US Military Action in Afghanistan - Poll

[Warren Dew]

Al Qaeda is not a single group, it is an idea and ideas are bullet proof.

Al Qaeda was an idea emanating much more from a core group back then than it is now.

[Ian]

I don't think I can answer the poll the way it's set up. Yes, the US should have taken action IN Afghanistan, as long as that's where bin Laden and boys were, but not AGAINST Afghanistan, which is how it turned out. Taking action against a few select targets with a small task force instead of taking over the whole country and trying to turn it into Little America. Covert ops and air support kinda thing, instead of the Bush preferred method of tearing through the country with guns a-blazin'.

Given the Taliban were protecting Al Qaeda, I don't have a problem with the overthrow of the Taliban as part of the initial action, which didn't involve that many U.S. troops anyway. Missing Al Qaeda's relocation and dispersion was a mistake, and the escalation to conventional warfare at the end of the Bush administration and accelerated to include nation building under Obama was unjustified.

Nicely succinct. There was no going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan without also removing the Taliban; any belief that the former could have happened without the latter is pure fantasy. And what Pappa meant as criticism is exactly correct: the US had every right in the world to go in there and beat the shit out of those who refused to stop providing sanctuary to Al Qaeda, as the Taliban refused to do after 9/11.

Anything that's happened in Afghanistan after the Taliban were beaten out of Kabul (Novemer 2001) is a different matter. It's all a case of trying to make sure the whole situation there doesn't return to what it had been in mid-2001. Plenty of room to second-guess what ISAF is and has been trying to d,o and their means of trying to accomplish it, but that's a different subject.

[Gawd]

Al Qaeda is not a single group, it is an idea and ideas are bullet proof.

Al Qaeda was an idea emanating much more from a core group back then than it is now.

Thanks to bin Laden's genius and America falling for the trap.

[Ian]

Al Qaeda is not a single group, it is an idea and ideas are bullet proof.

Al Qaeda was an idea emanating much more from a core group back then than it is now.

Thanks to bin Laden's genius and America falling for the trap.

Bin Laden was a religious zealot who is currently at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The term genius definitely does not apply.

[Gawd]

Al Qaeda is not a single group, it is an idea and ideas are bullet proof.

Al Qaeda was an idea emanating much more from a core group back then than it is now.

Thanks to bin Laden's genius and America falling for the trap.

Bin Laden was a religious zealot who is currently at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The term genius definitely does not apply.

He made you trillions in debt and even more hated, all through the use of a few plane tickets. He is a absolute genius. Why just look at what happened to the genius called Leonardo Devinci.

[Ian]

[Gawd]

Have fun paying back your debts.

[Ian]

No worries mate.

[Exi5tentialist]

What would the cost have been of leaving the Taliban in place, across two countries?

An wider and more successful Arab Spring, with oppressive governments overthrown from Kabul to Tripoli.

I'd be interested to hear your reasoning for that.

Without intervention from the outside, it is hard to see a Taliban-lead government being overthrown from within, and the effect of Afghan events on the Arab world in general is fairly tenuous, at least in comparison to the festering sore that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I'd be interested in your reasoning for it not being the case. You're the one who's saying it wouldn't have happened. But we will never know, will we? Of course it is 'hard to see' things imagining ourselves retrospectively imagining ten years forward under different circumstances... how could anything be more difficult to imagine? But the invasion of Afghanistan destroyed the possibility of an internal Afghan overthrow of the Taliban. Who's to say the Arab spring wouldn't have reached outside the Arab world? We just don't know, we US attack on Afghanistan didn't allow us the possibility to know.

[HomerJay]

What would the cost have been of leaving the Taliban in place, across two countries?

An wider and more successful Arab Spring, with oppressive governments overthrown from Kabul to Tripoli.

I'd be interested in your reasoning for it not being the case.

I don't think anyone could see a comparison between the dictatorships in the middle east with afghanistan.

Afghanistan was in a steady state of civil war, with disparate and politically mobile armies, not one single arab state was in that position.

[JimC]

What would the cost have been of leaving the Taliban in place, across two countries?

An wider and more successful Arab Spring, with oppressive governments overthrown from Kabul to Tripoli.

I'd be interested to hear your reasoning for that.

Without intervention from the outside, it is hard to see a Taliban-lead government being overthrown from within, and the effect of Afghan events on the Arab world in general is fairly tenuous, at least in comparison to the festering sore that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I'd be interested in your reasoning for it not being the case. You're the one who's saying it wouldn't have happened. But we will never know, will we? Of course it is 'hard to see' things imagining ourselves retrospectively imagining ten years forward under different circumstances... how could anything be more difficult to imagine? But the invasion of Afghanistan destroyed the possibility of an internal Afghan overthrow of the Taliban. Who's to say the Arab spring wouldn't have reached outside the Arab world? We just don't know, we US attack on Afghanistan didn't allow us the possibility to know.

I rather think that, in this case, the burden of proof is with you. You are drawing a very long bow to assert that a lack of intervention in Afghanistan 10 years ago would have allowed or fostered dramatic political changes in the Arab world. Afghanistan is not Arabic, for a start, and its Taliban rulers were sworn enemies of much of the leadership of the arab world at the time, albeit for very different reasons than the current advocates of reform...

I'm not saying that a replay of history without the western intervention would not be without significant changes, I'm simply saying that a dogmatic assertion that it would lead to "a wider and more successful Arab Spring, with oppressive governments overthrown from Kabul to Tripoli" is crystal ball gazing at its most fatuous...

As for an internal overthrow of the Taliban, and its replacement by anything resembling a workable, unified Afghan government, don't make me laugh. Possibly a continuing bitter struggle between rival war lords, and the Taliban leading a rump Afghanistan, with the Northern Alliance carving out a semi-permanent fiefdom, sure...

You may have noticed that the bulk opinion within the thread is that the initially kicking of Taliban arse was fully justified, but a continuing long-term engagement was in reality quite pointless.

[Exi5tentialist]

What would the cost have been of leaving the Taliban in place, across two countries?

An wider and more successful Arab Spring, with oppressive governments overthrown from Kabul to Tripoli.

I'd be interested in your reasoning for it not being the case.

I don't think anyone could see a comparison between the dictatorships in the middle east with afghanistan.

Afghanistan was in a steady state of civil war, with disparate and politically mobile armies, not one single arab state was in that position.

Oh crikey you're compartmentalising too much. Can you not see that a revolutionary movement such as the Arab Spring could have resonances outside the Arab world? If it spread to Afghanistan they would have to call it something other than Arab Spring.

US intervention in foreign countries may help neocon or neoliberal governments come to power in those countries, but in the process they destroy all possibility of internal revolutions while the Americans are there propping their puppet government up. Afghanistan is no different from any other country. I'm not saying there would have been an internal anti-Taliban revolution in Afghanistan, what I am saying is that American intervention has destroyed all possibility of one.

[JimC]

Exi5stentialist wrote:

US intervention in foreign countries may help neocon or neoliberal governments come to power in those countries, but in the process they destroy all possibility of internal revolutions while the Americans are there propping their puppet government up. Afghanistan is no different from any other country. I'm not saying there would have been an internal anti-Taliban revolution in Afghanistan, what I am saying is that American intervention has destroyed all possibility of one.

There is some truth in this. So many times, the US (and allies) have ended up propping up corrupt and decaying regimes, from Saigon to Kabul...

It so often feeds into the hands of the enemies of that regime, while the stalemate is maintaintained by airstrikes and the death toll rises...

[Exi5tentialist]

I rather think that, in this case, the burden of proof is with you. You are drawing a very long bow to assert that a lack of intervention in Afghanistan 10 years ago would have allowed or fostered

Read what I said JimC in the post you answered. I am saying we do not know what would have happened.

dramatic political changes in the Arab world. Afghanistan is not Arabic, for a start,

Oh Jeez, another compartmental thinker.

and its Taliban rulers were sworn enemies of much of the leadership of the arab world at the time, albeit for very different reasons than the current advocates of reform...

I'm not saying that a replay of history without the western intervention would not be without significant changes, I'm simply saying that a dogmatic assertion

Dogmatic assertion? It was a suggestion, an answer to a question, a musing on a possibility that might have happened if the US hadn't destroyed the possibility. There is no more dogmatic assertion than a B-52 dropping 20,000 tonne bombs on a country. Dogmatic assertion, don't make me laugh.

that it would lead to "a wider and more successful Arab Spring, with oppressive governments overthrown from Kabul to Tripoli" is crystal ball gazing at its most fatuous...

It's fatuous to destroy the possibility of such a thing. And no, it's not crystal ball gazing, it's retrospective crystal ball gazing into possibilities that were destroyed outright by all the bombs the US has dropped on Afghanistan in the last 10 years. It's a conceptualisation - admittedly a debatable one, but one that has no possibility of become a reality given the history of the last 10 years.

As for an internal overthrow of the Taliban, and its replacement by anything resembling a workable, unified Afghan government, don't make me laugh. Possibly a continuing bitter struggle between rival war lords, and the Taliban leading a rump Afghanistan, with the Northern Alliance carving out a semi-permanent fiefdom, sure...

I only mooted the internal overthrow of the Taliban. "Workable, unified Afghan government" is your imagination working overtime, so you're making yourself laugh if anything. Who knows? Afghanistan could have become the world's first anarcho-syndicalist economy, an example to be followed by others around it.

But no chance of that now, not with the US army occupying it. Maybe that's really why they're there. We will never know.

You may have noticed that the bulk opinion within the thread is that the initially kicking of Taliban arse was fully justified, but a continuing long-term engagement was in reality quite pointless.

Like most US interventions, Afghanistan was bound to be a long-term engagement the moment the first bomb was dropped. Oh so you wanted a clean, surgical intervention such as the one in Libya, lasting a few weeks with a few airstrikes that lead to a grateful nation praising the US for destroying Al Qaeda? That was never going to happen in Afghanistan. The US has thrown everything it's got at Afghanistan over 10 years and they still can't get rid of Al Qaeda. What makes you think a neat surgical operation in 2001 was ever going to deliver the results required?

[sandinista]

In the Civilian Casualties Derail Coito ergo sum said:

Almost everyone thinks the US was entitled to go into Afghanistan as it did

Is this true?

Edited: to make the subject title more concise

No, not true. Remember who is making that statement though. Not much he says is true.