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As to Afghanistan? I don't know. It made sense to go in to fetch Bin Laden, but not to do any nation-building.

NegativeLatency 8y ago
Did it though? At the end of the day he’s just another bad guy. Think about all the people there who view the US poorly because of our actions there. Not sure killing one person really makes up for that.
- roenxi 8y ago
  Ignoring even that, in the end when he was caught/executed, it was in Pakistan by a small team of operatives. So in hindsight, why was there an army in Afghanistan? 15/19 of the terrorists involved were former Saudi nationals, so it isn't like the Afghans were obviously churning out radicals. Whole thing was bizarre.
  - arethuza 8y ago
    Even more bizarre when you consider the reports that Pakistan was taking money from the US, giving some of it to the Taliban who then used it to fight the US. Why the US public isn't angry at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is a mystery to me.
    - cryptonector 8y ago
      The U.S. public was and is angry about all that. However, the U.S. government can't really do anything about them. Afghanistan did have bin Laden, so that was a reason to go there: to get him. Staying there for decades, however, was not necessary, and not really justifiable, especially given that the nation-building part of the project hasn't panned out.
- cryptonector 8y ago
  Why have jail for any crimes then too, right? Criminals won't think well of the justice system if we have jail, so they'll commit more crimes to spite us. Right? Be serious. Deterrence may or may not always work, but it works enough of the time. Even when it doesn't work, the alternative (leaving them alone) almost certainly wouldn't work either. People who do these awful things don't need new grievances -- all the old ones will suffice for them.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> It made sense to go in to fetch Bin Laden, but not to do any nation-building. Yeah, a US policy of destructive interference in Afghanistan without stabilization after the immediate aim is acheived has never had any serious adverse long-term consequences that would militate against that. (Neither, I suppose, in your world, has the same thing in Iraq caused problems with merely completely botched stabilization ignoring everything we've ever learned about that topic instead of no stabilization at all.)
- cryptonector 8y ago
  The U.S. has no patience for nation-building. Like it or not, that's the truth. That leaves us with three options in cases like 9/11: - do nothing - go in, do what you can to get the bad guys and deter future attachs - go in and attempt nation-building for as long as the public will stand it, then skip town The third option is the one we always try. It also always fails. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Intervention in the Balkans did work in the 90s, but we didn't occupy, so that wasn't a long-term nation-building warfare effort. Somalia we abandoned early on in the 90s -- there was no reason to be there, much less stay, and President Clinton was smart enough to figure that out. The three biggies went badly. Vietnam and Iraq would have gone better with more patience, but I can't blame the American public for not having that much patience. In any case, the limited patience (regarding war) of the American public is a fact.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > That leaves us with three options in cases like 9/11: There are no other cases like 9/11, except maybe Pearl Harbor. The third option worked pretty well there. > The third option is the one we always try. It also always fails. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Vietnam was actually an example of the second option failing. While there was some effort at nation-building, it was as a means to defeating the “bad guys” (the so-called “hearts and minds” campaign), not rebuilding after taking care of the “bad guys”. The third option also isn't what we tried in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It was more the second: get the Russians out, and don't worry about what happens after. There's a pretty direct line from that to the development of al-Qaeda (though the US option-2 intervention in the Middle East in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait also contributed. Notably, the idea that “the third option is what we always try” is completely false.) > Intervention in the Balkans did work in the 90s, but we didn't occupy The US was deeply involved in post-conflict peacekeeping and nation-building in the Balkans. In fact, it was still involved in that well into the time of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Did it though? At the end of the day he’s just another bad guy. Think about all the people there who view the US poorly because of our actions there. Not sure killing one person really makes up for that.

roenxi 8y ago
Ignoring even that, in the end when he was caught/executed, it was in Pakistan by a small team of operatives. So in hindsight, why was there an army in Afghanistan? 15/19 of the terrorists involved were former Saudi nationals, so it isn't like the Afghans were obviously churning out radicals. Whole thing was bizarre.
- arethuza 8y ago
  Even more bizarre when you consider the reports that Pakistan was taking money from the US, giving some of it to the Taliban who then used it to fight the US. Why the US public isn't angry at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is a mystery to me.
  - cryptonector 8y ago
    The U.S. public was and is angry about all that. However, the U.S. government can't really do anything about them. Afghanistan did have bin Laden, so that was a reason to go there: to get him. Staying there for decades, however, was not necessary, and not really justifiable, especially given that the nation-building part of the project hasn't panned out.
cryptonector 8y ago
Why have jail for any crimes then too, right? Criminals won't think well of the justice system if we have jail, so they'll commit more crimes to spite us. Right? Be serious. Deterrence may or may not always work, but it works enough of the time. Even when it doesn't work, the alternative (leaving them alone) almost certainly wouldn't work either. People who do these awful things don't need new grievances -- all the old ones will suffice for them.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> It made sense to go in to fetch Bin Laden, but not to do any nation-building. Yeah, a US policy of destructive interference in Afghanistan without stabilization after the immediate aim is acheived has never had any serious adverse long-term consequences that would militate against that. (Neither, I suppose, in your world, has the same thing in Iraq caused problems with merely completely botched stabilization ignoring everything we've ever learned about that topic instead of no stabilization at all.)

cryptonector 8y ago
The U.S. has no patience for nation-building. Like it or not, that's the truth. That leaves us with three options in cases like 9/11: - do nothing - go in, do what you can to get the bad guys and deter future attachs - go in and attempt nation-building for as long as the public will stand it, then skip town The third option is the one we always try. It also always fails. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Intervention in the Balkans did work in the 90s, but we didn't occupy, so that wasn't a long-term nation-building warfare effort. Somalia we abandoned early on in the 90s -- there was no reason to be there, much less stay, and President Clinton was smart enough to figure that out. The three biggies went badly. Vietnam and Iraq would have gone better with more patience, but I can't blame the American public for not having that much patience. In any case, the limited patience (regarding war) of the American public is a fact.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > That leaves us with three options in cases like 9/11: There are no other cases like 9/11, except maybe Pearl Harbor. The third option worked pretty well there. > The third option is the one we always try. It also always fails. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Vietnam was actually an example of the second option failing. While there was some effort at nation-building, it was as a means to defeating the “bad guys” (the so-called “hearts and minds” campaign), not rebuilding after taking care of the “bad guys”. The third option also isn't what we tried in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It was more the second: get the Russians out, and don't worry about what happens after. There's a pretty direct line from that to the development of al-Qaeda (though the US option-2 intervention in the Middle East in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait also contributed. Notably, the idea that “the third option is what we always try” is completely false.) > Intervention in the Balkans did work in the 90s, but we didn't occupy The US was deeply involved in post-conflict peacekeeping and nation-building in the Balkans. In fact, it was still involved in that well into the time of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.