Was war in Afghanistan unavoidable? I have always assumed we had to go because of the fact that they had terrorist training camps there. I was completely against the war in Iraq. Was I wrong to support the war in Afghanistan? Can anyone make a good case that we should not of been there?
Who is we? It was a UN sanctioned mission with support from all NATO nations.
I was mainly referring to the USA but also to the other forces as well. I guess I am asking was the threat from terrorist training camps credible?
It was avoidable by Afghanistan. We asked them to co-operate with international efforts to eliminate the terrorist support network in their country. If they had agreed, there wouldn’t have been an invasion.
It was unavoidable in the sense that when your favorite tool is a hammer, every problem looks like nail.
There are lots of countries with terrorist camps that we haven’t invaded. And as soon as we’re gone from Afghanistan, they will probably be right back. Of corse, at the first opportunity, al Qaeda fled to Pakistan, which was/is at least as much of a harborer of terrorists as Afghanistan ever was.
Do you accept it as fact that the 9/11 terrorists were trained in Afghanistan?
Agreement. Our demands really weren’t that awful, but they wouldn’t accept them, and war was inevitable at that point.
It was basically unavoidable-Americans wanted a strong military response after 9/11 and considering the Taliban were basically proto-ISIS they were practically begging to get into conflict with someone sooner or later-if not us then the Iranians.
Ok, but morally and politically was it correct? were the training camps areal danger? i think they were. but i’m not an expert on the subject.
It was avoidable. Look up “Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” That provision is in the Constitution for any instance in which the US has to fight an enemy that is less-than-a-state. Also, the Taliban did offer to hand over Osama Bin Laden, provided they were given some evidence citing his role in the attack, which shouldn’t have been difficult to put together. Not that that matters, because of the aforementioned constitutional provision for dealing with a situation like that. I just added it because it’s so often said that “[Villain of the day] is so unreasonable, they’ve refused our demands! War is unavoidable, though we tried to avoid it!” Think Rambouillet.
Say what you want to about them, but the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are two separate things. That’s an important distinction that is often lost, or obfuscated. Consider the phony outrage not long ago when several Taliban prisoners were explained for Bowe Bergdahl. People complained about Obama “letting terrorists go”, when in fact they were POWs.
Yes. There are plenty of shitty third-world countries that we don’t invade. We could have sent in a few cruise missiles at some purported training camps like Clinton did and have been done with it.
I think that sounds pretty reasonable. Blow up the camps instead of invading. Yeah, much better.
could you please describe the differences?
The Taliban is a fundamentalist political movement that took power in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is an international organization that has two main goals: to drive all non-Muslim powers out of Muslim countries and to replace secular regimes in Muslim countries with theocratic ones.
So they had things in common. Both were Islamic fundamentalists and both used terror attacks against their opponents. Al Qaeda offered the Taliban resources from its international backers and the Taliban offered al Qaeda a safe base in a friendly country.
Ok, but Lemmy made it seem like the were more different than that…
Absolutely yes. The Taliban deserved to be overthrown.
They aren’t the same thing, admittedly although its basically a difference of AIDS and Ebola.
And that would just have enabled Al-Qaeda to immediately rebuild those camps again. Occupation was necessary to not just destroy the existing camps but ensure new ones were not built.
well couldnt you just blow them up again???
Disagreed, An invasion or military action would have happened anyway. The attacks were too brazen and the US too proud (and unchastened by 14 years of failed war as it is now) to not have done so.
The Taliban: During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, various mujahideen groups fought against them. When the Soviets left in the early 90s, various militias battled each other, with backing from their favorite state (Saudi Arabia supported the Wahhabite Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and his forces, Iran supported the Shia militia of Abdul Ali Mazari. Incidentally, it was Sayyaf who first invited Osama Bin Laden to Afghanistan while he was in Sudan). Pakistan also wanted in on the fun, so started funding and training a group of students led by Mohammed Omar in the south of the country. The Taliban built a reputation on fighting the corruption of the other warlords, and beginning in 1994 began to quickly conquer a large part of the country.
Al-Qaeda: Origins are also tracible to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, though through a different route. In the 80s, MAK, an organization to funnel foreign recruits and funds to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, was created. Foreign fighters were never a large part of the forces fighting in Afghanistan. However, after the war, this organization wanted to expand its operations to other parts of the world. Al-Qaeda was born in 1988 by Osama bin Laden providing funding and Abdullah Azzam (of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad) supplying expertise. Al-Qaeda first went to Saudi Arabia upon the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, but was banished from there in 1990 after speaking out against US. troops in the country for the Gulf War. From 1992-1996 they were based in Sudan after Omar al-Bashir took control. In 1995, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (which formed a large part of Al-Qaeda) tried to assassinate Mubarak with Sudan’s help (they failed). Sudan was pressured by the international community to expel both the EIJ and bin Laden (the groups formally merged in 2001). Al-Qaeda then moved to Afghanistan, by this time more-or-less under Taliban control, and operated semi-legitimately
So, to sum up: The Taliban are an Afghan group which had significant support from Pakistan, while Al-Qaeda is a foreign, mostly Arab group that eventually settled in Afghanistan with the semi-approval of the Taliban. The Taliban were the government, Al-Qaeda was a paramilitary group that the government tolerated.