Like another tax rebate?

To do that though would be to deny… oops, admit much of what we are and have been for quite some time. I doubt that even the rising tide of global warming will float that boat. Little effort is required to parse much of the language at the frat party in Denver [esp. from last night] to see that while a kinder gentler hand may be used, one of the great challenges facing the new admin will be to restore ‘our position of world leadership,’ and barring a series of would be miracles, all that that entails and has for quite some time. We are were the deciders.

Sigh. They matter if you think that to create an international culture of law-abidingness that will restrain governments from criminal aggression is the most important prerequisite for ensuring the continuance of our species. As long as the populations of the United States and other free societies are unaware of just how immoral and illegal their governments’ actions are and are unwilling to restrain them, the danger level will remain critical. That’s why it matters a great deal to convince the American people that their government is not only incompetent but actually criminal. It may also predispose them to support extensive reparations to our government’s victims.

I think, in light of the comments thread, maybe you want to reconsider the idea that most at CT supported the war in Afghanistan?

And there wasn’t any shortage of opposition to that war by the left in 2001 either. But more common than outright opposition were arguments that an invasion would be foolhardy and doomed —the harsh terrain in the mountains, the caves, the severe winter, the experiences of the Russians (and British before them) were all cited as reasons why it would likely end in quagmire and failure. For example:

If anything, Afghanistan could prove to be a more difficult battlefield for the United States than it was for the Soviet Union. As an environment for military conflict, Afghanistan is virtually impervious to American power. Not only does it lack the ‘’high-value’’ targets that are commonly attacked in modern warfare, it lacks almost any meaningful targets at all, unless the United States is prepared to bomb government offices and residential neighborhoods, producing many civilian casualties.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE5DB103BF933A1575AC0A9679C8B63

So the idea that pretty much everybody was on board for the American invasion of Afghanistan, is just not historically accurate.

But at this late date, the different justifications for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan matter little either for the obligations to the peoples of those countries or the broader implications of success or failure.

Luis Posada Carriles? Or any of a whole host of Latin American death squad members and enablers? The guys who mined Nicaraguan harbours? Don’t tell me that the invasion of Afghanistan was anything other than the US throwing some shitty little country against the wall. Unless you would, in principle – given that the practical possibilities are non-existent – support the military obliteration of the US state and the installation of a bunch gangster capitalists and foreign aid skimming warlords as the new rulers.

Oh, sorry, I forgot that the butchers of Latin America formed a significant part of the Bush government and circle of advisors.

“There was little option but to go in an[d] root out the whole nest.”

That’s some lovely dehumanising going on there. Fumigate the place, eh?

I don’t know John, as the sentence should continue “that was bound to kill several thousand civilians the way it was going to be implemented”. Is self-defense against terrorist attacks which killed 4,000 civilians (I’m including the first WTC bombing and the embassy bombing here) a pretty strong reason to bomb 4,000 civilians to death?

Note that I don’t necessarily oppose any possible war against the Taliban, I just knew at the time that thousands of civilians would die under NATO bombs, and this is not something I found I could disregard lightly.

1: 9/11 was not a spectacular ‘one off’ by Al-Qaeda, but was instead planned to be the beginning of a ‘rolling’ series of terrorist attacks on the US mainland.

2: These attacks were to be organised and run from Afghanistan.

Clearly both these criteria have to be met before a ‘self-defence’ argument will succeed.

But it’s not at all clear to me that even the first is correct. Where is the evidence that OBL or Al-Qaeda planned a follow up to 9/11 (let alone numerous follow ups)? And by evidence I mean serious evidence, with budgets and timetables, not evidence inferred from the idle daydreams of bored jihadis. To the best of my knowledge, all the evidence, on the contrary, is that (as far as the Americans were concerned) after 9/11 Al-Qaeda had ‘shot its bolt’ and were unlikely to be able to plan something of such complexity ever again.

2: Even if this isn’t true: what’s Afghanistan got to do with it? Notoriously, most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis. The ‘nucleus’ for 9/11 was termed the Hamburg Cell. Should ‘we’ be bombing Hamburg?

To quote Wikipedia:

‘October 14, 2001, seven days into the U.S./British bombing campaign, the Taliban offered to surrender Osama bin Laden to a third country for trial, if the bombing halted and they were shown evidence of his involvement in the September 11 terrorist attacks. This offer was also rejected by U.S. President Bush, who declared “There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty”’

Now, my understanding is (please, any lawyers should feel free to contradict me) that Bush’s words in themselves would have ensured that a free trial in the United States was impossible. Moreover, it’s not at all clear that Bin Laden is legally guilty (don’t get me wrong: I am sure he is morally guilty. What I doubt is that the strongest charges (of murder, presumably) could actually be made to stand up in court).

So, in my opinion, the Afghan government were quite right not to hand over OBL to a state that regularly tortures its prisoners.

Ergo, the war in Afghanistan was unjustified.

Any discussions of ‘how can we trust the Taliban’ without discussing the more pressing issue of ‘why should the Taliban have trusted the Americans’ are not serious.

There are claims that AQ did terrorist training in afghanistan, though they could have done that training anywhere and afghanistan was not a good place for it. More believably, there are stories that AQ trained conventional soldiers there, that they turned out infantrymen that were on a par with US Marines. (The story is that they used US Marine manuals but removed the 3/5 of the material that was not useful, cutting down the training time by 60%.) However, they were like US Marines without much artillery or air support, so we beat them fairly easily. If these stories are true, what would AQ have done with conventional infantry? Could they have infiltrated them into saudi arabia and taken over the government? We might have stopped something other than terrorism by invading afghanistan.

For stopping terrorism, dismantling the AQ financial network was probably far more important. But we won’t find out what really happened until the people who did the work feel free to tell us what they did. At the moment we have very little to go by except Bush Administration propaganda which deserves no credibility.

I’d add that the “decision to go to war” wasn’t abstract for the people of Afghanistan, who have suffered far more from this war than we could possibly have from any international terrorism that might have been prevented.

No, it was clear immediately. From Day One, the Bush administration began packing every cabinet department and regulatory agency with industry flacks, limiting access to public records, making procedures less transparent, vetting judicial and other appointees on political grounds, employing signing statements and inventing other ways to enhance Executive Branch power, etc, etc. As Lincoln Chafee has reported, Vice President Cheney met with Republican senators shortly after the election and informed them that the administration’s policy would bear little relation to its public commitments during the campaign. Cheney illegally withheld the transcript of his energy task force meeting, claiming executive privilege. There were innumerable examples during the administration’s first nine months of reckless disregard for truth, transparency, and propriety, if you were paying attention.