This is the problem with zealots like Olentzero. He is fixated on one idea, and to him, every single thing that promotes his viewpoint is acceptable and heroic. This thread should not be a debate on American foreign policy. It’s pretty obvious that there is disagreement.
The question here is if Olentzero actually understands the implications of his argument. Accepting arguendo that American foreign policy is bad, then, according to Olentzero, anything that thwarts or changes this policy is a good thing. Where do you draw the line?
Is it OK to protest outside of military bases? (yes) Is it OK to start a newsletter and issue press releases and lobby congress for change? (yes) Would it be OK to break into a military base and spray paint peace signs? (no) How about burning down buildings? (no)
What if the election had gone the other way, and you were in charge of ballot counting in the tiebreaker district? Would it be acceptable for you to nudge the count to end the war? What if you were a police chief and you arrested army officers on bogus charges, delaying their deployment, in order to hurt American operations? What if you were a general in the military, and you believed the war was wrong and disobeyed orders by refusing to send ammunition or order air strikes and our troops were killed as a direct result?
If you are an agent of the state, you have two choices: do what you are told by your superiors (including the American people), or resign. No other choice is ethical. In the military there are even stricter rules, because of the necessity of keeping the military apolitical. I’m fine with a person getting discharged for refusing to deploy. But I don’t think it’s heroic, no matter what your motivation. And Olentzero’s policy of wanting everyone in the military to stand up and refuse orders to deploy, carried out to the degree he wants it to be taken, blurs the line between being a objector and threatening a coup.
I think it is unethical to bypass the political system, no matter how just your reasons are. It is the justification for terrorism and despotism and genocide. Sure, Olentzero has good intentions. But “for your own good” has historically been the excuse of tyrants and murderers. It’s not justifiable for a state agent to buck the political process, regardless of your arguments against the war in general.
Agreed on Iran, so moving on to the topic at hand.
Your rationale is fundamentally flawed. The Mujahedin in Afghanistan did not hate us because of the proxy war with the USSR, far from it, they sent people to the US to BEG us to send military aid. They wanted to get rid of the Soviets very badly and were happy to have us act as proxy. Their hate for us is not because we armed them to fight a war they would’ve fought anyway. It is entirely due to fundamentalist strains of Islam, and as you have mentioned because of our actions elsewhere.
OBL planned 9/11. OBL was being sheltered by the Taliban. The Taliban refused to hand him over to the US. These facts are not in serious dispute. That’s enough for a casus belli in my book.
Well, shit. You do that every time you pay at the pump.
Weren’t we just told that Khalid S. Mohammed planned 9/11?
You know this? Nobody else seemed so sure, but you know this. I don’t know this, so would you be so kind as to provide the facts that make this a subject “not in serious dispute.”?
:smack: Even if you don’t accept the findings of the 9/11 Commission, how about the fact that OBL himself accepts responsibility?
For the third time - NO, I DON’T KNOW WITH METAPHYSICAL CERTAINTY THAT THE TALIBAN SHELTERED OBL AFTER 9/11. However, I can reasonably deduce as much, given that the Taliban belatedly offered to turn him over to the US (see the article that Olentzero referenced a half dozen posts back). How the hell can you offer to turn him over if he’s not already under your protection?
In all seriousness, we don’t actually know if that’s him, and if it is, we don’t know whether he was somehow coerced into making those recordings. Due process, and all that.
Natch, I believe it was him and that he wasn’t coerced, just FTR.
I think there is some confusion here as to the mastermind behind the battle-plan Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, and the leader of the organization who provided the infrastructure and human resources to carry it out, Osama bin Laden. Think of ObL as the President and KSM as a General.
Fair enough, but at a certain point, most of us go with the most likely sequence of events. If you continue to follow elucidiator’s line of argument, you’ll eventually wind up in tinfoil-hat land. Like Stefan Cook…
Why, because I find some of your assumptions a bit shaky?
For instance: the Taliban refused to hand over ObL. Where was ObL, then? Your assertion implies that you know something nobody knows. Further, not only do you know where he was, but you know that he was in territory controlled by the Taliban. Oh? And if they weren’t in control of that territory, then of what significance is their refusal to do something they couldn’t do if they wanted? So, maybe they said something like “fuck you, America”. We go to war over stuff like that?
I’m missing the value, here. Suppose we kill ObL. So what? Will the threat of Islamic terrorism go poof! gone? Do we mount his head on a pike outside the Defense Dept.? And outside of visceral revenge, what do we get for it?
How much, in blood and treasure, are we willing to spend for this? And where’s the value?
First off, you’ll notice I said “most Afghanis”, not “the mujahediin”. Not all Afghanis are mujahediin, nor are all mujahediin Afghanis. It is a complete misrepresentation of my argument to interpret it that way.
Again, while this may be quite true for the mujahediin themselves, the same cannot be said to hold true for everyone currently under US military occupation.
Well then it is upon you to demonstrate that regular Afghanis hate us. To be honest it only really matters if the Muj hate us, as they are the fighters.
But you’re shifting the goalposts, one minute they are upset at us for opposing the Soviet occupation, the next you talk about the current occupation. Yes, they are probably pissed off at the current occupation, and that’s sad for them, but that’s the benefit of being the power player, you don’t have to sit and stew in resentment when someone attacks you, you can do something about it, and we did. It’s unfortunate that they can’t. If they could then maybe these things wouldn’t keep happening in their country, maybe their country wouldn’t be a staging ground for predatory Mujahedin, but that’s the way it is. Osama bin Laden hid behind the Taliban and the Taliban are nasty and oppressive to regular Afghanis. What are you going to do? What is there to do?
I’m sorry we didn’t gut Al Qaeda under Bush, we could withdraw from Afghanistan perhaps.
The bottom line though is that we shouldn’t just sit by and let our people be killed by a bunch of religious fanatics living in caves in the Hindu Kush.
You ever heard of a country’s populace thinking military occupation by a foreign army is a swell idea?
That’s the attitude that makes more mujahediin out of the general populace.
What, they can’t be upset about both? Either one is a case of another country coming in and trying to push things in the direction they want, with no real concern for what the folks who live there actually want.
Attacks which resulted from previous dealings in which the US worked to assert its domination over the region at the expense of the local population.
I suspect the folks in Kandahar feel the same way about the bunch of military fanatics living in Washington.
That’s beside the point. What I’m asking is, would it be okay if the soldiers there honestly felt that way? Would they be heroes then? And what if, for whatever reason it had come to pass, they were absolutely right about what would happen?
My point is, the military do not make policy. They execute the policy formulated by the people’s elected representatives. They have as much say in that process as anyone else, but no more.
No, because you are trying to throw serious doubts on a generally accepted sequence of events without offering a more likely, or even plausible, alternative.
As I stated earlier: OBL planned 9/11. OBL was being sheltered by the Taliban. The Taliban refused to hand him over to the US. This is generally accepted to be accurate, as even a cursory glance of Wikipedia under “Osama bin Laden”, “Taliban”, and “September 11 attacks” will reveal (yes, I know it’s only Wiki, but these articles are all semi-protected and closely scrutinized for possible vandalism).
Do you have alternate, credible evidence to present that would cast reasonable doubt on the accepted story? What is your alternative explanation?
You are conflating two separate issues: “what happened?” and “what should we do about it?” Reasonable people can disagree about the second issue, but not the first.
Evidently. Again, this was hardly an unforeseeable consequence.
So what should we have done about OBL, in your estimation?
There’s some parts missing. Like the part where you show me that we knew where ObL was, and that we knew he was under Taliban control. You seem to be offering opinion as evidence, because something is “generally accepted” then it must be true. It would be pretty to think so, perhaps, but that doesn’t make it so.
How many times can you say “OBL was being sheltered by the Taliban” without offering anything to substantiate it beyond that it is “generally accepted” as fact? Great Bleeding Og, how many times in just the past eight years has it been shown that what is “generally accepted” ain’t necessarily so?