US response? "We know he's guilty", and we don't care to prove it to anyone else.
And yet, even after US started bombing them, Taliban was still offering extradition deals. All the way up until the ground invasion.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
We know that Bin Laden was guilty in retrospect, of course. But he didn't admit it back then, and otherwise, there was nothing particularly unusual or vexing that Taliban was asking for. Whether they would have actually given him up or not if their demands were met is also unclear, but IMO, given the prospect of a large region-destabilizing war (which many people back then were warning way in advance what would happen), it was definitely worth a try. You can always invade if things don't work out.
Would he really have just accepted that Afghanistan provides refuge to those who had killed thousands on American soil? Do you think he could just write off the loss ("oh bummer, thousands died") and still get reelected?
You might remember that Saddam Hussein decided to slaughter Kurds in the north and Marsh Arabs in the south. The original George Bush was expected to do something about this genocide, and so one of the things he did was impose no-fly zones. Aside from war, how was that supposed to come to an end? Do you think Gore would have just kept that up for another 4 years (8 if he goes to war in Afghanistan) or do you think he might have just walked away from it and allowed the genocide?
I'm sure Gore would've wanted to have his presidency be about the environment. Remember that the second George Bush wanted to have his presidency be about education... and we all know how that worked out for him.