many thousands.

Despite the recalcitrance of the Taliban, it could, and should, have been responded to using the mechanisms of international law. Weak and slow moving though they are, they do exist and can succeed eventually, as witnessed by, for example, successful prosecutions of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.