"Protecting our freedom overseas"

You dont understand, we bombed them for THEIR benefit!

I'm sure you're aware of this, breadloaf, but just so we're clear: the Nazis and the Soviets were allies right up until 22 June 1941. The Soviets attacked Poland sixteen days after the Germans did and under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact carved out their own spheres of influence. Stalin did not want to attack until he was sure that Hitler would stop within the agreed limits, so the question of the Soviets attacking before the Germans do is moot.

^^^ You do realize the Taliban were allied with and protecting Al Qaeda do you? Crimeny I swear people anymore don't know their recent history or even remember 2001 if they lived through the year.

edited 20th May '11 2:01:26 PM by MajorTom

To be fair, as Tom said, the Taliban were the closest thing Afghanistan ever had to a ruling authority or government in Afghanistan, and they were using their resources to aid and shelter Al Qaeda.

Considering the average age of Tropers here, not surprising to me. I was expecting to get recalled back to active duty, after being out for 18 months at the time.

Nutshell: Afghanistan was justified. Iraq was not.

Did anyone ever mention anything about nation building once we cleaned out the terrorists from Afghanistan? Once the leader of Iraq was hung and we recovered those "weapons of mass destruction"?

I swear, people forget all the time that when you occupy another country, you are going to be there long after "victory day", or "mission accomplished" day or whatever they're calling it now fixing the mess up yourself.

edited 20th May '11 2:16:08 PM by victorinox243

Yeah, and that's the hard part. We're great at breaking stuff, but it's a lot harder to build it back up.

^

That's one of the funny things about it, I'd rather stay and rebuild, but there's so many people thinking we can just pull everything out in a matter of 30 days or some shit.

To be honest though, the Taliban leadership would shit a brick if we actually did that.. Just had all units ass out of the country fast as possible. They'd assume we were going to just glass the whole place.

edited 20th May '11 2:25:40 PM by Barkey

Tempting...

^ Also the reason why you got Al Qaeda in the first place.

Justification for Afghanistan is weak no matter how you throw it. We're not any safer today because of a massed invasion compared to sending in strike teams to take down Al Qaeda and just Al Qaeda. We put a bunch of druglords and rapists into power, and Karzai's brother is well known for being the biggest drug lord in town. I'm sure this will turn out awesome in 20 years.

Nation building is basically impossible. Foreign interests very rarely line up with domestic ones. We go in, grab their oil, their gold, their diamonds, take out Al Qaeda, ensure a stable majority government there (in this case the Karzai regime), spew enough propaganda about human rights and other bullshit, while a third of civilians there are killed directly by NATO forces. Good intentions mean absolutely nothing to anybody in Afghanistan. All they see is bloodshed and war.

It's an incredibly myopic view to believe that battle tactics are all that matters in war. Diplomacy is everything, it's what comes before a war, during a war and after a war.

And Germany attacking Poland first is a huge deal. The point is not moot. The reason why Poland didn't ally with the Nazis is because Germany invaded them. That is the whole freaking point. Notice the Polish forces allied with the Soviets until they realised the Soviets were invading them as well? Poland just got totally screwed.

Third of the civilians there directly killed by NATO...

Do you have a source?

^^ So then what should we have done? Not taking terrorism seriously got us 9/11. Yet at the same time, taking it seriously and making it a military affair instead of a police affair nets us whiners like you. Apparently we can't win either way if you are anything to go by. Treat it as a police affair = big attacks. Treat it as a military affair = we get protestors out the wazoo.

So what should we have done? Nothing is not an answer.

From my side of the fence, battle tactics matter quite a lot.

From your side of the fence, they don't matter at all.

Some of us here have reasons for different perspectives, you know. I'm not a believer in the concept of nation building myself, but in terms of the way the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have been handled, there are ways that things could be done worse, and plenty of ways we could have done better.

It's a shame that the US stopped caring about al-Qaida after Clinton's presidency. Did you know that Clinton tried to get the CIA to assassinate bin Laden, but he backed off when Republican said he was wasting CIA's resources and time?

Then you got Bush, who didn't seem to read reports about terrorism and intelligence regarding it, and cut the FBI's (and the Department of Jusctice's) anti-terrorism funding.

So 9/11 wasn't a result of treating it as a police matter - it was a result of doing much less than the US has usually done.

^ The FBI was ridiculously ineffective either way. They didn't stop a single terrorist attack of the 1990s even if they knew about it.

Or maybe they just didn't broadcast their achievements back then.

"Taking terrorism seriously" in the 1980's, by attacking civillian targets in revenge of events loosely connected to attacks just caused more terrorism. And this should be evident if you ever read the motives the hijackers gave to the attacks.

Of course, taking revenge by flying a passanger plane into a skyscraper, killing thousands is a deplorable act, but just out of curiosity, why is bombing slums and refugee camps in revenge any less deplorable?

Not quite what I meant, I'll rephrase.

I'm not going to vote to have soldiers sent into another country without damn good reason. It's not my ass on the line because I'm not in the military nor is there conscription. So if I told you to go into Afghanistan in my place I need to justify it.

The battle tactics matter to you on the field but diplomacy is "everything" in that, if I do that right, I won't have to deploy any soldiers whatsoever. Winning wars without a single death is the pinnacle of accomplishments.

@ Tom

Fact of the matter is that 9/11 didn't come around because a couple guys in a cave hated American freedoms and way of life. Long time American policies over the decades in the Mid-east, primarily due to the Cold War, had built a large network of organisations all of whom despise the actions of American CIA, diplomats and successive governments. Only recently did they become powerful enough to turn to international terrorism and that resulted in 9/11. Much of the American populace has nothing directly to do with their grievances, after all, it's not like anybody in the USA voted to bulldoze ancient mosques in Saudi Arabia. So the population can't connect the two events. "Nothing" happened from the 70s to 80s and then suddenly 9/11 happens in 2001.

Because of what the west did in Afghanistan and Iraq today, what happens twenty years from now? Is anybody going to remember? Probably not but the consequences will be there.

I don't know much about Afghanistan, but I don't think the attack there was unjustified. At least that one wasn't a spit in the face of the U.N.

War is a continuation of diplomacy by other means.

Killing civillians in revenge of the actions fo a terrorist group operating in the country? Seems legit.

So, how soon can Cuba and Nicaragua start bombing the US?

As soon as they can buy planes..though we'll kill them before they get anywhere..but that's a different story.

So, might makes right? I mean, that pretty much is the US and Israeli policy, and that's not that big of a surprise, but politicians at least pretend that the same rules apply to everyone.

Might is an option, just like any other tool; it's up to the user to decide if it works for the situation.

So tell me, when did we start killing civilians in retaliation for terrorist attacks?

edited 23rd May '11 2:08:00 PM by Kino

In all fairness, whereas al-queda deliberately attacked civilians, the death of civilians in the middle east was due to cross fire.

Doesn't make things better, but just saying.