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What I think everybody has lost site of is that Afghanistan, pre 9-11, was a country that facilitated an environment that allowed people who would normally be l

What I think everybody has lost site of is that Afghanistan, pre 9-11, was a country that facilitated an environment that allowed people who would normally be local village thugs to turn into James Bond villains that rammed airliners into buildings on the other side of the planet killing thousands of civilians drinking their morning lattes. The Afghan war was most certainly not a war of colonial aggression or some bullshit diversionary war in the wrong country and nobody has floated any realistic options other than occupying the country as way to prevent more buildings from being knocked down. It's not even entirely clear that even that minimal goal has been accomplished. The point of all this wasn't to spread Democracy to the oppressed people of Afghanistan and give them clean water and schools. It was to eradicate an environment that facilitates and encourages people to plan and execute complex operations intent on killing us as part of an insane world domination plan to bring forth a new Caliphate on this Earth in order to establish a particularly hard-line version of Islam on humanity. It just so turns out that our best estimate of what will stop the festering insane world domination cancer that grows there is a nice dose of Democracy, schools and economic growth. Perhaps that's wrong and misguided, but I have yet to hear of a plan that doesn't include "better government and stronger economy" that has any chance of working. And you can't have those things without some semblance of security. And you can't have security against people who want to establish a global Caliphate through a plan of killing and terrorizing civilian populations without killing a few of those assholes in return. I mean, what's the alternative? Go door to door and politely pass out flyers asking them nicely to stop having aspirations of killing the infidel to cleanse the world? I wonder how long the Peace Corps would last amongst people who's idea of a reasoned response to "let's drill a well for the village" is to cut their head off with a dull knife and send a video of the decapitation to their family. I'm not sure I really understand how to have a productive debate concerning this issue with people who think that the proper response to 9-11 should have been a shrug of the shoulders and enhanced sanctions. I don't think anybody wants us to be at war there -- the ass end of the Earth. It's not like we're getting any material benefit from it -- quite the contrary in fact. But I objectively think that anybody who holds naive ideals that you can execute an invasion, conduct security operations, stabilization initiatives and nation building in such an inhospitable, economically hopeless part of the world and not end up with dead civilians is a moron. And I most certainly haven't heard of a reasonable plan that would exclude such unfortunate casualties. Cries for NATO to get out are never followed by a plan for what to do after that that would prevent the social and economic degeneration of the country into what we had to deal with in the late 90's and early 2000s. To be perfectly honest, nobody really cares if Afghanistan soft crashes into a fractured state of tribal warlords who kill far more civilians than any occupation force could ever hope to do. Afghanistan will never be an advanced industrialized society. What we all care about is if they soft crash back into a regime that supports complex and grandiose terror operations outside their borders. And due to woeful mismanagement the entire conflict, it's not clear where they'd land, but it's not likely to be a peaceful agrarian society.

OpieCunningham 16y ago
Plenty of people have floated and tested ideas other than occupying the country as methods of preventing "more buildings from being knocked down". Indeed, nearly all terrorist plots that have been prevented have used these methods: investigative policing. For someone seemingly so versed in the issue, I'm surprised of two things: 1- That you're apparently unaware that there are two primary schools of thought re: anti-terrorism. One is grand military force and the other is investigative tactics. The former is nearly beyond cost prohibitive (some might argue it IS cost prohibitive), of a highly questionable efficacy, and results in orders of magnitude more civilian deaths than the instigating cause (9/11). The latter has been demonstrated to be highly effective at preventing attacks. 2- That you're equally unaware that the killing of families in far off lands results in an increased number of surviving family/friends who take up arms in opposition to those responsible. There is now a wealth of information spanning years detailing the primary motivating factors of insurgents, most of which revolves around revenge for the death of family/friends and little of which has anything at all to do with Caliphates. And lastly, it is the definition of naive to believe that "we're not getting any material benefit" from the war. You may not be, but many corporations have massive financial benefits and most politicians have re-election benefits (both pro-war and anti-war politicians, though primarily the pro-war variety).
- elblanco 16y ago
  1. Without going into particulars of military vs. softer responses, how then do you propose we conduct an investigative policy of counter-terror activities in a country hostile to our investigators without first establishing an environment a softer policy can survive in? 2. I'm certainly not unaware of that. All possible effort should be made to not kill innocents as it does indeed feed the terror machine. I would certainly like to see persons responsible for indiscriminate civilian deaths dealt with. But unless you are aware of a method, technological or otherwise, of identifying bad civilians from good civilians in a population a priori to bad civilians doing bad things, and of removing those people from the face of the earth without endangering the room full of people they shield themselves with, sometimes innocents will simply be caught in the cross-fire. It's sad, it's unfortunate, but it happens. Apparently your decades of counter-terror experience says something different, please share an actual operational plan from intelligence gathering to final capture/kill of a notional bad-guy if that's not the case. Outside of your naive and fantasy filled ruminations on how to conduct counter-terror operations, you do seem to be entirely ignorant of the reasons why we are conducting operations in Afghanistan in the first place and it had everything to do with establishing a Caliphate. "Like the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, of Iran, Osama bin Laden made his anti-Western passion and plans clear in print years before gaining prominence through a frontal assault against America and its friends. The Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad, a multivolume guide to paramilitary and terrorist activity, written by his followers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, signaled bin Laden's intention to wage an anti-Western campaign far beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. The encyclopedia was probably compiled and published in Peshawar, Pakistan, in late 1992. Because it doesn't provide a date or an exact place of printing (an intentional wartime evasiveness pervades the writing), one must make guesses about its provenance based on the text and on conversations with Pakistanis, Afghans, and Arabs. The encyclopedia, "one of the Sources of Energy for the faithful," was designed to transfer the knowledge and spirit gained from the "first brick of Islamic justice"—the successful war against Soviet communism—to a larger, more important campaign against the West, which bin Laden's statements have referred to only as kufr ("unbelief"), a classical-Islamic way of denoting geography by faith. The next jihad against America and its Muslim allies would, the authors of the encyclopedia prayed, lead to "the establishment of a castle of the Muslims, a [new] Caliphate"—a reference to the ruling politico-religious office of Islam's "golden age." For many fundamentalists, if not for the common man, the caliphate remains, at least sentimentally, the ideal geopolitical expression of Muslim universalism—an empire free of Westernized nation-states, where the shari'a, the holy law, reigns supreme, thus guaranteeing the union of Church and State and the brotherhood and strength of the faithful. The aim of the encyclopedia and many smaller paramilitary and terrorist manuals that have appeared since 1992 is to democratize terrorism, to give to any true believer a portable guide to waging holy war worldwide. The encyclopedia has been found in print or on CD-ROM wherever al Qaeda has sent its cadres. Bin Laden and his followers also sought to accomplish philosophically what the Shi'ite Ayatollah Khomeini aspired to but never achieved: taking Islamic radicalism mainstream by forcing and dominating the discussion of holy war among the various strains of Sunni fundamentalism, which has become a significant force in every Middle Eastern country. Though unquestionably the most influential Muslim of modern times, Khomeini could never transcend the seventh-century division of Islamic society into those who recognize the legitimacy of the caliphal succession to the Prophet Muhammad (the Sunnis) and "the party of Ali" (the Shi'a), who believe that only Muhammad's son-in-law and his descendants can rightfully rule the Islamic world." http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/01/gerecht.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/01/gerecht.... And lastly, it is the definition of naive to believe that "we're not getting any material benefit" from the war. You may not be, but many corporations have massive financial benefits and most politicians have re-election benefits (both pro-war and anti-war politicians, though primarily the pro-war variety). It's just money spinning around the drain. What I mean by not gaining material benefit is that it's not like NATO troops are returning home with chests full of loot like returning Roman armies on the frontiers. There's no new input of valuables into the economies of the nations participating in Afghan counter-terror operations.

OpieCunningham 16y ago

Plenty of people have floated and tested ideas other than occupying the country as methods of preventing "more buildings from being knocked down". Indeed, nearly all terrorist plots that have been prevented have used these methods: investigative policing. For someone seemingly so versed in the issue, I'm surprised of two things: 1- That you're apparently unaware that there are two primary schools of thought re: anti-terrorism. One is grand military force and the other is investigative tactics. The former is nearly beyond cost prohibitive (some might argue it IS cost prohibitive), of a highly questionable efficacy, and results in orders of magnitude more civilian deaths than the instigating cause (9/11). The latter has been demonstrated to be highly effective at preventing attacks. 2- That you're equally unaware that the killing of families in far off lands results in an increased number of surviving family/friends who take up arms in opposition to those responsible. There is now a wealth of information spanning years detailing the primary motivating factors of insurgents, most of which revolves around revenge for the death of family/friends and little of which has anything at all to do with Caliphates. And lastly, it is the definition of naive to believe that "we're not getting any material benefit" from the war. You may not be, but many corporations have massive financial benefits and most politicians have re-election benefits (both pro-war and anti-war politicians, though primarily the pro-war variety).

elblanco 16y ago
1. Without going into particulars of military vs. softer responses, how then do you propose we conduct an investigative policy of counter-terror activities in a country hostile to our investigators without first establishing an environment a softer policy can survive in? 2. I'm certainly not unaware of that. All possible effort should be made to not kill innocents as it does indeed feed the terror machine. I would certainly like to see persons responsible for indiscriminate civilian deaths dealt with. But unless you are aware of a method, technological or otherwise, of identifying bad civilians from good civilians in a population a priori to bad civilians doing bad things, and of removing those people from the face of the earth without endangering the room full of people they shield themselves with, sometimes innocents will simply be caught in the cross-fire. It's sad, it's unfortunate, but it happens. Apparently your decades of counter-terror experience says something different, please share an actual operational plan from intelligence gathering to final capture/kill of a notional bad-guy if that's not the case. Outside of your naive and fantasy filled ruminations on how to conduct counter-terror operations, you do seem to be entirely ignorant of the reasons why we are conducting operations in Afghanistan in the first place and it had everything to do with establishing a Caliphate. "Like the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, of Iran, Osama bin Laden made his anti-Western passion and plans clear in print years before gaining prominence through a frontal assault against America and its friends. The Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad, a multivolume guide to paramilitary and terrorist activity, written by his followers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, signaled bin Laden's intention to wage an anti-Western campaign far beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. The encyclopedia was probably compiled and published in Peshawar, Pakistan, in late 1992. Because it doesn't provide a date or an exact place of printing (an intentional wartime evasiveness pervades the writing), one must make guesses about its provenance based on the text and on conversations with Pakistanis, Afghans, and Arabs. The encyclopedia, "one of the Sources of Energy for the faithful," was designed to transfer the knowledge and spirit gained from the "first brick of Islamic justice"—the successful war against Soviet communism—to a larger, more important campaign against the West, which bin Laden's statements have referred to only as kufr ("unbelief"), a classical-Islamic way of denoting geography by faith. The next jihad against America and its Muslim allies would, the authors of the encyclopedia prayed, lead to "the establishment of a castle of the Muslims, a [new] Caliphate"—a reference to the ruling politico-religious office of Islam's "golden age." For many fundamentalists, if not for the common man, the caliphate remains, at least sentimentally, the ideal geopolitical expression of Muslim universalism—an empire free of Westernized nation-states, where the shari'a, the holy law, reigns supreme, thus guaranteeing the union of Church and State and the brotherhood and strength of the faithful. The aim of the encyclopedia and many smaller paramilitary and terrorist manuals that have appeared since 1992 is to democratize terrorism, to give to any true believer a portable guide to waging holy war worldwide. The encyclopedia has been found in print or on CD-ROM wherever al Qaeda has sent its cadres. Bin Laden and his followers also sought to accomplish philosophically what the Shi'ite Ayatollah Khomeini aspired to but never achieved: taking Islamic radicalism mainstream by forcing and dominating the discussion of holy war among the various strains of Sunni fundamentalism, which has become a significant force in every Middle Eastern country. Though unquestionably the most influential Muslim of modern times, Khomeini could never transcend the seventh-century division of Islamic society into those who recognize the legitimacy of the caliphal succession to the Prophet Muhammad (the Sunnis) and "the party of Ali" (the Shi'a), who believe that only Muhammad's son-in-law and his descendants can rightfully rule the Islamic world." http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/01/gerecht.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/01/gerecht.... And lastly, it is the definition of naive to believe that "we're not getting any material benefit" from the war. You may not be, but many corporations have massive financial benefits and most politicians have re-election benefits (both pro-war and anti-war politicians, though primarily the pro-war variety). It's just money spinning around the drain. What I mean by not gaining material benefit is that it's not like NATO troops are returning home with chests full of loot like returning Roman armies on the frontiers. There's no new input of valuables into the economies of the nations participating in Afghan counter-terror operations.