There seems to be a general case of amnesia about the way the Iraq war was sold and I'm not quite sure why.
While the fairy tale of WMDs was a multiyear effort the US has undertaken, first and foremost as a response to 9/11, Saddam was painted as the leader harboring terrorists and aiding public enemy number one, Osama Bin Laden and his then suddenly sprung into public attention group called Al Qaeda.
It's only later on that Powell was sent on a mission by Bush/Chaney/Rumsfeld to tug on the world's and American's heart strings by producing laughable evidence of WMDs. Not dissimilar to how they sold the original Iraq War with babies in incubators being thrown.
During that first year and all the way to March 2003, endlessly bush has used 9/11, and anybody who is 'harboring terrorists' cough cough Saddam Hussain cough cough to justify anything and everything America wanted to do. And Americans stood behind him, blind and proud with our American flag.
>Saddam was painted as the leader harboring terrorists and aiding public enemy number one, Osama Bin Laden and his then suddenly sprung into public attention group called Al Qaeda.
I believe this was debunked before the war started, as was WMD's (remember Hanz Blix).
The claim that Hussein had any relation to 9/11 is inauthentic, even Bush himself eventually admitted such. He still used Hussein's nonexistent connection to put Iraq in the "Axis of Evil" though.
Perhaps there would be a shift in the domestic populace.
For example, that segment of the populace that championed waterboarding and defended it as a legitimate interrogation method involving a little discomfort, and believed it wasn’t torture, have come to show their true colors and believe they can’t breathe and are being tortured by wearing a mask.
I think Terror Management Theory [0] explains this contradiction fairly robustly: Sheldon Solomon found that reminding people of their mortality, even subtly, increased their support for hostility to out-groups, military intervention, etc.
When it comes to COVID, anti-masking is arguably a form of coping with a reminder of mortality, by "minimizing one's perception of the threat" [1]: that the virus is "not nearly as contagious or lethal as health experts claim it to be" or "originating in a politically motivated conspiracy".
As harrowing as his story is, remember that he is one of the "lucky" victims of the War on Terror. If our success rate in imprisonment was 8%, how high was our success rate for the 800,000-3,100,000 killed in the War on Terror?
Key figures in US military and US leadership need to be held accountable. Same as with CEOs, if you only punish the organization and not specifically the leaders, there is no disincentive to doing it again.
Clearly the US is exempt from the war crimes laws, and that needs to change. But it would require leaders of other major powers/countries to push for this.
But… this will never happen because almost no leader wants to be held accountable, and thus they will never vote against their peers.
There was zero — functionally zero — accountability for anyone:
1. Bush Administration (and subsequent cowards)
2. Project for the New American Century and related organizations
3. cheerleaders and thoughtleaders in the media
4. executors of the orders and plans
5. and finally the American people for being so hungry for bloodlust (remember those "Liberate Iraq - Support our Troops" yard signs and bumper stickers?)
… and folks wonder why there is a crisis in trust and epistemology. Awfully enough, a lot of these people are being rehabilitated (politically) because the subsequent ones are so bad that the old are cast in a more positive light. But let's not forget the flagrant impunity and lies, and the stench of recrimination and smear campaign against those who called out against the jingoism rationally (e.g., Valerie Plame Affair with Iraq)!
I'll never forgive nor forget these folks' bad decisions. Bankrupted our country and my generation's future (and that of the subsequent ones). The opportunity cost of these bad decisions is incalculable.
I would add to the list Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, who took "off the table" impeachment in 2006, and prosecution in 2009, respectively. A lesser crime, to be clear, but they are morally culpable nonetheless.
On the one hand, I can understand the hesitancy to set a precedent of prosecuting the political opposition; while I think the evidence is clear that Iraq was a war crime, and not a well-intentioned "mistake", it's not hard to imagine counter-factuals in which genuine policy mistakes are spun the other direction.
Nonetheless, it should give us pause that our Constitutional mechanisms for holding power accountable for flagrant abuse don't seem to have any teeth in practice; not from a lack of legal mechanisms, but from the factionalism of the two-party system, and that leaders are incentivized not to spend scarce "political will" that would distract from their own agendas, if not come to bite them as well when power changes hands.
In that specific incident, such a degree of accountability was desired to be held that the Commandant of the Marine Corps is said to have attempted an influencing campaign around their trial: https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2017...
I'm sure there are things the military does that go untracked, however, deploying troops are heavily trained on the Law of Land and Warfare, the Geneva Convention (which only applies to how they treat citizens of a nation and the terrorists they're fighting, not to how they will be treated.), and various others.
So, what war crimes are you wanting them to investigate that their own governing bodies have not chased?
You were careful with your claims, and I can understand your desire to defend the reputation of the regular uniforms. But you can imagine how unsatisfying that kind of lawyerly response is to someone on the outside who watches the USA do whatever they damn well please, much less someone kin to the kidnap/torture victims.
I think in my most recent memory "war crimes" is a trigger word for an event where a bunch of "activists" harassed active duty service members live on Twitch about war crimes. I shouldn't conflate the two, but they're easily conflatable given how hyperbolic issues are at this point.
People are people. But don’t forget - many people consider the second invasion of Iraq an aggressive war of choice. And that makes every single participant a war criminal. From Bush on down to your friends.
Sort of, but not really. The UCMJ doesn't supersede Geneva Convention; if anything the Law of Land and Warfare builds on it. I can understand why civilians would think that though, we don't really teach people about how the military works so unless you've been in it, it's a black box where you fill in all the knowledge void with supposition.
Given that this thread is driven by the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, I think it's important to remember that the invasion of Afghanistan was a NATO operation after NATO invoked Article 5 (Collective Defence) in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that Al-Quaeda launched, organized by their leadership based in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban.
There are a few additional facts folks forget since this is now 20 years later. Such as on Sept 10th, an assassination attack was launched against the Northern Alliance because they knew that the US would retaliate for the attacks coming the next day. There were also a number of Taliban leadership that directly aided in the planning and execution of 9/11.
IMO, "nation building" is always an impossible mission. The objective should have been to attack, destroy the enemy, and leave - immediately. Punishing the sponsors of the 9/11 attacks, not entrenching an ideological split.
Until the full report of the investigation is released to the public, it's pointless to speculate on the decisions made after 9/11. There certainly appears to be indication that the real people behind it were not targeted for retribution. These days, unless the money trail is followed to its source, you never really know the full story.
Yes I'm intionally not naming names/groups/countries, but we probably know who I'm talking about.
It would not be the first time that a symbolic gesture was made that would appease the victims while not actually punishing those responsible. [ed-spelling]
Actually in this case you have even more interests at play from many sides (since US strength in the middle east - because of oil interests) has been a priority for decades.
It's not about oil from Afghanistan, it's about a more solid presence in the region (and in some cases, about preventing an enemy/competitor from having that presence).
Most countries around Afghanistan have oil. If Afghanistan could have been managed (as in, exploited without difficulty or consequence), then the US would have probably been financially wise to attempt what they attempted. But it turns out, after observing two major powers attempt to dominate Afghanistan, that it is just too messy to manage.
>> It would not be the first time that a symbolic gesture was made that would appease the victims while not actually punishing those responsible. [ed-spelling]
> IMO, "nation building" is always an impossible mission. The objective should have been to attack, destroy the enemy, and leave - immediately.
They should never do anything that makes the lives of ordinary Afghans worse who suffered more from the Taliban than the US. You can’t just bomb a country, create a power vacuum, and nope out of there. Moral cowardice in the extreme.
And this sort of thinking is exactly how we wound up stuck there for 20yr.
Voter block A wants to bomb them back to the stone age and leave.
Voter block B won't tolerate wrecking the place without some pretext of "helping the people" or whatever that means.
So the compromise is to wreck the nation then spend 20yr pushing food around our plate as though we're actually going to rebuild it until voter block B is satisfied that we gave it the college try.
That's a very heavy accusation to lob at the US people I think. Who says this and where does the 80% number come from?
And why would the US people want their country to invade a country on the other side of the world, that was no threat to them and was clearly not capable of defending itself against the might of the US army? Why would the US people want their country to invade anyone? And 80% of them? This I find very hard to believe. Maybe the "80% support" was for something else entirely, e.g. killing Bin Laden or destroying Al Qaeda, rather than invading Afghanistan?
There are likely many factors. In terms of civilian supporting the invastion, or at the very least, being neutral on invading was very much a popular opinion. Patriotism was extremely high following the attacks, and whether it was correct or not, many folks would see not supporting the invasion as unpatriotic. So likely do to social norms and group dynamics, it was unpopular to be against the war.
It might be hard to understand for folks that didn't live in the US during that time. A time when TV and print media were very much king. To paint the picture more clearly. Imagine a 24-hour news cycle on nearly every single TV channel. Even non-news channels discontinued normal programing to broadcast one of the big news stations. Every newspaper has massive headlines covering the content. For days and weeks there was no escaping the media barrage. It definitely warped folks perception.
So a kind of mass indoctrination to a militaristic concept of "patriotism", as I understand it? A concept that is not satisfied unless someone is invaded.
Why exactly? I don't understand. I never understood what was the real reason for the war. Multiple theories have been put forward that I am aware of but they all seem (to me) to be "just so" stories trying to find a post-hoc explanation for what seemed to be an invasion completely without reason. Oil interests, heroin trade, geopolitical advantage, democracy and human rights (actually that was one of the explanations at the time I think), revenge for 9/11, none of all that makes any sense, neither not invading unthinkable.
Why was not invading unthinkable, at any point? More so, why was it necessary? What did anyone gain from sendnig an already piss-poor and backwards country even further back in time towards the Stone Age?
And, to clarify, are you saying that to not invade was unthinkable for US citizens, or for the US government? Or someone else?
What does an occupation of a foreign country that has millions of civilians with no connection to these events have to do with attacking al-quaeda? Are they simply guilty by association for harboring terrorists.
Americans still haven't worked out that taking over nation by force isn't the correct answer and makes things worse. God forbid anyone attempt to occupy the US, you would all go ape shit mad.
But the US didn't attack Al-Qaeda. It attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. It killed their civilians, destroyed their infrasructure, obliterated their states. How is that attacking Al-Qaeda?
This whole post is about holding leaders accountable. The same should be true for those leaders in Afghanistan who aided the attacks on 9/11. But staying to prop up a government in a nation that had already suffered a proxy war occupation by Russia, and had sent them packing (with our help) was always a doomed effort. The culture there won't permit such a thing. So I think leaving a power vacuum would have been the lesser evil, vs prolonging it, or leaving the guilty unaccountable, as we did in SA.
What connection is there with holding leaders accountable and occupying a country with millions of civilians who have no connection to any of these events and are simply trying to live?
If we use this logic, then the US should be stormed and occupied for the sins of its leaders and all innocents should be held culpable for not overthrowing their evil government.
Japan was "shock and awe" done (strategically, not morally) right. The US fire-bombed Tokyo and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving no question in the Japanese mind of who was the overwhelmingly superior force. There was no honor in death fighting such a force; there was only oblivion with nothing left to remember you by. The Japanese happily accepted rule by a "gaijin shogun" rather than face that kind of defeat. And MacArthur turned out to be a rather magnanimous shogun, even arranging for the Emperor to avoid liability for his role in the war and especially Pearl Harbor so that the Japanese had something of their traditional order to cling to during the American occupation and beyond.
The political will to commit to that level of destruction and rebuilding hasn't existed since then.
Iraq begat ISIS. Iraq was a clusterfuck since 1990.
We were very fortunate Japan surrendered. They certainly didn't after nearly a year of fire bombing, they didn't after Hiroshima, and they almost didn't after Nagasaki. In fact there was an attempted coup when it was discovered the emperor wanted to surrender.
> IMO, "nation building" is always an impossible mission. The objective should have been to attack, destroy the enemy, and leave - immediately. Punishing the sponsors of the 9/11 attacks, not entrenching an ideological split.
That's bollocks. I'm German, had the Allied Powers followed the Morgenthau plan Germany would be essentially an Afghanistan today - an agro state and nothing more. But you all followed through with Marshall, and that was perhaps the ideal example that nation building works.
It is just very complex, requires understanding of cultural differences, and patience. The Western countries didn't even have a proper post-immediate-hostility strategy (partially because Bush's cronies clearly hadn't invested a single second of thought beyond "how to fill the coffers of the MIC) in Afghanistan, much less a plan on how to give Afghanistan-the-country an economic perspective beyond farming opium.
Afghanistan has a lot of precious natural resources: minerals, metals, oil and gas. Had the Western countries invested in kickstarting mining these, providing locals with employment and the government with a steady stream of funds, the situation would have been very difficult today. Especially since a population that has security, stability and income doesn't go and look for the next fundamentalist terrorist for a perspective!
As a result: I refuse to put blame on any ANA soldier or civilian for deserting against the Taliban. Why fight for a country that has literally no way to survive on its own?
And fwiw, the lack of a modern "Marshall Plan" clone is also what led to the shitshows that are Libya, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. You can't just go into a place, depose a dictator and then hope that the situation will turn out all right on its own. If you want democracy, you have to make it appealing to people!
> But you all followed through with Marshall, and that was perhaps the ideal example that nation building works.
I don't know about this. I may call it "nation re-building" - Europe already had highly developed societies, infrastructure, and institutions. But coming into a less developed country and trying to insert those institutions by force - or even worse replace them - sounds unlikely to work.
I wonder if maybe the Americans started actually believing the nation building stuff after saying it over and over for 5 decades...
You’re completely overlooking how unprepared Afghans are for secular democracy. Germany and Japan had well developed states before World War II. Afghanistan had never been more than a pastoral tribal society. They’re hundreds of years of development away from the democracy we tried to impose on them.
> You’re completely overlooking how unprepared Afghans are for secular democracy.
Provide people with tangible benefits they gain from democracy and then it will come as naturally as they flock to the Taliban simply because they promise to get rid of the Western countries.
The West didn't do anything to actually promote democracy and provide a perspective for the people, and then we all wondered why the Taliban were able to take over the entire fucking country in a matter of two weeks.
That’s not how it works. Democracy isn’t something you can gift like Prometheus giving humans fire. It’s something that must rest on a society’s cultural foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom
Britain dropped some criminals in Australia and they created a prosperous democracy. Because the people had a millennium of cultural development under its belt to support democracy. Meanwhile democracy has failed in Iraq and Afghanistan despite massive US support.
In my home country of Bangladesh, we’ve had civilization for over a thousand years. The British spent 200 years in the country building institutions and culture. We have a lovely constitution. And even then we can’t maintain democracy. We’re basically back to a one party state now. The Afghans have never even had a real national government of their own. Their society is at a feudal stage of development. It’s like trying to bring democracy to England circa 600 AD.
> The British spent 200 years in the country building institutions and culture.
That is a sorry description of colonialism.
Your theory of "cultural development" also doesn't explain how Germany chose through elections to turn itself in to a Nazi state.
As an aside, Zakaria is a talking head, part of the news as entertainment complex - sticking to the mainstream narrative as close as possible while trying to appear insightful at the same time. He is neither a historian, economist or sociologist and is a known plagiarist. Why would anyone want to read his books?
The U.S. did spend sort of a lot of money in attempts to develop infrastructure and industry in Afghanistan. But it mostly achieved nothing because of the widespread corruption (both of Americans and afghans) and lack of an overall plan that made any sense (as you noted).
There are probably something like hundreds of these reports, all with similar conclusions - spent a ton of money, didn’t really achieve anything meaningful, made some crooks richer, and the taliban either a profits from what little was achieved (for “protection services” and such) or just blows it up.
We can dream that this could have been better, but I’m unconvinced that the US in the 21st century is capable of achieving any different outcome.
Germany is still occupied by Americans. We're still defending you from the same foreign adversary, Russia.
If the US pulled out of Germany in 1965, what would have become of the place? IMO, it's clear. The communists would have been conscripted into war, West Germany would have surrendered rather than fight their countrymen. This is exactly what happened in Vietnam and it's what is happening in Afghanistan now.
Germany is nowhere near "occupied". The Allied Forces haven't had any say in German politics since the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany" (better known as 2+4 Vertrag) in 1990.
Yes, we host a couple of US military bases (Soviets went out after GDR reunification, Brits and French have long left), but these have no occupation purposes and competences at all.
regardless of whether the US had a continuous military presence in west Germany, it is implausible to me that east Germany / the USSR could have taken over west germany without starting WWIII. West Germany was a NATO member state by 1955.
That's just bullshit. France had nukes in 1965, and still does today. Baring a communist revolution in France, US troops in Europe made no practical difference.
Unfortunately Western Governments would rather cosy up to Saudi Arabia and such like who actually seem to have been one of the primary sponsors of 9/11
Saudi Arabia cooperated with the USA after 9/11. Taliban harbored Al Qaeda and helped OBL reach Pakistan safely.
There's a big difference. Saudi Arabia has to answer for creating and sponsoring the ultra-conservative Wahhabi-cult of Islam, but that's getting further removed from the fundamental issue of protecting the 9/11 planners _after_ 9/11 (aka: what the Taliban did)
The so-called "Hague invasion act" allows the US President to use "any means necessary" to release any US citizen from custody by the International Criminal Court [0].
This, technically, gives the President the power to invade the Netherlands without getting (further) approval from Congress.
> This, technically, gives the President the power to invade the Netherlands without getting (further) approval from Congress.
Insofar as it does that, it gives the President the authority to wage open ended war anywhere on the planet as long as a US citizen is held by the ICC, since the President has sole discretion to determine what means are necessary.
OTOH, that provision is also arguably an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power with no effect whatsoever, since if it delegates anything less than the ability to do anything Congress could allow it isn't specified.
On the gripping hand, the War Powers Act already allows the President to wage war to get a US citizen released from the ICC (and for almost any other reason) anywhere on the planet as long as they ask Congress before too long after starting the war.
Perhaps the first line of defense against such an invasion would be to agitate the farmers, causing them to drive all their tractors back into town. It's pretty difficult to get anything done with them ruining all transportation.
When they will film that one day it will be glorious. First the landing in the smoke covered canals of Amsterdam, walks through the flower fields and then the final hunt in The Hague by feet due to the tractors.
> As final preparations were under way during the summer of 2001, dissent emerged among al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan over whether to proceed. The Taliban's chief, Mullah Omar, opposed attacking the United States. Although facing opposition from many of his senior lieutenants, Bin Ladin effectively overruled their objections, and the attacks went forward.
I'd really like a huge investigation of the entire conflict. What progress were we seeing to justify being there for 20 years? What were we told? What did we know? It's not totally lost if we learn from this and get better.
Gitmo also needs to be emptied, at least of everyone detained from this conflict.
What you’re suggesting is that we need data to improve. But we’ve had data. We knew long ago that many of the decisions around the war on terror were bad ones and/or justified with bad information. Even many veterans who served will tell you we had no business deploying people to some of those areas.
Actionable data isn’t worth very much if you don’t act on it. What we need is accountability. I don’t know how you hold the decision makers behind the war accountable though.
Not necessarily - look at how early Mossad prosecuted the guilty sheltering in countries that were not willing to cooperate. Sure, they had to break some eggs - letter bombs are not necessarily precise - but the collateral damage was minimal and the whole scheme worried just fine.
> Clearly the US is exempt from the war crimes laws, and that needs to change. But it would require leaders of other major powers/countries to push for this
I don't see this happening any time soon, without a popular movement that drastically alters the American political landscape. Whichever party a president and legislators are from, they have war criminals among their ranks, so they couldn't accept their friends, colleagues, "bosses", etc. being sued and going to jail for war crimes. Not to mention the American fetishisation of the military, a politician could hardly campaign on sending "our heroes" on trial. Heck, Trump pardoned a notorious war criminal and it was celebrated by some.
So, baring a switch to proportional representation which would allow more parties and variety, or a popular movement that swipes away the current two parties, i absolutely can't imagine that happening.
This happens with a lot of things in politics, the compromise is usually to just set a future date when you start doing the right thing and give amnesty to people before that. Some kind of gradual change is often buily in as well.
I agree that proportional representation and greater democracy can fix a lot of current problems, but we don't need to put off everything until that arrives and indeed that will need to be achieved within the current system and might need similar compromises to be achieved.
> This happens with a lot of things in politics, the compromise is usually to just set a future date when you start doing the right thing and give amnesty to people before that
I really don't think that's a great idea for war crimes. They're already illegal, and absolutely despicable. Some really terrible things were done, they should be punished - saying from 2030 we'll really punish war criminals doesn't inspire confidence, and probably won't be an actual deterrent until the US starts enforcing it en masse.
This is what Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are supposed to do. If convicting all the horrible monster people would leave very few people free, sometimes it’s just better to make sure the future better. Restitution can be more important than punishment.
But, forgiveness is hard, and it means evil people walk free.
The concept of an international criminal court itself is an affront to national sovereignty, and isn’t very widely supported. Among those who go along with it, they tend to stop once it creates an issue for them.
The ICC primarily prosecutes the war crimes of war losers. They’ve convicted some Nazis, some Serbs, and a few African war lords here and there. But it’s silly to presume they have authority over any nation that exists with even a modicum of national security.
You won’t see George Bush, or any other US official before The Hague for the same reason you won’t see Xi Jinping, or Putin, or Netanyahu, or Tony Blair, or Ali Khamenei, or Rodrigo Duterte… there.
This is just demonstrably untrue. Most Asian countries are either non-signatories, or have withdrawn. China, Russia, Israel, KSA, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Qatar, Turkey… are all post-industrial nations.
Also, of the fully ratified signatories, it’s only supported when politically convenient. No member of NATO is going to allow for their citizens to be prosecuted by some extraterritorial court that thinks it has jurisdiction over half the world. Every NATO country has been accused of war crimes, and they’ve probably all committed them. None of them have been prosecuted, allies won’t call on other allies to be prosecuted, even Angela Merkel defends Israel’s on this topic, and Israel barely even pretends that they don’t commit war crimes.
It’s also why there’s so much popular anti-ICC sentiment in Africa, because a lot of people there think it only exists to prosecute Africans (which isn’t a very easy accusation to rebut).
First World and Industrialization are very different concepts. First world just means allied with the US during the Cold War. Israel meets every definition of a highly developed country, which makes your first claim false. The wikipedia article you listed also includes Singapore (another non-signatory), which makes this claim false.
According to the IMF, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao are all “advanced economies”. All of them are certainly industrialized, and certainly not signatories. All “Newly Industrialized Countries” would also meet the criteria of being “industrialized” as well, and they include (among others) China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Phillipines and Turkey. All industrialized, and all non-signatories.
Really the only countries in the world that could be considered non-industrialized are the ones classified as Least Developed.
> It’s also why there’s so much popular anti-ICC sentiment in Africa, because a lot of people there think it only exists to prosecute Africans (which isn’t a very easy accusation to rebut)
It is, there have been plenty of Serbs that have been convicted.
Let's count them: Monaco, Israel, Singapore, United States of America, also Hong Kong, Macau, Vatican City if you want to count those. Everyone else in red or orange on that map is not considered an industrialized/developed country.
4-7 is plenty now? Especially considering the size and situation of the others?
And Russia, China, Turkey, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Pakistan, and more. Maybe your characterization was correct in 1950, but I have serious doubts if your criteria for "industrialized" fails to include the largest industrial producers by a large margin (China).
You consider countries in which the majority of households lack running water, electricity is available 20 hours a day if you're lucky, or where more than 20-50% of the population work in agriculture (typical for industrialized countries is 1-3%) to be developed?
Clearly they have no major infrastructure left to build and their industrialization is done. Nothing to develop left at all.
> But it’s silly to presume they have authority over any nation that exists with even a modicum of national security.
That's because most nations do have an established practice of putting their own war criminals on trial. It's good for building trust, which is quite beneficial in the longer run. The U.S. have slipped somewhat, but then they make up for that by literally paying for much of the civilized world's security, so they're still quite good on net.
>Panjwai massacre,[1] occurred in the early hours of 11 March 2012, when United States Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales murdered sixteen civilians and wounded six others in the Panjwayi District of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan
He was sentenced to life without parole.
>The Maywand District murders were the murders of at least three Afghan civilians perpetrated by a group of U.S. Army soldiers from June 2009 to June 2010
Five of the Army soldiers faced murder charges while seven others were charged with participating in a coverup.
War is waged by people. War crimes are inevitable but it seems to me the US has done a fairly decent job of holding themselves accountable. How should the "US" be held accountable?
>it seems to me the US has done a fairly decent job of holding themselves accountable.
That's easy to claim when you're the one doing the investigation. By refusing to co-operate with the International Criminal Court, the US has signalled it will not be held responsible for war crimes unless it's convenient for it. That decision is not great for the US's optics.
I say that as someone whose ancestors were invaded by both US and Soviet forces, and I happen to think US forces really are less likely to commit war crimes - but that seems more a result of rugged individuals holding themselves to a higher standard, "The US" seems to have acted as badly as any other large, unaccountable institution would.
Military service members committing crimes during war is not new but it's far different than war crimes being ordered from the top of the US govt. The closest thing is the prisoner mistreatment but even then, those soldiers did things that were definitely not authorized.
I make no excuses. Those who commit war crimes should be held to account- and they almost always are.
This thread seems to want senior US leadership held to account for war crimes when they never ordered anything illegal.
War crimes are inevitable- war is waged by humans and humans make mistakes or do bad things to one another. Humans are not perfect. It's about what you do about them when you discover them. We have soldiers serving life sentences without parole for war crimes.
You can't have it both ways. You are either responsible for the management and oversight of your organization (corporation, country, etc.), and thus accountable, or you are negligent.
I would suggest that <1% of war crimes (number pulled directly out of thin air) are held to account. There are approximately 200,000 civilians dead as a result of these wars. Some 'legitimate' collateral damage, some because soldiers like to shoot people, some because they were journalists in their office, some because they went to the wrong wedding.
While the investigator, judge, and jury of these potential crimes are the people perpetrating them themselves we have absolutely no idea of what proportion are or are not investigated let alone punished. Certainly, the evidence of cases that have received public attention (see the collateral murder video and 'investigation' as just one such example) shows a pattern of lies and coverups to justify gross incompetence or outright psychopathic behavior.
>According to the United Nations, the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011.
The 'Law of War' clearly defines how attacks on civilians can constitute a ware crime:
Article 51(5)(b) forbids any attack ‘which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated’. Such attacks will be classified as a war crime.
According to the United Nations, the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011.
So, 14%, 15% and 20% for 2009, 2010 and 2011 were committed by NATO troops? That's terrible, especially considering the Taliban aren't known for their great human rights record.
Looks like they were pretty keen to wipe out that guys entire family; 16 year old son two weeks later and eventually nailed the 8 year old daughter. You dont often see bipartisan action like that.
Very few countries are active war mongers, so it might actually be possible to assemble a bloc to try making US accountable. It probably wouldn’t be possible to go after prime perpetrators, but it might be possible to at least start extracting low key figures and put them on trial in a way that US cannot interfere with.
Thanks to US we already know how to handle this - there is a plenty of secret locations in various different countries where the perpetrators can be safely tried and then handled according to the sentence.
I doubt the US would take their citizens suddenly disappearing in a country very well either, and keeping it hidden would be difficult. Maybe you could secretly convict a soldier who desecrated corpses or something, but people like Gina Haspel would be nearly impossible without ramifications.
There is already an accountability mechanism: impeachment, voting out of office, etc. What you’re demanding is that non-Americans be able to depose American elected officials, which is absurd. It’s world government accountable to no one.
The US went to war against the entire UN vote and suffered no consequence whatsoever, who is going to hold them responsible for breaking the rules of engagement ?
Its opponents. I can easily imagine eg Russia openly claiming that since the international law doesn’t apply to US combatants, they are to be assumed to be terrorists and not soldiers.
That’s an obvious lie. US is extremely loyal to its war criminals - good example is how people responsible for downing Iran Air Flight 655 not only never got punished, but were actually decorated. Even Russia handles this kind of situations better.
> Key figures in US military and US leadership need to be held accountable.
Isn't that a bit of a one-sided, vindictive point of view? I don't know who are still being detained in Guantánamo, but if there are terrorists among them, shouldn't these key figures then also be rewarded?
I don't have the answer neither, but IMO the way the responsible people should be treated depends on their intentions, willingness to accept suffering of innocents, external limitations on their powers, and the net effect of their actions, not only on a seemingly simple case of wrongdoing.
No. That's what due process is for. If you can't reasonably prove someone is a criminal, they don't belong in jail.
Compare: Throw the whole population of your country in prison. Clearly, you've also imprisoned every terrorist of your country. Should you be rewarded for that?
The Guantanamo situation is comparable: The US picked random people from the street based on gossip at best, or because they looked funny at a soldier at worst, and threw them in jail and tortured them. No process, no nothing. Nobody should be rewarded for that.
It’s worse than that. The US offered cash equivalent to several years wages for turning in suspected terrorists. People immediately started reporting any tribal or personal enemy to collect a check and rid themselves of a rival.
The first suspect who died in custody was a cab driver named Dilawar. He died in handcuffs that were attached to a chain link cage. One of his interrogators said he knew the guy was innocent —- he had some experience interrogating terrorists —- but his superiors wouldn’t listen and he continued the torture.
High ranking officers (I am thinking of Sir David Omand) reported a switch in the past two decades in the practiced decision making parameters, which accept more false positives to avoid false negatives in alarms.
As if one calibrated a spam filter to discard messages from the Embassy and stationery supplier to be sure as little Viagra and inheriting princes come through. "More security, too bad for the few innocents."
> Compare: Throw the whole population of your country in prison.
That's not a comparison to the situation in Guantanamo. 780 people were detained there, out of a potential 400 million (depending on where you draw the borders).
> Nobody should be rewarded for that.
One strike, you're out? Is that the rule you judge by?
Are 780 people, of which only 8% were actually "bad", "one strike"? Not to mention even most of the "bad" ones were not tried or given a due process, and most were tortured.
I do not understand the initial statement that an 18 year old from Yemen, that they mention was preparing to start college, was "conducting research in Afghanistan", until he was arrested in February 2002. So this is research by at best a high-school kid in taliban-ruled and/or US-occupied Afghanistan, and it seems like a bizarre claim.
This article also conflicts with the birth year on his wikipedia page, according to which he would have been 22/23 in early 2002. This birth year estimate comes from the Guantanamo authorities however, so not sure whether that is very credible either.
> But in Serbia, where he lives, he is still considered a terrorist, and his ambitions have been thwarted. He has found it hard to make friends because people fear associating with him; a tabloid ran a two-page spread calling him a terrorist, and his acquaintances have undergone interrogation just for knowing him.
> He can’t get a job. He can’t leave the country, or drive. He has no healthcare. His relationship with a woman he loved ended after he was denied a travel document to visit her.
Does anyone know how or why Mansoor Adayfi ended up living in Serbia? I would have (naïvely) thought that Guantanamo prisoners would be repatriated to their homes or home countries. Does he have family living in Serbia? I also haven’t paid attention to the political situation in Serbia in recent years but it used to be within the Russian sphere of influence so I’d be surprised that the US would choose Serbia as the site of his new “prison”.
Edit: this report¹ from 2016 explains that
> Transfers have been slowed because many inmates were from war-torn Yemen, and so had to be returned to a third country that can provide rehabilitation and monitoring.
The report also seems to indicate that Serbia volunteered to “assist” the US and that that the Guantanamo detainees were being “transferred” (rather than being released). So, it seems that, despite not having ever been convicted of a crime, the torture survivors are still incarcerated under a form of “house arrest” by a third country – rather than directly by the US military.
The US didn't want to send people back to Yemen due to the "unstable" (=war zone) situation there and fears they'd (re-)join terrorist groups, but rather in places that could do some monitoring and rehabilitation (but not US soil of course!). Serbia offered to take a few prisoners on humanitarian grounds.
> He had just been conducting research in Afghanistan, and was expecting to begin college at the end of the year. Instead, he was accused of being an al-Qaida leader, kidnapped by Afghan warlords and handed over to the CIA
this is the only information information in the whole arricle about why he was sent there, and it is pretty sparse information.
If i were to put on my critical thinking media hat, this gives the impression that its not the whole story, or at least an idealized version of it.
Also its not explained his connection between Yemen and afganistan.
(this isnt to validate the practices at guantanamo, however)
It mentions that 86% of prisoners there were handed over by locals as being “suspicious” when offered very large bounties by the US Government (apparently up to millions of dollars).
The article also links to this report of an ex-Bush era official saying most detainees were innocent [1] and the ALCU has some more info and numbers [2].
I think there indeed needs to be more story to detain him but it isn't up to him to provide a defense. It is well known that Gitmo contains people without any legal instrument. Of course a state should be held accountable for imprisioning people without accusations. Although that seems to be a pattern of the United States if you look what the attorney general in Missouri does with innocents.
There probably are bad people among those imprisoned and there just isn't enough evidence to convict them. The damage they can cause isn't on the level to committing treason towards your own alleged values.
The US also has spawned a lot of defense contractors the last 20 years that now will look inward to find business opportunities if no other external threat can be summoned. That will probably not be pretty.
I don't have a link, but I've noticed that quite a few videos in the similar corner of topics need an "age check" (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI , the creator of which was (according to them) visited by DHS for "anti-american sentiments" [1] )
So glad you mentioned this, I've also noticed this. Agreed, it's scary and crazy what happened to JT Chapman/Second Thought. This 'age check' is also a pretty convenient way for Google to 'passively' create a list of people who watch "anti-american sentiment" videos.
Yea, I've been seeing this more and more on what seem from the outside like fairly innocuous vides and was yesterday accomanied by a prompt on my mobile that I 'need' to add my age.
This was mandated legally by the European Union for videos that are not suitable for minors. (I assume this one contains gore or something like that? I haven't watched it)
Great summary of events. It is sad once again that it took over a decade for the obvious to start spreading.
I remember 2001, Bush and Co throwing silly justifications to engage. At that time most people felt that we should fight terrorism where it spawns. Years later Ben laden is supposedly caught, killed, and dropped deep in the ocean far off the coast, god knows where. No trial, no question asked really. Just the releaf that the most terrorising terrorist was done for. "We got him" as Obama said.
The surrender was rejected, and the Taliban became an insurrection force we know today. We won the war in 2001, then lost it when we refused the surrender terms. We wanted to nation-build instead.
-----------
EDIT: Never turn the government of a country into an insurrection force. The Taliban, for all of their flaws, was the government of Afghanistan (or the closest thing to a government that they had in the decades before 9/11). They knew how to run their country. We didn't kill the Japanese Emperor when we won WW2, we let the Emperor live a life of dignity and remain a culturally significant icon while negotiating surrender terms.
Irony upon ironies: "Mitchell, who is retired and lives in Land o' Lakes, Florida, spends his free time kayaking, rafting and climbing.[14] He describes himself as an atheist and a supporter of Amnesty International.[10]"
Something like Guantanamo doesn't happen because two people dream it up. It happens because a gigantic organization is committed to it.
It also wouldn't have happened unless there was solid political support at the highest levels. That includes not only politicians but the parts of a democratic society that isn't necessarily directly elected, within the justice system, military and media.
The system also has been held up under multiple administrations, including one that probed public opinion enough to debate closing it only to turn around and expand it instead, which didn't make a measurable difference with voters. The last part is the key point here.
All this may sound a bit hopeless, but we know how to fix these types of inherent issues in a society, by proper application of division of power.
For sure. But I think there's value in both focusing on systemic issues, as you say, and in associating individuals with the indelible stain of their own immoral actions.
You can say that the rise of the Nazis was due to flaws in the Weimar political system and weaknesses in social institutions at that time, but you can also make sure people know the names of Eichmann and Heydrich and similar.
It was convenient that people like Mitchell and Jessen was around with the ideas they had, but even more important to know the names of are Bush and Obama. They could have ended these ideas with the stroke of a pen.
What makes this a delicate problem for the democratic institutions is that 50+% of the voters voted in Bush for a second term even in the light of the paying for prisoners and tales of torture and worse, from survivors like the three British citizens just months before the election who went on to make a movie about it.
If we still want to make sure something similar doesn't happen again, it is necessary to have a juridical institution specifically to protect human rights with the power to veto these decisions, if neither the military institutions or the democratic populace will. Otherwise history has a tendency to repeat itself.
> That includes not only politicians but the parts of a democratic society that isn't necessarily directly elected, within the justice system, military and media.
You missed money, who make up the majority of the overclass.
This also contains this amusing aside: "He also criticized Obama’s healthcare policy – a 'shit sandwich' – and his administration’s approach to global warming. Mitchell believes it’s a myth."
> Someone should interview him and see how he sees himself and his role, and does he consider himself to be a war criminal.
Sacha Baron Cohen. Seriously, Sacha's interview with Dick Cheney where he asked him to sign his waterboarding kit was pure gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmUnUoeLSIM
This is another example how the US society frankly doesn’t care. There are plenty of ways the local citizens could organize to make life hell for people like those. Yet it doesn’t happen.
Great book, it directionally aligns Progress to accountability (really accounting). After reading the book, when I am in a big city I look up at the skyscrapers and think about how despite the web of vendors and people trying to defraud each other, some small amount of value manages to get diverted into a successful skyscraper, and this is made possible by accounting. Progress is an iterative prisoner's dilemma
It's a little bit more complicated.
Because Kurnaz is a turkish citizen Turkey had been responsible for his return.
They refused and Germany did not want to admit him because his residence permit had expired and he had not renewed it during his imprisonment in Guantanamo as required. This reason was given by Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of the department responsible at the time in the Federal Ministry of the Interior and later head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution before he became the CDU's far-right candidate
I'm not sure I'd hold him responsible. He isn't the one that ordered the torture, and we don't know what he was told ( did he know the guy was getting tortured? did he know he wasn't any threat?)
That's the beauty of any complex system made by humans. The system decides, no human is responsible (except for the occasional scapegoats).
Society is built on systems and everyone submits to them. If it works for the majority, it's good enough.
The sad part is that it is possible to change the various ancient systems into something better, more dynamic, more responsive, that would work for more edge cases.
We just... don't. Few dare question the status quo and even fewer try to change it.
He was foreign minister at that point and refused to take a German citizen back, instead he left him there. Until pressure was to high, and "public opinion" wasn't that much focused on islamist terrorism anymore. In a nutshell, a low point in Steinmeier's career, and in post-WW2 German foreign policy. Not that Germany was the only country doing this kind of shit, so.
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger was less important and probably less threatened. Otto Schily instead, then interior minister of Germany, alledgedly was fearing for the security of his loved ones, caused by threats made against him.
> Otto Schily instead, then interior minister of Germany, alledgedly was fearing for the security of his loved ones, caused by threats made against him.
I never heard of this. Do you have any sources for this?
Holding the U.S. accountable for the war on terror isn't going to happen. The rest of us need to hold our own politicians accountable for collaborating with the U.S. though.
> That doesn't stop the rest of us from holding our politicians accountable, though.
So your country goes against the US, the US retaliates by stopping trade. People in your country lose jobs, people demand the govt to fix things, what is your govt going to do then?
It easy to say our politicians should be accountable, real life is more complicated though.
I honestly doubt the current U.S. administration would do anything if say, Denmark started internal inquiries about whether their politicians' decision to participate invade Iraq was made on false grounds. If they did, the EU would probably not be happy about trade sanctions.
Denmark was obviously just an example, but there are a lot of U.S. allies, trading partners and so on, that all have assisted or participated in the war on terror.
Besides, the Democrats could probably just blame it on Bush anyway.
You gave Denmark as an example, sure they can do it. Denmark's trade with US is very tiny but lets say Russian submarines start showing up near Greenland, what is Denmark going to do, they will go to NATO where you have US calling the shots.
Once Russia starts making some noise, all European countries will need US protection.
I'm amazed at how many people still see the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions as correct moves. Just last week I was having a friendly mostly non-political conversation with two of my coworkers and then the topic verged to the military and then to the Iraq wars. (For context, I'm Canadian and they're both US ex-pats in Canada.) Both had the opinion, still, that the Iraq war was the correct move at the time. But couldn't really coherently describe why. I changed the topic rather than get into a controversial argument.
I guess I find this shocking, because it feels to me like the "just cause" reasons for scenario the US got itself into Iraq have been repudiated entirely at this point and the fallout has been pretty much entirely negative and led to some long term rather terrifying dysfunctions. I feel like the arguments made by those of us who protested the onset of the war made have been proven historically correct. I struggle to understand the opposing opinion?
Afghanistan we can make somewhat separate arguments about, for sure. But Iraq... Someone on the conservative side of the spectrum, please enlighten me what the reasonable argument for justifying the past military action there is at this point...
A lot of people think it was the right move because its the move the country and the president decided to make. Never underestimate how many Americans think that by and large Americans are always the good guys and right.
The initial Iraq invasion was to enforce Kuwaiti sovereignty and stop Saddam's unilateral aggression which was destabilizing the region. We tried bribing him with aid, but he still invaded, so the U.S. kept true to their promise to enforce agreements. The U.S. helped a small country and protected its image.
The second Iraq war may or may not have been WMD based, but Saddam slaughtered hundreds of thousands of mostly Shi'a and Kurdish civilians. Saddam's badness to ease of defeat ratio was probably the highest in the world, making him an easy target. You never know what will replace a bad dictator, but I can see how it would be hard to stand by knowing the guy has killed so many and do nothing.
(Not a conservative, per se, but I try to understand all sides.)
The Second Iraq War was not based on any altruistic motive. If it was, the US would say so, instead of manufacturing evidence for WMDs. We can safely conclude that the actual reasons for the invasions are something that the US government wanted to hide.
Beyond that, the war in Iraq killed more people than Saddam Hussein's genocide, so that justification simply doesn't fly. It's complete bogus, through and through.
The people behind Iraq invasion were all part of 'Project for a New American Century' which promoted 'Pax Americana' in the Middle East, i.e. a stabilizing occupying force, probably the overthrow of Iraq and Syria.
They envisioned Iraq being a little more like Gulf States i.e. more stable, allies, and a buffer between Israel/Iran/Saudi Arabia.
And some nice construction contracts for Bechtel.
And a geostrategic signal of power.
The WMD thing was a populist narrative justification, the real motivation is literally published for all to see, it's just not what the media war was fought over.
Nobody ever fought a war for purely altruistic motives, it's unlikely the Americans were to have joined WW2 unless they were at risk themselves, but that doesn't mean there can't be motives and actions that are better than others.
Weirdly, the justification for Iraq I think would have been entirely function of historical revisionism given the success or failure. If Iraq was more stable and prosperous then 'it was the right thing to do', if the invasion was a failure, then it 'was a mistake' and that's it. Iraq has $5K/USD per capita GDP now, it has a government, elections, there's progress. Iran has a lot of control and of course Kurds are doing their own thing, but there is baseline order. 'Was It Worth It?' is another question, maybe in 50 years we can understand definitively what the real cost of finally getting rid of a Saddam-like institution was.
Yes, definitely partly, manifestation of that I believe.
But it's complicated though ... the US is a huge part in keeping up that set of dominos that is the international order. But it doesn't mix well with hyper nationalism either, and definitely not military adventurism either.
Sick of hearing these nonsense hidden reasons that are completely without merit. The reasons we went to war were very clear, 'Saddam was stockpiling WMDs and was a threat to world.'. They were wrong, they simply made a colossal mistake.
I'm sick of hearing weak US cope defending a sick crime perpetrated by know fabulators like Rumsfeld and Cheney. They ran a similar creating writing program back during the cold war, inventing the "missile gap" with similarly imaginary facts.
If you look on a map, Iraq and Afghanistan are both border states with Iran, one on either side. Do you think that's just a coincidence?
I'm not saying either was a good idea at the time, and they were both obviously bad ideas with hindsight, but it seems there was possibly a greater strategy at play.
The publicly stated reasons for going to war, and the actual reasons, are different, though obviously related.
Regular citizens generally are not going to buy into complicated arguments or vague, geostrategic issues, they often need clear, more unambiguous line of reasoning. Especially those that align with their supposed values.
The proles need to hear stories about 'Freedom' and 'Democracy' and 'Evil Tyrants' and scary things about 'Masses of Chemical Weapons'.
US leadership wanted to enter WW2 long before the American public could be convinced. It took an attack on American soil, and dead Americans to tilt public opinion.
The US used a 'False Flag' (Gulf of Tonkin) operation in Vietnam to help build public support and credibility for intervention in Vietnam.
George Bush proposed a 'False Flag' UN airplane incident apparently, an idea that was quashed.
This is the case in every war, without getting too controversial, even the US revolutionary war.
It all seems kind of Machiavellian and duplicitous, and it is, but it's also the reality of leadership in ugly scenarios. Imagine that you're the leader of a nation that really, really needs to do something that the plebes don't want to do? It's a weird kind of moral dilemma.
FYI I'm not justifying any of these decisions, just illustrating the incongruity between actual planning, and the marketing / communicating of it.
COVID is an example of that, it's a massive exercise in 'Public Communications' where the stakes are existential. What we are being told publicly i.e. the 'Narrative' isn't a lie by any means, but it's definitely designed to create outcomes.
So:
" The reasons we went to war were very clear, 'Saddam was stockpiling WMDs and was a threat to world.'. "
No, that's just what they said publicly. That's how war was 'marketed'.
Also - they used the term 'Terrorism' a lot with respect to Saddam, i.e. 'War On Terror'. Of course, Saddam was definitely not a radical religious terrorist, he was basically the opposite of that.
Everyone pushing for the war knew that the material evidence for WMD's was pretty weak.
PNAC made several publications before Bush came to power, and the public members of PNAC literally filled the White House.
Those who were against (or more Dovish) on the war i.e. Colin Powell and Condi Rice - were the not part of PNAC.
So imagine if there was this 'Think Tank X' that wanted to push for some thing, 'X' and then when Biden comes to power, more than 1/2 of his Cabinet is literally from this special 'Think Tank X' and then after 1 year, the all push hard for this 'X thing' but communicate it to the public as 'Y'?
You can hardly say it's about 'Y'.
It's about 'X', it's fairly clear.
There were 17 members of PNAC in the White House. And the President's own Brother.
It was oil control. USA now imports almost as much oil from Iraq (6% of total imports) as Mexico (7%). Iraq's oil production has doubled since the invasion. One of the first buildings secured in the last invasion was the Oil Ministry, which had more priority than museums and government offices. Whoever controls Iraq's oil, controls its wealth.
The US had no problem providing Saddam with money, arms, and biological weapons in the 80s[1], even after he used them against Iranians. And of course, the US been involved in Iran since 1953[2] when they overthrew their first and only democratically elected PM because he wanted to nationalize their oil reserves. As long as Saddam massacred the "right" people, the US fully supported him.
As far as instability, the very boundaries of Iraq were purposefully drawn so that the Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis would be locked into the same nation state and easier to control. Saddam was just one of the pawns in the great oil game the US and the western world has been playing there. The fight over access to oil - the singularly important resource that enables modern armies and economies to function - is the underlying cause of the instability in that region, and has been for the last century.
The problem is that none of those answers were provided as a reason to instigate a 2nd war and occupation of Iraq.
Its an attempted justification of a pointless war, an excuse. 'We got rid of the bad guy', If someone bombed your cities, destroyed your power and water supply while going on to occupy your country for years leading to the deaths of 100,000s, would you hail them as liberators?
As for Iraq, its completely destroyed. Saddam was peanuts compared to the unholy inferno the US brought down on Iraq. Good guys don't instigate wars and decimate cities. The US spent 100s of billions to 'fight terror'. How do you fight terror? With terror apparently.
The interest in regional stability is probably rooted in oil. The U.S. hasn't taken any captured oil fields and sold the oil for themselves, as far as I know, so I think they just want the region to be a stable, predicable marketplace for dead dinosaurs.
And blowing up major cities, destroying basic utilities like power and water and creating a situation thats lead to civil war involving factions from neighbouring countries is 'creating stability'. This is some bizarro world logic.
They already had a civil war. Saddam quelled a big uprising among Shi'a and Kurds. Unity among the Muslim factions is stronger than national unity, so your proposed consequence already existed for 1000 years.
Yeah difference being those conflicts didn’t involve raining 1000s of bombs down over major cities. The situation for civil war already existed, so the best option is to light the fuse by bombing the place and leaving a power vacuum? Not a great plan to eliminate terrorism or promote stability. It’s not hard to think of better ways to spend tax dollars and avoid the emotional toll of losing many good people.
“Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.”
Richard Perle, chair
The Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board
July 11, 2002
"Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader... and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments. The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies."
I've added a second quote that more directly addresses the question. But even the first one clearly points to the role of oil in deciding the invasion: there's no need to price the thing out because Iraq has more than enough oil to pay for any and all reconstruction itself. Of course that's going to be a factor in any invasion decision.
In any case, further quote from the second one:
> To this end, as Whitehall documents obtained by the Independent show, the US and British sought to privatise Iraqi oil production with a view to allow foreign companies to takeover. Minutes of a meeting held on 12 May 2003 said:
"The future shape of the Iraqi industry will affect oil markets, and the functioning of Opec, in both of which we have a vital interest."
> A "desirable" outcome for Iraqi's crippled oil industry, officials concluded, is:
"... an oil sector open and attractive to foreign investment, with appropriate arrangements for the exploitation of new fields."
Interesting. So just oil in a general sense but also Iraq as a destabilizing entity in the area where oil is a primary natural resource. We have to be careful not to be confused with the common conspiracy theory that the US wanted to steal Iraqi oil.
I can buy that. This also needs some context though. Meeting minutes can be seen as brainstorming ideas. Having oil is huge though- having a good natural resource cash cow helps you pay/feed your military and fund an economy- something we see Afghanistan lacked. Good point though, noted. Thanks.
> We have to be careful not to be confused with the common conspiracy theory that the US wanted to steal Iraqi oil
Under Saddam, Iraq's oil was nationalized, and most of the profits went to Iraq's government, with Chinese and Russian companies taking less than 10%. After the invasion, the US pushed for a law that would allow no-bid contracts to western oil companies[1]. It never passed because that would have been the end of Maliki's government.
So, to be fair, we wanted to steal the profits from Iraqi oil production, and secure access to the 3rd largest reserves on earth.
You are forgetting the whole part where Saddam asked/told us he was invading, and the US was silent, giving him tacit permission to invade. All to further US aims in the region. Saddam was our patsy.
I think this is a very fair answer. Additionally, the Clinton admin bombed Iraq for four days in 1998, the same year the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal broke.
You can't retroactively justify the war in hindsight on false reasoning. 'Saddam was a bad guy' is not a justification for war and occupation. If the American people were told they would need to spend 100s of billions and lose countless young lives for the sole purpose of overthrowing a dictator in a foreign country, there would have been no war.
The reasons for going to war were a lie, and claiming that the removal of Saddam was the true victory is an excuse.
> but Saddam slaughtered hundreds of thousands of mostly Shi'a and Kurdish civilians
I'm not saying that this isn't very bad, and worth stopping, but how is it different from what happens all the time on a lot of places on that region? (Is the US planning an invasion of Israel right now? I don't think so.)
Countries normally don't interfere on such things because doing it has a tendency of backfiring and making things worse than they were at the beginning. From my impression many thousands of km away, the US people mostly did held that opinion at the time, and would refuse to allow an invasion if the government didn't lie to them. Also, the WMD focus was such a blatant lie that it's impossible that anybody with any power believed it.
> Someone on the conservative side of the spectrum, please enlighten me what the reasonable argument for justifying the past military action there is at this point...
At this point? None. At that point? Well...
Saddam was playing a very subtle game. He was, on the one hand, telling the US inspectors (truthfully) that he didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. And, on the other hand, he was telling his neighbors (and even units of his own military) that he did.
In retrospect, you can say that all the intel was there to say that he didn't have them. At the time, though, when he was trying to tell his neighbors that he did? That was less cut and dried. And, after 9/11, the bias was toward "over our dead bodies are we letting someone like him have WMDs". So the ambiguity (with whatever probability mix) got resolved to "yes he does".
I mean, after 9/11, would you have accepted a 20% probability that he had WMDs? Even if you would, would the country? Would you expect the president to accept that?
> Someone on the conservative side of the spectrum, please enlighten me what the reasonable argument for justifying the past military action there is at this point...
I'd say that it's possible (quite possible) to be conservative and to be against foreign adventures. It's probably better to view a country as being occupied by multiple cohorts of political thought, one of which is a ruling class that likes to play Risk.
That ruling class has shifted party allegiance and probably will do so in the future.
In any case, from my uninformed armchair, it seems pretty obvious that it's easier to run foreign policy by attempting to influence the existing dictator (whether it's in Iraq or Libya or Syria) rather than install a new one with the attendant cost in blood and treasure.
Maybe because it's fun to cheer on a TV war from a barstool (USA! USA!). The early parts of a war, especially when fighting an incompetent enemy, make for great entertainment.
Western countries aren't ruthless enough to really win wars in the Third World. They should think less like Rome and more like Byzantium. But those opening scenes look amazing.
I can't answer your question though, so I'll leave it at that. Maybe it's the wrong question. Probably best to ask simply for 'people' who supported regime change as opposed to a straightforward trackdown and punishment of guilty parties.
For instance, at this point I'd probably place George Bush at the progressive end of the political spectrum, or at least as an ally. A lot of people have changed their seating position in the last five years.
As usual, James Howard Kunstler has an opinion regarding Afghanistan, a person could argue that the shadow of the CCCP looms over the US. History doesn't repeat, it rhymes:
please look up the 'neocons' and how they got started. Around the time of 911, neocons got a lot of (emotional) support from regular conservatives, but in general, this is not a conservative ideology.
Saddam Hussein was a pariah and was no longer a convenient leader to have around in such a volatile region. It would have been political untenable to support him and potentially dangerous to leave him around. If he started to get desperate or his weakened status allowed another actor to gain significant sway with in the region then there could be wider regional issues.
Now with hindsight we know the region became massively more volatile and is even more a collection of fractured and nearly failed states.
Could a strategy have been developed to remove Saddam and encourage a less dangerous Iraq, seems doubtful as it really sounds like it would always be a gamble. And could it have been done while being lead by government that's in a 4 year election cycle, very doubtful, need quick action to get that sweet re-election after all.
For the record I was not a supporter of the war. Nor am I from the USA :)
The original justification famously turned out to be complete nonsense, but Iraqi citizens are better off today than they were in 2002. That came with a huge cost, mostly born by Iraqi citizens, but it is true.
That is absolutely not true at all. Dropping bombs on things does not make them better. Large cities that were home to millions of people were bombed, vital utilities like power and water were 'taken out' for strategic purposes. Airports were destroyed, hospitals and schools accidentally bombed. The country fell into civil war. There are still many places that lack basic utilities like running water that existed prior to the 'liberation'. It is still a powder keg of factions fighting that include soldiers from neighbouring countries who have crossed the border.
I think the honest answer is that, like most claims about others, it's true for some, but probably not for all.
It's hard to make the claim that every Iraqi is better off. That claim is obviously baloney.
But we can say that some are better off. It's clearly debatable by reasonable people whether or not a war was needed to make that group of people better off? Trying to be objective myself, I'm willing to concede it may not have been. But others might disagree.
Strongly against gitmo on every level, but good luck getting anyone accountable on the matter.
Within the US , the corresponding laws have been passed prior to action, so it's "legal".
For other countries, all they can do is issue an arrest warrant, which will never be respected by the US government, unless someone radically different assumes POTUS position some day.
Interesting that the guardian is reporting on this as if their very own government consists of angels and saints on these matters.
> Interesting that the guardian is reporting on this as if their very own government consists of angels and saints on these matters.
It's The Guardian US reporting about the United States. The Guardian UK is also generally very critical of the UK government, so I don't get your point. You don't need your government to be made of saints to criticize war crimes.
The leaders who sell us and the world on these terrible interventions need to have a personal stake in their outcomes. If they want to nation-build, they should have to move themselves and their families to the new nation. If they want to topple a government, they should have to live in the capital afterwards. No more ruining the world and walking away rich afterwards.
The same goes for our business leaders, by the way. Personal results should align with the business and social results. There shouldn't be wealthy Purdue pharam execs or McKinsey consultants after oxycontin wrecked the health of Americans.
> Adayfi has huge sympathy for the guards who lived through Guantánamo with him, even though they played nasty tricks on the detainees – carting them around in aircrafts telling them they were going home, only to subject them to further interrogation; hiding their correspondence from their families; and throwing their Qur’an in the toilet.
> “We were all following orders, we were all victims of the same machine,” he says.
I guess the important question is that who is going to hold US accountable and make sure that the resolution is carried out. IMO there is no other powerful entity in the world to impose restrictions against US yet.
Unfortunately the article is only about Guantanamo and the human rights abuses committed there on people who were largely innocent (which is bad enough, of course), but not about the wider failures of the "war on terror", the most current of which is the appalling way in which the so-called democratic administration and army of Afghanistan has failed after the NATO withdrawal. I suspect there were similar mechanisms at play there as with the way suspects were "recruited" for Guantanamo...
Meanwhile the US knew fully well that the Taliban would claim power over Afghanistan if they withdrew their military.
The US behaves like a deranged abuser in a codependent relationship. Destabilise the region, exploit it, nurture dependence on western military and then abruptly leave.
The TV series Always Sunny In Philadelphia did a skit on this, its called the DENNIS system.
These kinds of comments detract from the horror of the crimes in Guantanamo. It reminds me a bit of when Americans opposed to mask mandates liken them to having to wear yellow Stars of David.
Guantanamo detainees were tortured with stress positions, sexual abuse (including simulated rape), simulated executions (including being taken out to sea and told they would be thrown overboard), held in cold rooms, and told their family members would be arrested and put in prison.
This includes detainees who were later exonerated.
In comparison, Assange has been...in British custody pending the results of an extradition hearing? While contesting credible (be they right or wrong) charges of rape?
There's something deeply unjust in making this a discussion about Assange.
> This includes detainees who were later exonerated
That's one way of putting it. It would be more accurate to say for the vast majority of the detainees, there was never any tangible proof of crimes and they were fully innocent.
According to the UN Assange has undergone continuous phycological torture [1]. I know the US considers phycological torture as enhanced interrogation tactics but the UN sees it as torture.
To paraphrase @popehat, this is just how federal prisons are. (OK, I don't know how such prisons are in the UK, but presumably they're bad.)
That's a Bad Thing, for sure. But I suspect most of Assange's fans aren't upset about the treatment of Assange because they oppose the carceral state; it's because they're fans of Assange.
In other words, if you say "I'm opposed to the conditions of Assange's detention", I suspect you're not saying you oppose the normal conditions of legal detention--which perhaps you should--but, rather, that you are opposed to the fact that those norms we happily apply to millions are being applied to Assange.
From what I've found, the UK in particular is not in a huge position to throw stones given the standards of their prisons result in this being yet another area where they're a sort of mini-USA. But e.g. the Swedish system would be better.
Agreed! I wish more people would focus on that, instead of being focused on one particular prison resident (and far from the most sympathetic, in my view).
I think it provides a worthwhile perspective as to the motivations of the US and what actions it considers to be important enough to put non-trivial effort and resources towards the pursuit and punishment of.
ie. Not the doing of the things, but the public revelation of the doing of the things.
I think it's entirely pertinent to the discussion.
> I think it provides a worthwhile perspective as to the motivations of the US and what actions it considers to be important enough to put non-trivial effort and resources towards the pursuit and punishment of.
"The US" is not a monolith. Guantanamo--both the rapid expansion and ingestion of likely-innocent bystanders and the torture program--was an effort of the Bush-era Defense Department, specifically with high-level support from Donald Rumsfeld and legal cover from the Office of Legal Counsel (John Yoo).
The Assange extradition was a project of the Obama-era Justice Department. It's hard to see any commonalities (in terms of goals or decision-making) at the implementation level, and whatever else you think of Assange, the US's extradition requests have, essentially, followed both international norms and American and international law.
You can try to see some sort of historical through-line here about American imperialism (and you might be right), but, as with my above analogy, that's like saying "the Star of David analogy is pertinent because it relates to the abuse of government power." At a sufficient abstraction that's true, but it still doesn't shed a lot of light.
The "War on Terror" line runs directly through Guantanamo and Assange, and I see a definite a consistency of US foreign policy across all the administrations involved throughout.
The biggest change I've seen in the last 20 years is the recent (sudden?) withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
To be clear, I don't think you're wrong, I think we're just coming in at different angles of subjectivity, and the above is just how I see it from where I am.
Thanks for clearly explaining your perspective. I appreciate clearly explained counter-arguments to my, sometimes backed by overly-dramatic language, opinions :)
This implies the US population being held responsible because the US is a democratic nation.
The idea is, every 4 years the highest position of governance is put on a trial and the population votes if they approve or disprove the way things are done and reconsider alternatives.
Besides the 4 year period for the evaluation of the highest ranking officers, there is an ample opportunity for direct intervention through other elections and NGOs.
The burden is on the US citizens but other nations holding the US nation accountable is unrealistic. The Germans were held responsible for Hitler but they lost an open war to a greater power. The US is not facing such a power.
Whatever happens is up to the US internal politics and the culture of the US nation. The best the external powers could do is to push for events that change the US populations feelings, thus affecting the judgement of the periodic reviews.
>Whatever happens is up to the US internal politics and the culture of the US nation.
If only the US would live by that when looking at other countries. Sanctions, embargos, trade-restrictions, threats are used against other countries by the US, why should they be treated any different themselves?
Because US is hegemon and can essentially do as it pleases without immediate consequence. This is why Russia and China have been focusing on destabilizing the US and minor geopolitical moves to chip away as opposed to directly challenging US authority.
The US is powerful and can do that. Well, at least up to some extend but even then it turns to be ineffective but as we see with the recent developments.
because for the US, to sanction basically any country is a blip on their economy, but for any other country, indeed blocs of countries to reciprocate that means not only losing your second or third largest trade partners but also shutting you economy off for electronics, software, international financial services, etc
> This implies the US population being held responsible because the US is a democratic nation
Such "proposal" is completely irrational. Proposals must be defensible, irrational ideas are not universally defensible.
One is not responsible for other people's choices, and cannot be held responsible for other people's (or coinhabiting peoples') choices, nor for the barbaric systemic faults that hinder the ideal implementation of a political system.
"Key figures must be held responsible" is the highest rated opinion right now. It's fascinating how nation denies responsibility for the actions of the freely and democratically elected officials, which are the very same key figures that "must be held responsible".
For some reason, people with option to choose and change their representative claim that they cannot be held responsible for the actions of their representatives.
What's irrational on holding a population responsible for the choices they make? I see statements but no reasoning that would explain the irrationality of holding the electorate responsible for the actions of the elected. Care to explain?
> people with option to choose and change their representative
> holding a population responsible for the choices they make
> holding the electorate responsible
That option does not exist for individuals, mrtksn. The "people" on an abstract level do, but the "people" does not exist. John exists. The population does not make any choice; it does not exist: Jane exists. The electorate is not a person.
The irrational way you used is to work on abstractions without having vetted your idea against real reality. To which purpose one may make non existent entities "responsible"? The thought cannot stop there. You kept the idea floating, since having brought it to immediate consequences would have debunked it - it must not have been kept afloat by reason.
If a sensible idea to make this virtual "people / population / electorate" fairly and justly face these mysterious responsibilities, keeping firm that Jack is completely innocent of the choice of his neighbours (nor of the perversions in the established choice itself, nor of the system in which all takes place), exists, I am very curious. To blame it on "all" without blaming it on Jill, still keeping out of the meaningless thin air of ideas - this would be an impressive feat.
Populations are often held responsible for the choices they make. That's how history books talk about Romans, Greeks, Ottomans etc.
It's true that individuals in specific populations don't face the consequences that a population faces but they do face the immediate outcomes. Sometimes those outcomes are good for them, sometimes bad. For example, Europeans are facing the consequences of the chice they made with their support for the interventionism in Africa and Middle east. For example, Richard from GB faced the consequences of his votes by loosing access to EU's market as a result of influx of refugees due to interventionist politics creating these refugees.
That doesn't mean that somebody held them responsible, they will be held responsible in the history. History is written quickly these days. This time, it might have actual consequences for being held responsible just like it had consequences for the Germans.
History books may use rhetoric and formulate expressions as if «populations made choices». But since really populations do not make choices, one should avoid throwing in one's mind abstractions before translation to the literal truthful statements, for mental hygiene.
It was not the European population to put presence in the MONA, not Richard's brother, who even voted against, to cause brexit: they are not responsible.
Surely history will act with stochastic determinism, creating maybe an aura that one may romantically depict "as if responsibility" - but in a future wave of damages involving the real Tom and Dick, they will most probably be innocent. What they could have done to prevent facts is minimal. Let us just be careful in spreading slogans that weaker minds may take literally - it would be an damage against a very real mental collectivity, more and more people seeing the false instead of the truth, using bad intellectual keys with collective consequences.
In fact, the chief thing one is responsible for in these matters, is the ongoing effort towards cultivation and refined intellectual discrimination and judgement. Little, or much less, can be done for the neighbour - surely let us not pollute his mind.
Again on the specific point:
responsibility means that somebody should respond with consequence to some event, in fairness and justice.
-- Officer Greene is a policeman. He may kill an innocent in action. He is responsible. In case of incident, he will be investigated, there may be consequences on his career, reputation, freedom etc. That "Officer Greene is responsible" is true and meaningful, makes sense, to an easy interpretation of the statement.
-- The team of Mr. Browne organizes business continuity in an office. They are responsible. In case of incident, they will act and be judged for it, as their good or bad work prevents or causes losses etc. That "Mr. Browne's team is responsible" is true and meaningful to an easy interpretation of the statement.
-- If one stated that "the people are responsible for the action of the elected", an interpretation should be provided that makes the statement true and meaningful. Good luck with it, if anyone wanted to tackle it - I do not see it easy, nor possible.
More importantly: Trump negotiated that release without consulting the Afghan government last year, while also setting a May deadline for US forces to leave.
The Taliban used that as a recruitment call. We're months late on the original timeline, and they knew we were leaving last year. Of course the Taliban would surge in this timeframe.
The question now is: is it worth to counter-surge to hold back the tide? It seems like the overwhelming opinion is that we should leave, so we're leaving.
The US failed to create the cultural change that would allow Afghanistan to be a westernised democracy. That’d take decades of building schools and hospitals and teaching every kid those western values until there is nobody who remembers the Taliban.
Sadly, it looks like this was never the plan. At least, some people profited from weapon sales.
The Bush administration did plenty of damage in the first two years. (Although by all accounts, he was largely rubber-stamping the initiatives of his VP and "advisers".)
You also shouldn't forget to hold the other powers to account that made it impossible to have peace in Afghanistan.
Russia put out bounties on US soldiers, Iran armed the Taliban, Pakistan sheltered them and I'm sure China had their fingers in there just as well.
The Taliban have never been the legitimate, much less the benevolent government of the Afghan people. If you've seen "The Handmaid's Tale" you have a general idea of what happened in the 90's and is going to happen there again.
The article you are referring to actually says the story is probably true, but that the confidence of the intelligence community in this finding is only "weak to moderate".
The much bigger problem was that Trump said outright this story is fake, instead of holding Putin's feet to the fire or getting behind the issue at all.
If every US president held Russia’s feet to the fire when the CIA had “weak to moderate” intel we’d be banging two rocks together for fire because WW3 would’ve happened already.
Because while trump was increasingly trying to isolate Russia for its bad behavior comrade Biden rolled over in his first meeting and removed a bunch of restrictions.
The story wasn’t that “Russia had a bounty on US soldiers” instead it was “Trump knew that Putin put out a bounty on US soldiers” neither story is true but you only really care about the second one because OMB.
The point is your crocodile tears are a sad excuse for caring.
Our allies in the Gulf States are also responsible too
> Several Afghan and US officials have long accused several regional governments including Pakistan, Iran and Russia of giving financial aid to the Afghan Taliban, a practice they frequently deny.
> Private citizens from Pakistan and several Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are considered the largest individual contributors.
> Although impossible to measure, these sources of funding clearly provide a significant proportion of the Taliban's revenue, and according to experts and officials could be as much as $500m a year.
> These links are long-standing. A classified CIA report estimated in 2008 that the Taliban had received $106m, from foreign sources, in particular from the Gulf states.
That was BS. It's amazing what you find out when people are actually under oath. It was likely an intelligence "leak" to keep us in Afghanistan. These are the same organizations that tried successfully to convince us of "WMDs." I'm not sure why people continue take what they say at face value anymore, especially the news.
The Department of Defense (DOD), in testimony in July 2020 to the House Armed Services Committee by General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, said that U.S. defense intelligence agencies had no information to corroborate reports of a Russian bounty program in Afghanistan[37] and lacked evidence of "cause and effect linkages to a Russian bounty program causing U.S. Military casualties."[5][38]
Citing credible unnamed sources, on June 26, 2020, The New York Times reported on a Russian military program to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan.[17] Two days later, The Washington Post reported that the bounty program had resulted in the death of at least one U.S. soldier.[16]
Has there been any legitimate, benevolent government there in living memory? Perhaps they're simply better off with a king, much like the frogs in Aesop's tale.
I'm opinionated in the sense that the only "legitimate" government would be one that is chosen democratically and acts in a particular manner.
And I'm particularly not saying that there is or must ever have been some particular "legitimate government" for every piece of land. I'm just saying that when the US went in and kicked out the Taliban, they definitely weren't making things worse from a lot of perspectives. They ultimately weren't able to solve all the problems, but that is a different question. The 20 years have largely been better than the years under Taliban rule.
IIRC, historically, the tribal settlements in the country never had a ton of interaction with each other due to the terrain. I think it's a great example of modern borders not making much sense given the interactions of the population.
There have often been buddhist, muslim and other kingdoms or larger military organizations in power in Afghanistan.
It's not that the borders don't make sense, it's that the area as a whole is hard to rule and it's hard to pay for that ruling. Currently one could argue that the medieval kind of "political technology" used by the Taliban is superior to the democratic political technology, for this very reason.
Re-watched the video I was misremembering, and they're iterating exactly what you mentioned. I learned more about Afghanistan from this than anything in the news for the past two decades -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y
Also the win condition of the government and government forces was to keep order in all of Afghanistan, guarantee the rights of women, and generally promote economic progress.
The Taliban's win condition was basically to inflict just enough damage the former condition would be impossible. Their troops are not far removed from criminals themselves: they loot, rape and torture.
No, there weren't. The one king which ran off to Italy was somewhat moderately legitimate, and moderately popular, but not enough to survive having his key people assassinated, nor to gain meaningful foreign assistance (USA denied his plea to save his ass from communists.)
It were Britishers who started this mess 140 years ago, and they must be the ones to fix this.
Then the city states go fight each other. Or somebody assembles a large enough militia to loot one city after another. Or multiple city states band together and lord it over others.
> The Taliban have never been the legitimate, much less the benevolent government of the Afghan people. If you've seen "The Handmaid's Tale" you have a general idea of what happened in the 90's
That is because the USA armed and bankrolled the jihadists who overthrew the secular, left-leaning PDPA in the 1980s. Here is Ronald Reagan with the jihadists in the White House
It's inane for Americans to arm a jihadist insurgency against a left-leaning secular government, and then tear their vestments in some feigned moral superiority that the jihadists would take over the country thirty years later.
> That is because the USA armed and bankrolled the jihadists who overthrew the secular, left-leaning PDPA in the 1980s. Here is Ronald Reagan with the jihadists in the White House
> It's inane for Americans to arm a jihadist insurgency against a left-leaning secular government, and then tear their vestments in some feigned moral superiority that the jihadists would take over the country thirty years later.
It's weird that you wouldn't mention this important context:
> The foundations of the conflict were laid by the Saur Revolution, a 1978 coup wherein Afghanistan's communist party took power, initiating a series of radical modernization and land reforms throughout the country. These reforms were deeply unpopular among the more traditional rural population and established power structures.[56] The repressive nature of the "Democratic Republic",[57] which vigorously suppressed opposition and executed thousands of political prisoners, led to the rise of anti-government armed groups; by April 1979, large parts of the country were in open rebellion.[58]
> The communist party itself experienced deep internal rivalries between the Khalqists and Parchamites; in September 1979, People's Democratic Party General Secretary Nur Mohammad Taraki was assassinated under orders of the second-in-command, Hafizullah Amin, which soured relations with the Soviet Union. With fears rising that Amin was planning to switch sides to the United States,[59] the Soviet government, under leader Leonid Brezhnev, decided to deploy the 40th Army across the border on 24 December 1979.[60] Arriving in the capital Kabul, they staged a coup (Operation Storm-333),[61] killing General Secretary Amin and installing Soviet loyalist Babrak Karmal from the rival faction Parcham.[58] The Soviet invasion[nb 1] was based on the Brezhnev Doctrine.
At this point it's history: because China borders with Afghanistan and has a primary interest in the stability of the region.
Wang Yi (the Chinese Foreign Minister) last July met in Tianjin a delegation of nine members of the Taliban.
He promised support in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and asked them to interrupt links with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, accused to have perpetrated attacks in the Xinjiang. For Beijing, some Jihadist Uiguri would be affiliated with the organization.
Wang promised to make the country part of the new Silk Road, contributing with infrastructure investments (motorways, hydroelectric energy, ...). This would prevent social, political and terrorist instability, while saving an unpleasant military action.
Saying China is as impartial as Japan, German, and Italy when it comes to foreign affairs involving the US is either incredibly naive or disingenuous. It doesn’t itself prove Chinese involvement, but there’s a clear history of tension between the American and Chinese governments.
they could have won the war in 2 years instead of losing the war in 20. all they had to do was target the taliban leadership in pakistan instead of their foot soldiers in the vast mountains of afghanistan.
"The Taliban has fought against the US and the Kabul state for two decades in the face of casualties that would have shattered the morale and recruitment of almost any other army. The Vietnamese communists are the only parallel I can think of – and indeed, the Taliban may have learned the importance of discipline and organisation indirectly from communism.
There are provinces in Afghanistan where five Taliban governors in a row have been killed – and yet a new volunteer for the position has always stepped forward. This marks a striking contrast with all previous religiously inspired Pashtun tribal uprisings, which grew rapidly but also collapsed quickly after the first major defeat."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.1...
interesting that even the North - ethnically different, ie. Uzbeks, led by General Doustum, and which has been anti-Taliban for decades - fell without fight, and Doustum had to run into Uzbekistan. According to Nur, the [former] Governor of Balkh, (translation of translation) "it was a deep and widespread treason as all the government objects and forces were just simply transferred to Taliban".
Will not, because that makes US (or specifically Biden's admin) looks weak, not good when the theme of the new admin is "America is back!". I even consider the possibility of next conflict will be higher, US needs to shed its "Vietnam syndrome" swiftly and they need some quick victory similar to the 1st gulf war.
Fun fact: propaganda used to be a morally neutral term [0], which we now call "public relations", after the word took on connotations with Nazis and Soviets. Everyone who is advocating for a policy, moral position, etc., is putting out "propaganda"; by any objective measure, MLK and Thomas Paine were extremely effective propagandists, and we (rightly) celebrate them for it.
The real question is, what one is advocating for, and whether one does so honestly. And while there are certainly circumstances for justified violence, "antiwar" seems like a pretty good thing to advocate for, all else being equal. And I fail see any blatant dishonesty or bad faith in this piece, whatever the shortcomings might be of The Guardian or the mainstream press in general.
While the fairy tale of WMDs was a multiyear effort the US has undertaken, first and foremost as a response to 9/11, Saddam was painted as the leader harboring terrorists and aiding public enemy number one, Osama Bin Laden and his then suddenly sprung into public attention group called Al Qaeda.
It's only later on that Powell was sent on a mission by Bush/Chaney/Rumsfeld to tug on the world's and American's heart strings by producing laughable evidence of WMDs. Not dissimilar to how they sold the original Iraq War with babies in incubators being thrown.
During that first year and all the way to March 2003, endlessly bush has used 9/11, and anybody who is 'harboring terrorists' cough cough Saddam Hussain cough cough to justify anything and everything America wanted to do. And Americans stood behind him, blind and proud with our American flag.