There is much debate about whether war against Iraq is necessary. What is missing is a debate about whether the war against Al Qaeda had to be a war against the Taliban, fought on Afghanistan's already bloody soil.

Just as United Nations disarmament experts, with a decade or more of expertise and unrivaled archives, are regularly belittled by Washington, those who knew Afghanistan best under the Taliban were not heard. Does the United States disregard UN expertise at great unnecessary cost?...

The writer, UN bureau chief for The New York Times from 1994 to 2001, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.