[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
With the Taliban, this is not like WWII and Japan, where you bomb the country and they retreat and promise to be good- they regroup in another country. Afghanistan was just an easy place to set up shop. Bombing the shit out of Afghanistan did nothing but ruin the lives of Afghanis who had nothing to do with the violence. It did not stop anything.
[/QUOTE]
Afghanistan wasn’t just an “easy place to set up shop” for the Taliban…the Taliban are Afghani nationals who had, and want to have again, a theocratic Afghan state. So invading, and bombing, did get them out of power and changed Afghanistan’s government.
Now, with al-Qaeda, you’re right, Afghanistan was an easy place to set up shop, but that was because the Taliban government of Afghanistan was sympathetic to al-Qaeda and it’s goals. You’re right that with the fall of the Taliban, al-Qaeda is going to, and has, set up shop elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean that the fall of the Taliban didn’t hurt them. It took away an ally for them, and took away a safe place where they could train and organize. The more of those places you take away from al-Qaeda, the weaker it gets, and the harder it is for them to accomplish their goals.
Unfortunately, yes, people’s lives were ruined by the bombing, and innocent people were killed and suffered losses. This is obviously a bad thing, and everyone would agree it’s a bad thing. But unfortunately, it was a neccesary thing to overthrow the Taliban.
And I think it does make a difference that Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire rather than by the enemy, and it matters more that it was covered up. Obviously, he’s dead either way, but being killed by the enemy is out of US control. There isn’t much we can directly do to prevent it. However, a friendly fire death is almost always preventable. It’s not supposed to happen, and when it does happen, it demonstrates a failure, either in training, in discipline, or in planning. As such, friendly fire deaths need to be investigated to determine what went wrong and how to correct the situation so that they’ll be avoided in the future.
That it was covered up is also a big deal. One of the fundamental principles of the US millitary is that of civilian control. The millitary is under the control of the American people, through elected officials. Therefore, it’s important for the American government to have accurate information about millitary (and indeed, other government) actions. While some information needs to be restricted for matters of safety or national security, there isn’t any justification for the military…for the government, to lie about events in order to avoid embarrassment or admitting mistakes. Admitting mistakes is neccesary so that they can be corrected and avoided.
