I think you have the facts a little wrong here. This telling totally ignores the history of the Hamburg Cell and the 9/11 planning that happened in the Philippines. Your statement here applies to Florida, arguably, but not to the rest.
Did they? And how hard was it? What was the Hamburg Cell not able to do in Germany that it could do in Afghanistan other than meet personally with OBL? Was that critical? Why could it not have happened in any of the dozen or so other places in the world without strong governments?
I think you’re assuming a lot of facts that aren’t apparent here.
What assets, intelligence, and information did they get from the Taliban that helped them? And that they could not have gotten from, say, Yemen (or told to them while they were in Yemen)? Is this just speculative or do we know they actually got something useful?
I’m skeptical of this narrative too. If you compare the history of Al Qaeda attacks from the decade before 9/11 to the decade after 9/11, I’m not sure they are that different. I think any difference rests in declaring that, say, the Madrid train bombing weren’t really Al Qaeda. And if that’s what the argument rests on, I’m not sure that the terminology is that relevant to the ultimate national security question.
[QUOTE=Richard Parker]
I think you have the facts a little wrong here. This telling totally ignores the history of the Hamburg Cell and the 9/11 planning that happened in the Philippines. Your statement here applies to Florida, arguably, but not to the rest
[/QUOTE]
I’m not that familiar with it. Are you saying the operated openly and with the support of the local government? If not then I don’t see how my facts are wrong. If so then this board is all about educating the ignorant, so I didn’t know that and will be happy to learn.
You tell me. Were they able to operate in the open and with the support of the local and national government? If not then I’d say there is a big difference, even if they were able to skate under the radar of the government. Skating under the radar is different than operating openly and without fear of local or national retaliation…and also leaves out the material support. Unless you are saying they had all of that?
The Taliban were in control of a nation state (Afghanistan). They had diplomatic missions, had other international contacts and other instruments of being a nation state. And AQ was PART of their government. I don’t know what they have access to in Yemen, but I’d guess that whatever it is it’s going to be at least quasi-covert. If you are saying that AQ has direct access to Yemen because they are part of the Yemen government and have open access to all their intelligence and other assets then that’s something I’m unaware of.
Recall that Afghanistan went through a decade or so of civil war before the Taliban consolidated their grip on the government. In addition, AQ wasn’t always IN Afghanistan…they moved around quite a bit before the Taliban finally offered them a safe haven. So, like you, I’m skeptical of YOUR narrative in trying to compare their activities before 9/11 to those after. Myself, I’m looking more at the organization today compared to what it was just prior to 9/11 and I think it’s pretty evident that AQ has been force to really spread itself out and disperse, and that a big part of this was losing their bases in Afghanistan. If you don’t agree, well, that’s fine…to me it’s pretty clearly the case. I suppose that perception is going to be key to this debate as to whether we could basically do nothing, or simply fire some tomahawks or do some air strikes into AQ bases in Afghanistan and call that good enough, or whether we were justified in going after them directly and pushing them out of Afghanistan as well as attacking them pretty much everywhere else we found them.
Let’s stipulate that the Taliban supported AQ in a way that other weak states in the region would not have. What I’m asking is why you think Taliban support helped them carry out 9/11. Can you be more specific, or are you just making a general inference that they probably got something helpful from the Taliban?
I’m not saying that the Taliban directly helped them carry out 9/11. Where did that come from?? I’m making a specific inference that having a solid and secure base to operate from as well as material support from a nation state is what allowed them the freedom to plan out and execute 9/11.
The Taliban (as a whole…I have no doubt that specific Taliban members were involved at some level) was at fault for providing that base of operation and material support AND for refusing to turn key AQ members (including ObL) over to the US when we demanded it as well as refusing to shut AQ down when we demanded that in the wake of 9/11. Thus the invasion. I’m sure that, in retrospect, especially since AQ has basically left the Taliban holding the bag in Afghanistan and has moved on, the Taliban probably wishes they had just gone along with our demands and turned those suckers in, or at least tried to and at least went through the motions of closing down those bases and giving the US open access to pursue AQ in their territory and with their ‘assistance’ (at least as much as we get from, say, Pakistan). That would have at least left them in power.
I think we’re going in circles. My question is HOW did “having a solid and secure base to operate from as well as material support” help them plan out and execute 9/11?
Would they have been arrested by the authorities for the activities they engaged in if they had been based in frontier Pakistan, or Somalia, or Yemen? What material support did they receive from the Taliban that they would not have received otherwise and that was helpful to them?
I’m sure it was marginally more convenient to operate in Afghanistan than, say, Germany. But the original claim was that it was “a large contributing factor,” which I think requires more than just speculation about how it might be useful to them.
Moreover, if they didn’t have Afganistan, could they not have chosen a dozen other near lawless countries with easily bribed governments to do their training in?
The answer to the OP depends on the meaning of “practical.” (Maybe the OP can elaborate.)
According to some estimates, the cost to date of the war on terror as we decided to fight it–including Iraq, Afghanistan, Dept of Homeland Security and other outlays–is around $1.5 trillion. Those wars also claimed several thousand American lives. This rounds out to about half a billion dollars of public spending for every person who died on 9/11. Why not spend that money on developing self-driving cars and building out the required infrastructure, saving 40,000 lives lost to auto fatalities each year? Or spending it on curing cancer? Actually, the better question is not whether an alternative response would have been practical, but whether our actual response was practical.
I would argue that even the operation in Afghanistan, while possibly necessary politically, was probably not necessary in a practical sense. Even if we had done nothing vis a vis Afghanistan, it isn’t clear al-Qaeda would have succeeded in remotely matching their success on 9/11, when they benefited enormously from the element of surprise, plus undoubtedly a great deal of luck, allowing them to pull off the deadliest terror attack (by orders of magnitude) in history. And as we’ve seen, intervening in Afghanistan and in Iraq apparently did nothing to stifle the rise of radical Islam or violent jihadism. Even if it did, I don’t see on what calculus the expenditures involved are justified, given other more life-saving uses to which those resources could have gone.
The politics were never going to be favorable to a restrained response, but politicians in fact contribute to creating such politics because doing so in fact serves their interests. Hence, Bush’s stratospheric approval ratings immediately post-9/11. Bush could probably have gotten away with some large scale punitive strikes against al-Qaeda targets if he hadn’t chosen to frame things right out of the gate in such epic, Biblical terms. But then, it served his political interest to so frame them.
[QUOTE=Richard Parker]
I think we’re going in circles. My question is HOW did “having a solid and secure base to operate from as well as material support” help them plan out and execute 9/11?
[/QUOTE]
To me, I answered that question in the sentence you quoted from me…‘having a solid and secure base to operate from as well as material support from a nation state is what allowed them the freedom to plan out and execute 9/11’ Obviously, you disagree. Like I said, to me it’s pretty clear…having the freedom from having to worry about things like extradition treaties or raids on their facilities or on their C&C or having the crap bombed out of them allowed them the room to train and plan. They also got practical experience, as together with the Taliban their Brigade 055 was used to suppress resistance within Afghanistan. When they would raid into other nations, as they did several times in the late 90’s the Taliban shielded them from other nations and refused to either capture or extradite them. Along with material aid (guns, weapons, access to intelligence and diplomatic access) I’d say it was a pretty powerful alliance for AQ…and, of course, there was the two way prestige factor. AQ was PART of the Taliban and Afghanistan and defiant of the US, that gave them both legitimacy and cred with the more radical element in the region.
They fled the Sudan because pressure was being brought to bear on them by the US and others to either capture them or allow us to come in and do it for them. And it was a credible threat. In Pakistan they certainly had some levels of access, but as you can see by what’s happened to their network there (especially the ObL raid) it’s not exactly solidly secure, and wouldn’t have been then either (though we wouldn’t have been as brazen as we are today)…which is why they didn’t pick Pakistan or Yemen to set up their main bases and build relationships openly with either government.
Well, that’s where we differ. I think it was more than ‘marginally more convenient to operate in Afghanistan’ than anywhere else (Germany? I hope that was tongue in cheek and not a slight on our Teutonic brethren and sistren).
As to speculation, well…pot and kettle. You are basically speculating about Germany and convenience, and I’m trying to explain what, to me, is something along the lines of ‘Water…it’s wet. Can’t you feel it??’. shrug
I don’t know. Do you have any real world examples of nation states that AQ would be interested in, would have openly built a relationship with AQ, and didn’t care a fig about what the US or Europe thought of that and weren’t going to budge? Perhaps one where ObL could have married his daughter to, as he did with Mullah Omar? Because I can’t think of any with large Sunni populations that were willing to embrace a very radical group AND support them AND integrate them into their government in the face of pretty stiff international censure.
Having a secure base meant Al Qaeda didn’t have to waste resources hiding. They didn’t have to split up into small groups, run a safe house network, communicate by couriers, cache their equipment in hidden arsenals, etc.
Al Qaeda’s top expense was reportedly paying the Taliban $20 million a year in, uh, gifts. And for some strange reason, the Taliban twice refused to extradite UBL. Once after the 1998 embassy bombings, once after 9/11.
It’s the old cliche. The problem isn’t finding somebody who’ll take a bribe; the problem is finding somebody who’ll stay bribed. Al Qaeda could rely on the Taliban because they had a shared ideology that went beyond money. Most countries would have just sold Al Qaeda out when the United States offered a higher bid.
I’m not sure that pissing off terrorists would be a good idea. Sure, these countries could have betrayed al-Qaeda for money, but would they want to risk getting revenge bombings and assassinations in return?
That is insanity. You are implying that there should have been no response to a bloody attack that left 3,000 Americans dead-simply put that the government should not have undertaken its most basic function, ensuing the security of its citizen body. And the fact is the anti-Al Qaeda war worked-the past decade and a half has not seen the sort of series of large-scale Islamist attacks upon American assets at home and abroad (outside of the context of war) that we saw in the 1990s.
Did the Taliban actively support AQ (that is, provide money or training or weapons), or just ignore them? If the latter, then whatever AQ did there they could do in any other third world shit hole or even in more developed countries whose intelligence agenceies weren’t working closely with the US.
The United States made two requests to extradite UBL; the Taliban turned them both down while AQ provided funds directly to the Taliban, as I previously mentioned. Notwithstanding any other facts, I call that protection, not just ignorance.
The date. Your article is dated Sunday, Oct. 14, 2001; 1:50 p.m. EDT…that’s 7 days after we started the invasion and had already been pounding the crap out of the Taliban with air strikes. We’d already asked them and been turned down several times by this point.
If you compare the history of Al Qaeda attacks from the decade before 9/11 to the decade after 9/11, I’m not sure they are that different. I think any difference rests in declaring that, say, the Madrid train bombing weren’t really Al Qaeda. And if that’s what the argument rests on, I’m not sure that the terminology is that relevant to the ultimate national security question.
I’m making a specific inference that having a solid and secure base to operate from as well as material support from a nation state is what allowed them the freedom to plan out and execute 9/11.