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> Afganistan invasion happened when everyone was so enraged by 9/11 they weren't thinking straight "Everyone" being 'the USA'. British involvement was so unpo

• ben_w 3y ago
  > "Everyone" being 'the USA'. Indeed. To be clear, I'm a UK citizen, I lived through those protests, and to me all the events of 9/11 bore the same sense of unreality as a blockbuster film — I didn't even know about the specific existence of the Twin Towers until seeing pictures of them on fire, and my first trip to the USA wouldn't happen until the end of 2014. However: in this context, the USA's opinion was sufficient even in isolation, as they are both a nuclear power and were the main force involved in the invasion — if the American government wanted to use nukes, they'd have used nukes, with or without the rest of us. And I don't think the threat of possible Afghan nukes would have slowed them down, rather I think it would have turned the tragic failure to nation build after the invasion, into a real life (though probably geographically limited) equivalent to Fallout. Fortunately they kept that option off the battlefield, opting for non-nuclear alternatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB
• rospaya 3y ago
  Those protests were mainly against the Iraq war, I remember, I was there. There's a big difference between the two wars.