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It has become uncomfortably clear over the last 5 years how Europe triggered its world wars. But 4 posts ago Animats was drawing our attention to the fact that

by roenxi 2y ago

It has become uncomfortably clear over the last 5 years how Europe triggered its world wars. But 4 posts ago Animats was drawing our attention to the fact that Moscow is being bombed. Are we supposed to give serious consideration to the idea that leaving Moscow un-bombed represents some sort of surrender to Russia? The US has launched invasions of multiple countries with less of a pretext than even the Russians and nobody pretended that bombing Washington was clever. Or even particularly justified.

defrost 2y ago
> and nobody pretended that bombing Washington was clever. Or even particularly justified. Save for Osama Bin Laden who not only "bombed" the Pentagon in Washington he also took out the twin towers in NYC and tried for other targets. Further back the Canadians firebombed multiple targets in Washington, including the Whitehouse, in retaliation for similar US actions in Canadian territory.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Looking back, would you say that Bin Laden's controlled and calculated escalations against the Pentagon, etc, was a move resulting in a reasonable response? He wasn't even an official representative of Aghanistan and the US still went full-on crazy and got ~150-200,000 people killed. And it isn't even obvious how linked the war was to Bin Laden or Al Qaeda, when he was eventually killed it wasn't in Afghanistan and it didn't take an invasion of Pakistan to achieve. The Taliban controlling Afghanistan obviously wasn't a problem because they still do. In hindsight the whole thing looks like a futile dick waving exercise to keep the military industrial complex profitable. Provoking the Russians in a similar way is not clever.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    The USA screwed up in funding the mujahideen in Afghanistan, which included Bin Laden, against the Russian invasion, which in turn led to 9/11, which in turn led to a USA invasion of Afghanistan instead.
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      Some rather tenuous assertions of cause-and-effect we have here. OBL was a self-propelled force. There's no indication that the US supported him, or even knew about him until 1996. To suggest that the US operation in Afghanistan up through 1989 (make of it what you will) "led to 9/11" seems quite specious indeed. The guy listed many grievances in his justification for the 9/11 attacks, but (AFAIK) the prior US support for the Muj (i.e. the very people he was fighting with), or any aspect of it doesn't seem to have been one of them. Rather, it was all that stuff about the Holy Sites, US presence in the gulf (on behalf of regimes he didn't like), and last but not least the fact of Clinton going after him directly (and trying to kill him in fact) which seem to have lit his flame. (And then the idea of 9/11 "leading to" the Afghanistan invasion is a wholy different, and even more convoluted thread -- but which also seems to have been sufficiently addressed by others already).
  - wredcoll 2y ago
    The problem with this argument is that russia literally has no non-nuclear ways to escalate. America did and used them. All you can say is "well this time it's over the line and they'll start using nukes" but that argument applies just as well to literally every action.
  - cherrycherry98 2y ago
    I think to say that "Taliban controlling Afghanistan obviously wasn't a problem because they still do" is inaccurate. The problem the US had with the Taliban is that being an Islamic fundamentalist political entity, they provided safe harbor for al-Qaeda. They refused to cooperate with the request to extradite Bin Laden. The west had every intention of eliminating the Taliban for good and failed to achieve this goal. The prevailing wisdom at the time was to remove the Taliban from power and to establish a deradicalized, democratic Afghanistan that would hopefully cooperate with the west in fighting terrorism as well as removing the conditions that would cause jihadist movements to flourish. The template for this being the destruction of Axis powers during WWII and their subsequent rebirth as deradicized, prosperous, militarily benign nations. It took a decade long man hunt to locate Bin Laden which was unanticipated. When he was found in Pakistan he was in hiding, not being intentionally harbored by the government as in Afghanistan. In hindsight it was probably unrealistic to expect a rebuilt stable Afghanistan free of the Taliban. Perhaps a larger "surge" level of troops for a longer period of time and greater focus on Afghanistan rather than invading Iraq would have achieved a different outcome. Let's not forget that the US was not being entirely rational at the time. The government and the public wanted revenge in a big way.
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      When he was found in Pakistan he was in hiding, not being intentionally harbored by the government as in Afghanistan. By all indications, he was being effectively harbored by the Pakistani ISI. (There's also Hersh's theory that it was a "walk-in" from Pakistani military intelligence who actually tipped them off to, or at least provided strong corroboration as to the existence of Bin Laden's compound -- rather than the CIA sleuthing this out on its own from tracking various couriers. I never got caught up on how that particular theory panned out, as I've never been too obsessed with Bin Laden or the circumstances surrounding his extrajudicial execution anyway). Let's not forget that the US was not being entirely rational at the time. The government and the public wanted revenge in a big way. Indeed. My sense is that it wasn't so much a desire for revenge (thought there was certainly a large element of that). But rather fear, and a desire to send a "message". And so bombing the shit out of some dirt-poor country (whose population had generally no awareness of, let alone complicity in any of this) seemed to be the perfect way to do that.
  - defrost 2y ago
    At the time (from Australia, having already travelled a good deal mapping and working in global geophysical exploration) my opinion was that OBL executed a carefully thought out and well executed plan with the specific intent of eliciting an over the top batshit crazy response from the USofA. In this he succeeded without a doubt. (NB. I'm absolutely not endorsing his actions). He delibrately provoked the US and he was extremely clever about it. > He wasn't even an official representative of Aghanistan ... Pakistan .. All immaterial from an OG Al Qaeda PoV - they were intent on starting a mass war between the Arab world and the West based on a dislike of the Saudi Royal Family, their corruption of "true" Arab values (for some intepretation of "true arab values"), the US support of the Saudi's, the US actions in Islamic countries and their support and or acceptance of atrocities committed against Muslims. Very early on there was a teetering point when the US could have capitalised on a global wave of sympathy that included much of the Islamic world. Then was the time to form a small group with international partners to target and capture the small Al Qaeda and leverage support from Muslims outraged at OBL's actions. That opportunity was squandered badly with the Bush versioned War on Terror and sideshow invasion of Iraq, the search for non existent WMD's and the Coalition of the Reluctant Few. The US went down an avoidable 20 year rabbit hole and squandered reputation and relations.
- cafard 2y ago
  Firebombed? With Avro Lancasters? The British Army burned the White House and a few other buildings in Washington, in retaliation, as they said, for the burning of buildings in York (Toronto).
  - defrost 2y ago
    That seems a tad alternative history. Regular old throwable fire bombs | lanterns | incendiary devices | oil filled clay pots with a wick, etc. work just fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons

by roenxi 2y ago

defrost 2y ago

> and nobody pretended that bombing Washington was clever. Or even particularly justified. Save for Osama Bin Laden who not only "bombed" the Pentagon in Washington he also took out the twin towers in NYC and tried for other targets. Further back the Canadians firebombed multiple targets in Washington, including the Whitehouse, in retaliation for similar US actions in Canadian territory.

roenxi 2y ago
Looking back, would you say that Bin Laden's controlled and calculated escalations against the Pentagon, etc, was a move resulting in a reasonable response? He wasn't even an official representative of Aghanistan and the US still went full-on crazy and got ~150-200,000 people killed. And it isn't even obvious how linked the war was to Bin Laden or Al Qaeda, when he was eventually killed it wasn't in Afghanistan and it didn't take an invasion of Pakistan to achieve. The Taliban controlling Afghanistan obviously wasn't a problem because they still do. In hindsight the whole thing looks like a futile dick waving exercise to keep the military industrial complex profitable. Provoking the Russians in a similar way is not clever.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  The USA screwed up in funding the mujahideen in Afghanistan, which included Bin Laden, against the Russian invasion, which in turn led to 9/11, which in turn led to a USA invasion of Afghanistan instead.
  - aguaviva 2y ago
    Some rather tenuous assertions of cause-and-effect we have here. OBL was a self-propelled force. There's no indication that the US supported him, or even knew about him until 1996. To suggest that the US operation in Afghanistan up through 1989 (make of it what you will) "led to 9/11" seems quite specious indeed. The guy listed many grievances in his justification for the 9/11 attacks, but (AFAIK) the prior US support for the Muj (i.e. the very people he was fighting with), or any aspect of it doesn't seem to have been one of them. Rather, it was all that stuff about the Holy Sites, US presence in the gulf (on behalf of regimes he didn't like), and last but not least the fact of Clinton going after him directly (and trying to kill him in fact) which seem to have lit his flame. (And then the idea of 9/11 "leading to" the Afghanistan invasion is a wholy different, and even more convoluted thread -- but which also seems to have been sufficiently addressed by others already).
- wredcoll 2y ago
  The problem with this argument is that russia literally has no non-nuclear ways to escalate. America did and used them. All you can say is "well this time it's over the line and they'll start using nukes" but that argument applies just as well to literally every action.
- cherrycherry98 2y ago
  I think to say that "Taliban controlling Afghanistan obviously wasn't a problem because they still do" is inaccurate. The problem the US had with the Taliban is that being an Islamic fundamentalist political entity, they provided safe harbor for al-Qaeda. They refused to cooperate with the request to extradite Bin Laden. The west had every intention of eliminating the Taliban for good and failed to achieve this goal. The prevailing wisdom at the time was to remove the Taliban from power and to establish a deradicalized, democratic Afghanistan that would hopefully cooperate with the west in fighting terrorism as well as removing the conditions that would cause jihadist movements to flourish. The template for this being the destruction of Axis powers during WWII and their subsequent rebirth as deradicized, prosperous, militarily benign nations. It took a decade long man hunt to locate Bin Laden which was unanticipated. When he was found in Pakistan he was in hiding, not being intentionally harbored by the government as in Afghanistan. In hindsight it was probably unrealistic to expect a rebuilt stable Afghanistan free of the Taliban. Perhaps a larger "surge" level of troops for a longer period of time and greater focus on Afghanistan rather than invading Iraq would have achieved a different outcome. Let's not forget that the US was not being entirely rational at the time. The government and the public wanted revenge in a big way.
  - aguaviva 2y ago
    When he was found in Pakistan he was in hiding, not being intentionally harbored by the government as in Afghanistan. By all indications, he was being effectively harbored by the Pakistani ISI. (There's also Hersh's theory that it was a "walk-in" from Pakistani military intelligence who actually tipped them off to, or at least provided strong corroboration as to the existence of Bin Laden's compound -- rather than the CIA sleuthing this out on its own from tracking various couriers. I never got caught up on how that particular theory panned out, as I've never been too obsessed with Bin Laden or the circumstances surrounding his extrajudicial execution anyway). Let's not forget that the US was not being entirely rational at the time. The government and the public wanted revenge in a big way. Indeed. My sense is that it wasn't so much a desire for revenge (thought there was certainly a large element of that). But rather fear, and a desire to send a "message". And so bombing the shit out of some dirt-poor country (whose population had generally no awareness of, let alone complicity in any of this) seemed to be the perfect way to do that.
- defrost 2y ago
  At the time (from Australia, having already travelled a good deal mapping and working in global geophysical exploration) my opinion was that OBL executed a carefully thought out and well executed plan with the specific intent of eliciting an over the top batshit crazy response from the USofA. In this he succeeded without a doubt. (NB. I'm absolutely not endorsing his actions). He delibrately provoked the US and he was extremely clever about it. > He wasn't even an official representative of Aghanistan ... Pakistan .. All immaterial from an OG Al Qaeda PoV - they were intent on starting a mass war between the Arab world and the West based on a dislike of the Saudi Royal Family, their corruption of "true" Arab values (for some intepretation of "true arab values"), the US support of the Saudi's, the US actions in Islamic countries and their support and or acceptance of atrocities committed against Muslims. Very early on there was a teetering point when the US could have capitalised on a global wave of sympathy that included much of the Islamic world. Then was the time to form a small group with international partners to target and capture the small Al Qaeda and leverage support from Muslims outraged at OBL's actions. That opportunity was squandered badly with the Bush versioned War on Terror and sideshow invasion of Iraq, the search for non existent WMD's and the Coalition of the Reluctant Few. The US went down an avoidable 20 year rabbit hole and squandered reputation and relations.
cafard 2y ago
Firebombed? With Avro Lancasters? The British Army burned the White House and a few other buildings in Washington, in retaliation, as they said, for the burning of buildings in York (Toronto).
- defrost 2y ago
  That seems a tad alternative history. Regular old throwable fire bombs | lanterns | incendiary devices | oil filled clay pots with a wick, etc. work just fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons