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Jess you can disagree, but at the time of this writing this is what one of the introductory paragraphs of the war's Wikipedia states: > Following the September

Jess you can disagree, but at the time of this writing this is what one of the introductory paragraphs of the war's Wikipedia states: > Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, then-US President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban, then-de facto ruling Afghanistan, extradite Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks and who was, until then, freely operating within the country. The Taliban's refusal to do so led to the invasion of the country; the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies were mostly defeated and expelled from major population centers by US-led forces and the Northern Alliance.

jessaustin 5y ago
Taliban and aQ were "allies" in the sense that they both fought against Northern Alliance. aQ were (are?) foreigners to Afghanistan, only welcomed by locals they regularly paid, which included some Taliban. Taliban, who themselves were not a monolith, were happy to receive weapons and training from aQ, but it wasn't out of love. It made political sense for American war media to blur the lines between them, but by now we know never to trust what we're told in the first few weeks of a new war. Did someone in Bush's administration ask some Taliban poobah for ObL, at some time before the invasion? Probably! That would have been like asking for a unicorn pony. They didn't have him in custody, and they weren't going to be arsed to engage in whatever deadly combat would have been required to get him in custody. Unlike today, at that time Taliban weren't really a national ruling entity. They ran the courts and the tollways in some of the populated parts of Afghanistan. ObL was holed up in the hills somewhere. USA military didn't have a great deal of luck digging him out either, once they gave it a try. The proportional action would have been to occupy only those parts of Afghanistan in which one could reasonably imagine ObL had hidden, and hire both Taliban and Northern Alliance to provide security on the condition they not fight each other while USA troops were around. It's not as though Taliban had created aQ, our supposed ally Saudi Arabia did that. Taliban, just like everyone else in Afghanistan, would have been perfectly happy for aQ not to have escaped Sudan. Somehow the goof troop that got us fighting a war in Iraq also screwed up the operation in Afghanistan. At this point that can't be a surprise to anyone. But you're talking about mistakes made leading up to and in the first several weeks of the occupation. The point of this thread is the following two decades of pointless brutality.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  Al-Qaeda are foreigners, yes, but that was because of their very founding as a force of volunteers to help the Afghans during their war with the Soviets. They were trained by the Americans as part of the cold war, but their real friends were the Taliban and everybody knew it. You can say "they weren't going to be arsed to[...]" but the reality is that they were close friends. If they weren't, the Taliban could have easily retained power by inviting the Americans in to aid their capture. As for why Nato stayed so long in Afghanistan, it is difficult to imagine now, but 20 years ago we had just won a giant string of wars and in most of them democracy was installed and life got better for everyone. We tried to make it work in Afghanistan too, but it didn't work for a multitude of reasons. Anyway, with respect, I was talking about Article 5 and the defensive alliance that is Nato. Countries within Nato can choose to go to war outside of A5, but they are only compelled to help under it.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Sure, USA created these groups in order to undermine Afghanistan's existing government that was sympathetic to Moscow. Astute observers note the similarity to USA creation of e.g. "Right Sector" in Ukraine. Taliban did offer to turn over ObL, and this was known by the public at the time. [0] This may not have been such a realistic offer, given the hiding-in-caves-with-lots-of-guns aspect mentioned above, but they tried to do exactly what you advise and it didn't work. Maybe they learned a lesson about how USA policy is entirely controlled by the military-industrial complex through the sockpuppet war media? Let's ignore mistakes made over twenty years ago. We could have withdrawn at any time over that twenty years, so I'm more complaining about the mistake made every minute since then. The point of the thread is that NATO is not "defensive". You offered as a counterexample, NATO's war in Afghanistan. If that's all you've got, we can conclude that NATO is indeed not defensive in nature. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
    - 3pt14159 5y ago
      Last comment because, well, I've learned to limit how much I go back and forth on these types of things. First, even the article you liked didn't offer to turn over Bin Laden. It offered a discussion, asked for proof, etc. This isn't how international relations with a super power that's just had it's financial sector gutted in a once-in-a-decade event go. There is this retreat to minutiae that often happens in political debates. Sometimes it helps, but it usually does. 1. USA was attacked (for the second time) by a religious extremist. 2. They invoked Article 5, the only time in the history of the alliance that countries involved had a pre-commitment to jointly aid in defence. This isn't to say that individual Nato countries can't join together in other military exercises, like, say the invasion of Iraq. But that isn't Nato. That's UK + USA, it doesn't include Canada. 3. Every major ally of the USA responded by deploying troops to Afganistan. Even France. You can talk about the "industrial complex through the sockpuppet war media" and yes we have to be careful about how much we trust reporters because black propaganda is sadly a real thing, but the constant denial of ground realities and suspicion of Nato is clearly false on the merits. People are not lining up to immigrate to Russia or China or Afghanistan. Everyday people know that you have to try pretty hard to piss off Canada and if Canada is part of Nato maybe it isn't because of a giant world sized conspiracy theory. Maybe, just maybe it's because (mostly) peaceful democracies naturally want collective defence.

jessaustin 5y ago

Taliban and aQ were "allies" in the sense that they both fought against Northern Alliance. aQ were (are?) foreigners to Afghanistan, only welcomed by locals they regularly paid, which included some Taliban. Taliban, who themselves were not a monolith, were happy to receive weapons and training from aQ, but it wasn't out of love. It made political sense for American war media to blur the lines between them, but by now we know never to trust what we're told in the first few weeks of a new war. Did someone in Bush's administration ask some Taliban poobah for ObL, at some time before the invasion? Probably! That would have been like asking for a unicorn pony. They didn't have him in custody, and they weren't going to be arsed to engage in whatever deadly combat would have been required to get him in custody. Unlike today, at that time Taliban weren't really a national ruling entity. They ran the courts and the tollways in some of the populated parts of Afghanistan. ObL was holed up in the hills somewhere. USA military didn't have a great deal of luck digging him out either, once they gave it a try. The proportional action would have been to occupy only those parts of Afghanistan in which one could reasonably imagine ObL had hidden, and hire both Taliban and Northern Alliance to provide security on the condition they not fight each other while USA troops were around. It's not as though Taliban had created aQ, our supposed ally Saudi Arabia did that. Taliban, just like everyone else in Afghanistan, would have been perfectly happy for aQ not to have escaped Sudan. Somehow the goof troop that got us fighting a war in Iraq also screwed up the operation in Afghanistan. At this point that can't be a surprise to anyone. But you're talking about mistakes made leading up to and in the first several weeks of the occupation. The point of this thread is the following two decades of pointless brutality.

3pt14159 5y ago
Al-Qaeda are foreigners, yes, but that was because of their very founding as a force of volunteers to help the Afghans during their war with the Soviets. They were trained by the Americans as part of the cold war, but their real friends were the Taliban and everybody knew it. You can say "they weren't going to be arsed to[...]" but the reality is that they were close friends. If they weren't, the Taliban could have easily retained power by inviting the Americans in to aid their capture. As for why Nato stayed so long in Afghanistan, it is difficult to imagine now, but 20 years ago we had just won a giant string of wars and in most of them democracy was installed and life got better for everyone. We tried to make it work in Afghanistan too, but it didn't work for a multitude of reasons. Anyway, with respect, I was talking about Article 5 and the defensive alliance that is Nato. Countries within Nato can choose to go to war outside of A5, but they are only compelled to help under it.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Sure, USA created these groups in order to undermine Afghanistan's existing government that was sympathetic to Moscow. Astute observers note the similarity to USA creation of e.g. "Right Sector" in Ukraine. Taliban did offer to turn over ObL, and this was known by the public at the time. [0] This may not have been such a realistic offer, given the hiding-in-caves-with-lots-of-guns aspect mentioned above, but they tried to do exactly what you advise and it didn't work. Maybe they learned a lesson about how USA policy is entirely controlled by the military-industrial complex through the sockpuppet war media? Let's ignore mistakes made over twenty years ago. We could have withdrawn at any time over that twenty years, so I'm more complaining about the mistake made every minute since then. The point of the thread is that NATO is not "defensive". You offered as a counterexample, NATO's war in Afghanistan. If that's all you've got, we can conclude that NATO is indeed not defensive in nature. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
  - 3pt14159 5y ago
    Last comment because, well, I've learned to limit how much I go back and forth on these types of things. First, even the article you liked didn't offer to turn over Bin Laden. It offered a discussion, asked for proof, etc. This isn't how international relations with a super power that's just had it's financial sector gutted in a once-in-a-decade event go. There is this retreat to minutiae that often happens in political debates. Sometimes it helps, but it usually does. 1. USA was attacked (for the second time) by a religious extremist. 2. They invoked Article 5, the only time in the history of the alliance that countries involved had a pre-commitment to jointly aid in defence. This isn't to say that individual Nato countries can't join together in other military exercises, like, say the invasion of Iraq. But that isn't Nato. That's UK + USA, it doesn't include Canada. 3. Every major ally of the USA responded by deploying troops to Afganistan. Even France. You can talk about the "industrial complex through the sockpuppet war media" and yes we have to be careful about how much we trust reporters because black propaganda is sadly a real thing, but the constant denial of ground realities and suspicion of Nato is clearly false on the merits. People are not lining up to immigrate to Russia or China or Afghanistan. Everyday people know that you have to try pretty hard to piss off Canada and if Canada is part of Nato maybe it isn't because of a giant world sized conspiracy theory. Maybe, just maybe it's because (mostly) peaceful democracies naturally want collective defence.