Re: The Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread [4]

[Eldorion]

Al Q wanted to blow us up with their underpants and shoes, thats all I need to know.   

Unfortunately that's the same attitude the US government and intelligence community took in 2001, and its one of the reasons why we bungled the war in Afghanistan so badly.

[Mrs Figg]

  I was joking. I thought reference to underpants would have been a bit of a clue.


   Sanctimonious prats.   

[Eldorion]

Well sadly the part about that being the government's attitude in 2001 was not a joke, but sorry for missing the sarcasm.

[Mrs Figg]

s'ok.   
I will be more careful with the sarcasm.

[Mrs Figg]

Its good to know theres Petty and Eldo fighting right wing comments wherever they lurk   

[halfwise]

Iraq didn't want to blow us up, and neither did the Taliban (who offered to give up bin Laden, but the US didn't like the conditions they wanted).

Wait...what?! What conditions did they give?

[bungobaggins]

On October 14 [2001], the Taliban offered to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country in return for a bombing halt, but only if the Taliban were given evidence of bin Laden's involvement. The U.S. rejected this offer, and continued military operations. Mazar-i-Sharif fell to United Front troops of Ustad Atta Mohammad Noor and Abdul Rashid Dostum on November 9, triggering a cascade of provinces falling with minimal resistance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Coalition_attack

[Eldorion]

Wait...what?!  What conditions did they give?

They wanted the US to stop bombing the country (this was before the US had boots on the ground; the bombing began on October 7 but US soldiers didn't enter the country until October 19-20) and to provide evidence that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 since he was denying it at the time.  The Taliban also offered to turn bin Laden over to a third country, but the United States refused any sort of negotiation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011014/aponline135016_000.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/17/afghanistan.terrorism11

It's kind of remarkable how thoroughly this has been forgotten since it was reported at the time...

Well, I think it's — first let me reiterate, my focus is bringing Al Qaeda to justice and saying to the host government, "You had your chance to deliver."

Actually, I will say it again. "If you cough him up and his people today that we'll reconsider what we're doing to your country. You still have a second chance. Just bring him in, and bring his leaders and lieutenants and other thugs and criminals with him."

Source

"There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt, we know he's guilty," Bush said at a Sunday afternoon press conference. "There's no negotiation. If they're interested in stopping military operations, they have to turn him over."

Source

EDIT: And this followed the Taliban's earlier (pre-bombing) offer to put bin Laden to an Islamic trial if the US provided evidence. Source

[Eldorion]

Simulpost with Bungo.

The US was looking for a war in 2001, not just to bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice. I think a big reason for that was the false belief that the Taliban and al-Qaeda were basically one and the same. This ignores the fact that the Taliban is a Pashtun nationalist organization with basically no ambitions outside the Afghanistan/Pakistan area, whereas al-Qaeda had more global aims, and that the two didn't always get along. A savvier (and less warmongering) administration could have exploited those divisions and probably captured bin Laden in a matter of months rather than years, and with far less costs and sacrifice to the American people (not to mention the Afghans).

[halfwise]

Without knowing all the operational details it's hard to know if it was a good call to refuse turning over details of how we knew Bin Laden did it.  Inside spies would be killed for sure.  And if you stop bombing and they say, "okay, just give us a few days to gather him up" it doesn't really work.  So it makes sense to keep bombing right until he's turned over.

But yeah, it sure doesn't look very good. And yet I doubt if we've ever had an administration adroit enough to get the Taliban or someone else to fork over a sometime ally. Even so, I think you're right that they were looking for a knockout in retaliation for 9-11, not just some back room arm-twisting.

[Eldorion]

Normally, demanding that another sovereign country open their doors to your law enforcement/intelligence forces without condition or face war is considered an act of blatant aggression. And even if one agrees that bombing Afghanistan was okay in order to put pressure on the Taliban (since long-distance air strikes are a common card for modern great powers that are generally seen as short of full war), what doesn't make sense is escalating the situation and dismantling the country so you can rebuild it from the ground up. Or at least, that doesn't make sense unless it was what you wanted to do all along.

[bungobaggins]

We went in there for oil democracy.

[Eldorion]

Possibly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline

But I think that trying to prop up American influence (also known as "credibility" when listening to John Kerry) was a bigger factor.  That and the amount of money that can be made from fighting foreign wars as well as the political capital it raises due to patriotism -- until it drags on too long and everything goes down the shitter.

[Pettytyrant101]

The problem with satirising the right wing is usually they have done it themselves just by talking!

[bungobaggins]

I think the title of the video is being ironic.

[Mrs Figg]

quite frankly if I was a woman living in Afghanistan I would have welcomed the total annihilation of the Taliban by any means possible and that includes bombing their fucking asses to smitherines. They make girls and womens lives a living hell. Unfortunately innocent women and children are the victims of any war so it kind of defeats the purpose. I dont agree with invading and bombing anothers country on the grounds Bush, Blair et al gave, because there are always political manoeuvres, power games, oil and all that stuff behind it, but the destruction of barbarism and sexism is ok by me and I dont care how its brought about. call me a simple minded right winger I dont give a shit.

[Pettytyrant101]

You cant force a country to change by pointg a gun at them and dropping bombs on them- it will never work- you just create resistance and grievences.

Imagine if at the height of UK world power in the late 1800's another superpower had existed and told the UK they would bomb us into the ground unless we gave women the vote- it would not have helped womens causes, it ould not have happened, and the bombing would have made the British people rise up against the enemy.
Change like that has to come from the people themselves and yes sadly that might mean years of women being persecuted for standing up against it, or throwing themselves under Kings horses- but at least that works.
Trying to force another culture to change its thousand of years old ways with the threat of violence is a nonstarter.

If we really wanted to hep in the areas of womens eduction we would funnel the sot of money we wasted on the wars into education in those countries, improving hospitals, sanitation ect and work from there, a position of friendly strength and try to persuade, not force.

[David H]

If we really wanted to hep in the areas of womens eduction we would funnel the sot of money we wasted on the wars into education in those countries, improving hospitals, sanitation ect and work from there, a position of friendly strength and try to persuade, not force.

Exactly. And we were in the perfect position to do exactly that in Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out in1989. We'd had a strong Peace Corps presence in Afghanistan during the 1970's. Why we didn't go back to education efforts in 1990, when we would have been received as friends and allies, is a mystery to me. It was a huge opportunity missed.

[Eldorion]

quite frankly if I was a woman living in Afghanistan I would have welcomed the total annihilation of the Taliban by any means possible and that includes bombing their fucking asses to smitherines. They make girls and womens lives a living hell. Unfortunately innocent women and children are the victims of any war so it kind of defeats the purpose. I dont agree with invading and bombing anothers country on the grounds Bush, Blair et al gave, because there are always political manoeuvres, power games, oil and all that stuff behind it, but the destruction of barbarism and sexism is ok by me and I dont care how its brought about. call me a simple minded right winger I dont give a shit.

I don't see anything to disagree with here, especially not the bolded part.

And it is a great shame that we ignored Afghanistan after the Soviet withdraw. I think we tried to make things right after the invasion in 2001 but unfortunately said invasion sort of limited the prospect of "winning hearts and minds".

[Mrs Figg]

friendly pursuasion wouldnt work. not in a million years. this is their culture and religion, no amount of money thrown at them would work, you just end up like Saudi Arabia, those are rich educated people and women are still not allowed to drive their own cars.

[Eldorion]

Afghanistan actually had a pretty modern-leaning, relatively cosmopolitan society in the 1950s and 60s, before decades of war shattered the country.  Obviously it's speculation what might have happened in the early '90s if the US had stuck around, but the Taliban was not yet in power and Afghanistan didn't have a deep history of Islamic fundamentalism before the war.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/07/afghanistan-in-the-1950s-and-60s/100544/

[Pettytyrant101]

Arguably the two most successful invaders were the Romans and the British- in that good aspects of those cultures survived in the new free states that emerged.
But the invaders had to stay there the entire time and eventually, it will destroy you trying to maintain that, as it did Rome and Britain.

[Mrs Figg]

the Romans and the British instilled discipline and order, protection, trade and even peace like the Pax Romana, in a lot of ways they gave more benefits to an invaded country than negatives.

[Pettytyrant101]

At the cost of the collapse of their own empires, tens of thousands of lives, slavery ect

[David H]

friendly pursuasion wouldnt work. not in a million years. this is their culture and religion, no amount of money thrown at them would work, you just end up like Saudi Arabia, those are rich educated people and women are still not allowed to drive their own cars.

I think the bigger point you're making may be that large scale social change isn't something that can be imposed from the outside.  In the case of women's rights, the women in question have to want it. They've got to demand it. And they've got to demand it for the next generation, and the generation after that. Otherwise you can expect the culture to slide back to the old ways.

From outside, all we can do is support. And education and economic independence are the two tools that have proven to be of the most use to the women inside the culture.

By the way, Saudi Arabia seems to be changing faster than one might think. There are ever increasing numbers of prominent women in government and civil service.  Education for women is increasingly expected.  And they are allowed to own cars and property. That's huge compared to much of the world.  I expect the snowball to just keep rolling faster and faster.