Dubya's crew said no according to The Times.
"When American bombs began to fall in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many Taliban members fled Kabul within weeks and soon the group was reaching out to Hamid Karzai, who would become the country’s interim president: They wanted to make a deal.
But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.
Almost 20 years later, the United States did negotiate a deal to end the Afghan war, but the balance of power was entirely different by then — it favored the Taliban.
For diplomats who had spent years trying to shore up the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan, the deal that President Donald J. Trump struck with the Taliban in February 2020 to withdraw American troops — an agreement that President Biden decided to uphold shortly after taking office this year — felt like a betrayal.
Now, with the Taliban back in power, some of those diplomats are looking back at a missed chance by the United States, all those years ago, to pursue a Taliban surrender that could have halted America’s longest war in its infancy, or shortened it considerably.
— Alissa J. Rubin"