You're putting the USA and Al Qaeda on the same moral footing with this comment. You might want to take it back.
Afghanistan
- Thread starter Sherzad
- Start date
My point is innocent people die in wars - sadly - all the time for terrible reasons, and are often ignorant of the reasons why, but you seem eager to downplay the people who provided a haven for the organisation who initiated it given in this case we do actually know why the US retaliated.
Worse, you've accused the US of doing it for the 'optics', of the deaths of those 3,000 people to being 'a bloody nose', to Bush wanting to 'rack up a body count', in 'revenge'. How you characterise the US response is noticeably different to how you characterise the organisations who invited it.
Or you know, the intelligence communities failed massively in doing their job. And instead of holding them accountable, we decided to kill a bunch of innocent people because it is an easier sell and helps idiots get elected.
Because the Taliban were smaller players than Al Qaeda and were in no place to do anything about OBL. Not least because he'd already escaped the moment the attacks started.
Bush's demand was false choice. Omar couldn't have handed Bin Laden over even if he wanted to.
All the talking beforehand was a pretext for inevitable war. That's what the US population demanded so that's why the US backed the Taliban into an unavoidable conflict whilst pretending it could have somehow been prevented.
Yes. That's how politics works in the US.
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Who has killed more people?
Heres the thing for you uninitiated. If your country invades another one expect this shit to happen down the line.
It was tongue in cheek. But no less ridiculous than the original claim.Are you on a WUM?
I don't think there's much between them on the negative side of the scale.
Granted, America has done significantly more good than Al Qaeda. But they also done a hell of a lot more bad. And should rightfully be called out for it.
Exactly. I dont subscribe to the bullshit that murder is okay if its state sanctioned.
Conclusion from the senate intelligence report on 9/11 you won't find on Wikipedia. @nickm you should give the systemic findings sections a read.
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As Omid Djalli said" After looking for him all over the World for such a long time, where did they find him? In his house".
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The goal was to expel Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan to prevent it from being used to plot further attacks in the US, which has been largely successful. As a bonus, they managed to get Bin Laden as well. The rest of the war was largely unproductive.
The USA had every right to go after those involved in the 9/11 atrocity and seek justice. However, it should have been a covert operation against the leadership. Basically, the hawks went in headfirst and wanted to show the world their military might. Just as in Vietnam they got bogged down. Just as the Afghans wanted to defend their land against the aggression of the Russians, similarly they despised the de facto (installing a puppet government) occupation of their country by the USA and their mates and in the process trampling on their beliefs and culture. History exposes the fact you cannot defeat a people whose ideology is a win-win situation if you either die or survive.
Despite what we'll hear minimal gains have been achieved during these costly operations both in terms of lives lost and financial considerations. The delusion of state-building in Afghanistan was just that, delusion. They didn't learn from their Vietnam mission in Afghanistan, and similarly in Iraq either.
Military and financial might aplenty. Dumb policymakers.
Despite what we'll hear minimal gains have been achieved during these costly operations both in terms of lives lost and financial considerations. The delusion of state-building in Afghanistan was just that, delusion. They didn't learn from their Vietnam mission in Afghanistan, and similarly in Iraq either.
Military and financial might aplenty. Dumb policymakers.
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Al-Qaeda did not need bases to plot attacks on the US. I would think the 9/11 operational logistics were mostly planned on US soil and in other countries. I could understand your line of thought if you had said the inspiration for the attacks came from Al-Qaida leadership in Afghanistan. A room and some unhinged people can plan terrorist attacks without having military bases. This has been proven post 9/11 with other terrorist atrocities around the world.
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@Dante is right and hits the nail on the head.
This idea that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are sitting around a table moving chess pieces and plotting is wide of the mark. Both groups have their own agenda and their own goals.
The US wanted to show its strength post 9/11, and in some ways, killing 45,000 innocent Afghanis is someway of showing it, but the funny thing is, after occupying Afghanistan for 20 years, it's taken about 2 months for the Taliban to undo all of the US's work.
And so, the cycle will continue.
This idea that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are sitting around a table moving chess pieces and plotting is wide of the mark. Both groups have their own agenda and their own goals.
The US wanted to show its strength post 9/11, and in some ways, killing 45,000 innocent Afghanis is someway of showing it, but the funny thing is, after occupying Afghanistan for 20 years, it's taken about 2 months for the Taliban to undo all of the US's work.
And so, the cycle will continue.
Much of the training happened in Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda were given free reign to do as they pleased, which ostensibly gave them state backing to plot terrorist attacks in the west.
Bin Laden’s Tarnak Farms facility outside Kandahar was used extensively as a training site where Al-Qaeda did everything from radicalize future 9/11 highjackers and plan 9/11.
Mohammad Atta and Ziyad Jarrah travelled there to make their suicide videos and receive instructions, Abu Khabab ran their chemical weapons program from there, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi traveled in and out of Afghanistan, and the entire leadership from Bin Laden to Zawahiri to Mohammad Atef and Saif Al Adel were all there receiving refuge and planning extensive future attacks.
Bin Laden also personally used his base in Afghanistan to plan terrorist attacks on Afghans on behalf of his Taliban benefactors, such as when he planned and executed the Ahmad Shah Massoud assassination as a favor to Mullah Omar. The evidence that Al-Qaeda used Afghanistan to plot and execute terrorist acts is not just substantial, it’s overwhelming.
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I get the initial goals, but the subsequent aim over 20 years of war was to prevent the Taliban retaking control. You lost. Acknowledging that is important, there are other governments and ways of life that the democratic world (including me) will not like, living in a fantasy won't help dealing with that.
The goal was to rebuild and regenerate the country so that it wouldn’t be used as a future haven for terrorism. That is clearly hanging in the balance at the moment.
We're talking about 9/11 being the reason for the US going into Afghanistan.
You simply can't plan taking over planes, going through security for something like 9/11 on a field somewhere in Afghanistan. Yes, like I said inspiration and some form of military training happened. It was a baseless argument to invade Afghanistan. Like I said it should have been a covert operation.
PS: There have been terrorist atrocities planned from US, British and European homes and flats by homegrown terrorists on a large scale. Did they receive or need Afghanistan training bases?
There were extensive terrorist training camps run by Al-Qaeda (and facilitated by the Taliban) in Afghanistan. All a rogue terrorist organization like AQ needed was a host nation to operate from without worry of being attacked by the US or others, and they had that in Afghanistan from 96 when Bin Laden returned from Sudan through late 2001. This would've continued unimpeded had the US not invaded to get rid of them.
Exactly. The US have left tail between their legs with their 20 years of whatever being undone in 2 months.
Lot of bollocks here about this. The Taliban did offer to hand over OBL if the US halts the bombing and also offer proof that he was behind it. Bush refused it out of hand.
There was no need to bomb Afghanistan into the stone age apart from taking revenge.
There was no need to bomb Afghanistan into the stone age apart from taking revenge.
The offer to "hand over Bin Laden" (as if even possible) was made by one Taliban guy after it was too late (ie. one week after the bombing had started) and was promptly dismissed as a stalling tactic. Mullah Omar then rejected that any such offer had been made.
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Not at all.
Robert Grenier, the CIA station chief in Pakistan at the time of 9/11, confirmed that such proposals had been made to US officials.
Grenier said the US considered the offers to bring in Bin Laden to trial a “ploy”.
“Another idea was that [bin Laden] would be brought to trial before a group of Ulema[religious scholars] in Afghanistan.
“No one in the US government took these [offers] seriously because they did not trust the Taliban and their ability to conduct a proper trial.”
Subsequent to the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, as US pressure grew, the Taliban insisted on a procedure under the supervision of Organization of Islamic Countries because it considered it a “neutral international organisation”.
Is it considered a war when it's just one side kicking the shit out of the other, who has no actual means of attacking its enemy?
Yes, still a war even if one side is an insurgency.
Now we get articles in west lamenting the innocent casualties of the taliban. They'll go some to kill as many civilians as we did.
It's probably a war crime. Just like the Iraqi invasion. It's a fact that Taliban was in charge of Afghanistan at that time and their Foreign Minister was one of the earliest to condemned this attack.
There are no innocent civilians of the Taliban. They themselves killed a lot of civilians in Afghanistan. But also they are fighting an invader too.
Whatever the rights or wrongs, the people I feel really sorry for are those soldiers who were injured or named in the fight against the Taliban and who must be asking what was it all about.
It became about trying to impose a political system on a part of the world that did not want that political system. And failing, slowly, and with unnecessary cost in life.
So sad for all the lives lost or changed forever.
What about the innocent Afghanis caught in the middle? Victims of war aren’t exclusively US soldiers.
It's also important to remember that not all enemy combatants were Taliban. As you can see from this video I posted earlier, 92% of Afghanis are still unaware 9/11 ever happened. That's 20 years and a full scale invasion later.
A high proportion of the people taking up arms against the Allied Forces were just regular people seeing a foreign invading army taking over their towns, villages and farms. Guantanamo Bay ended up being full of goat herders and farmers with no actual affiliation with the Taliban.
But, as I said previously, killing and capturing in big numbers was the end goal for Bush (just like his dad did when setting the template for modern televised warfare).
Whether or not the prisoners and casualties were deserving could be obfuscated by ra-ra nationalist propaganda.
A high proportion of the people taking up arms against the Allied Forces were just regular people seeing a foreign invading army taking over their towns, villages and farms. Guantanamo Bay ended up being full of goat herders and farmers with no actual affiliation with the Taliban.
But, as I said previously, killing and capturing in big numbers was the end goal for Bush (just like his dad did when setting the template for modern televised warfare).
Whether or not the prisoners and casualties were deserving could be obfuscated by ra-ra nationalist propaganda.
So after 20 years of bloodshed what have the US and allies achieved?
15 of the attackers were Saudi nationals, did the US attack Saudi Arabia in response?
2.3 trillion dollars went missing the day before 9/11, anyone bother to question where that went?
Ask these types of questions and youre labelled as a crazy conspiracy theorist, but who exactly gained from these wars in the middle east?
Wonder who really gained in this War on Terror?
15 of the attackers were Saudi nationals, did the US attack Saudi Arabia in response?
2.3 trillion dollars went missing the day before 9/11, anyone bother to question where that went?
Ask these types of questions and youre labelled as a crazy conspiracy theorist, but who exactly gained from these wars in the middle east?
Wonder who really gained in this War on Terror?
In all the invasions of Afghanistan over the centuries, perhaps more latterly, the British, the Russians and the Americans, have any of them ever been considered successful?
....Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it ( Churchill)?
....Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it ( Churchill)?
Success in the context of Afghanistan is a tricky concept. Whose perspective are you taking?
Did weapons manufacturers profit from the war in Afghanistan? If the answer is yes, then it was a success for them. Did it help Bush get re-elected in 2004? If the answer is yes, then it was successful for his administration.
Did weapons manufacturers profit from the war in Afghanistan? If the answer is yes, then it was a success for them. Did it help Bush get re-elected in 2004? If the answer is yes, then it was successful for his administration.
It's from the perspective of those who sought to engage in Afghanistan, those who committed time, manpower and resources for a specific purpose. Did they succeed?
Genghis Khan in the 13th century and before him the Persians a few hundred years BC, can only guess at what they were after. The British were initially in the mid 19th century probably attempting to protect/enhance the far flung corners of Empire, not quite sure what the Russians were after, in the 1980's, they were said to be supporting the Communist Government in Afghanistan, and the Americans allegedly there 2001 to destroy/deny a safe haven to Al Qaeda.
Weapons profits and the re-election of Bush are by-products, but not the reasons for invasion? However yes they could be considered 'success' by chance rather than design, if you widen the definition.
Its hard to say if it got him elected in 04 or not. By that time the Iraq invasion was already 18 months in progress and much of the attention had shifted from Afghanistan to the controversy surrounding the decision to go into Iraq. What however didn't change, was the American public's post 9/11 rage to go after Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden to prevent future attacks. This gave the Afghanistan war the legitimacy it needed to continue percolating in the background while all the attention was on Iraq.
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