Take small steps to make the world a better place, helping your neighbors, and you can take a stand against entropy.
"War on terror" is just a ugly concept and not one that seem to work.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/911-civili...
Oh and something that does not get too much attention, either:
the taliban back then only refused to hand over Bin Laden without evidence presented, that he indeed was responsible, which at that time was not at all clear. And even till date, there never was a proper criminal investigation and court ruling about it all. Probably because of the Saudi connections.
Most of them killed by the same people the US targeted. Funny how all responsibility is always given to the West even when the people doing the killing are their enemies.
>the taliban back then only refused to hand over Bin Laden without evidence presented
Also after he publicly confessed, not to mention his previous crimes. Their refusal had nothing to do with 'evidence'.
It's barely ever given to the west, and never in major media. And when someone in an anonymous internet comment dares suggest we might be morally accountable for vast amounts of innocent deaths - a trifle of a blip of a nothing in the discourse - we can count on certain people getting their feewings hurt and becoming overly defensive. "I'm always being accused!" cried Tony Soprano.
> No one knows with certainty how many people have been killed and wounded in Iraq since the 2003 United States invasion. However, we know that between 184,382 and 207,156 civilians have died from direct war related violence caused by the U.S., its allies, the Iraqi military and police, and opposition forces from the time of the invasion through October 2019. [1]
[1] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/ir...
It was a 24/7 talking point by everyone on the left politically from the day the US invaded Iraq until the day Bush left office. Across all forums, anywhere a comment could be posted.
Google: "nytimes iraq death count" or "nytimes bush iraq civilian deaths"; or any number of dozens of variations on that same premise.
You must have missed the endless media parade about the Bush death count, and deaths from drone strikes. The headlines and discussion were everywhere across social media, mainstream media, on blogs.
You must be kidding, or never ever read any major Western media.
> And when someone in an anonymous internet comment dares
Oh no. Someone disagreed with you on the internet. It's horrible even thinking about this. Nobody should ever be victimized like this.
War introduces a lot of entropy into nations. It is the ultimate dice roll in terms of outcomes. You are taking a gamble. And history would suggest that civilians suffer hugely whatever the political outcome. If we know that then how can we shut our eyes to that effect?
That just sounds crazy given that our first retaliation for 9/11 was Iraq. Which had nothing to do with 9/11, and further...no "WMDs".
The first retaliation for 9/11 was not Iraq. That's a really bizarrely inaccurate claim.
The US invaded Afghanistan and removed the Taliban from control of the country by the end of 2001. Operation Enduring Freedom launched in October 2001.
The Iraq invasion was 2003.
The US initially sent its special forces into Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 to work with the Northern Alliance to route the Taliban and pursue bin Laden, and then invaded.
Source?
Bin Laden initially declined responsibility, saying his hosts the taliban, would not allow such a operation.
(surely not out of being nice, but because of wanting to keep the power)
And later (after he confessed) the US was on full war with the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden not with them anymore.
I'm referring to that, not to his preinasvion evasion.
The Taliban didn't even cut relations with him or his associates after he confessed, and they were not without influence in AfPak.
Surely the Taliban should have been very upset with their 'guests' for getting them involved in Al-Qaeda's war, right? Unless the Taliban knew from the start... Obviously they did, since this wasn't Al-Qaeda's first attack against America.
As I wrote, there's little reason to give any credence to their not knowing, and even if we did, there were plenty of other things they should have given up Bin Laden for.
I am pretty sure, they were upset and maybe there were actual heads rolling behind the scenes. But on the outside, they had the US as common enemy. An enemy that hit them both as hard as he could, without making any difference.
So of course at that time, talking about extradiction was over.
But the Taliban while at power did made the civic offer to extradict Bin Laden, if presented with evidence.
So of course, it is not sure, if they actually would have done it. Maybe they would have ended in a civic war by themself over it.
But we never knew, because the US choose to go the brutal way. No evidence. No extradiction. Just war.
Now 20 years later with the Taliban back in power and stronger than ever, I can just say, awesome outcome with this approach.
No evidence of it, and I find this entire debate odd.
Again, the Taliban hosted a terrorist group which had publicly declared war against America, and launched known attacks - all this well known before 9-11. What did anyone expect this public antagonist group to do? Play volleyball?
If someone hosted a group called "Death to X" and the group predictably attacked X, that someone shouldn't get to claim innocence. Especially not after the nth attack!
>Now 20 years later with the Taliban back in power and stronger than ever
A completely predictable result of the ideological way the retreat was done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud#Assassinati...
A different way to think about it: what if individuals independently taking small steps in only sufficient to maintain the status quo? What if the true state of reality is that something larger is needed, and is possible, but will never come to be because we never even tried to find it?
In times of crisis, it's the local network that will support you, not the federal government. As much as we've been told to embrace individualism over the past century, we're still a cooperative species and will default to cooperation when things turn bad.
If you want to see how well top-down nation building works out, ask the Afghans. The reason the new government never took hold was that there was no political will to address corruption so the old system still endured in local bonds and power structures. You can't have structural reforms without addressing root causes.
Only for a given subset of implementations (ones that require billions of dollars). Also: there are many billions of dollars looking for a place to be deployed, so it's not even a hard stop either, only a major difficulty.
I suspect there are other barriers in the mix that are a bit harder to see though (for some, at least), and may also have very powerful active defence measures that are maintained and improved on an ongoing basis.
> In times of crisis, it's the local network that will support you, not the federal government. As much as we've been told to embrace individualism over the past century, we're still a cooperative species and will default to cooperation when things turn bad.
I very much agree, and this is only one of many ~base-capabilities that ship as defaults from the factory. Perhaps one could make use of these services if one could reverse engineer their behavior, and discover the various API's that must be called.
> If you want to see how well top-down nation building works out, ask the Afghans.
This is but one example (therefore, not scientific thinking - the best kind of thinking...or so "they" say).
> The reason the new government never took hold was that there was no political will to address corruption so the old system still endured in local bonds and power structures. You can't have structural reforms without addressing root causes.
110% agree. So if one was to dig down into the infinitely complex causality, deeper and deeper, what plausibly most important root cause(s) might one find at the very lowest levels?
Please. This is just going to create more toxic conversation and politics. Can we just focus on 9/11 victims and mourne peacefully? Rest of the top level comments here are sharing stories about their personal experience. I know you mean well but its the wrong place to bring this up.
Instead all we got was 60 words in 2001 followed by that lousy PATRIOT Act, two decades of drone strikes, several case studies in failed nation building, and then for Covid a president pushing ineffective treatments and ridiculing medical experts.
Yes, it's insulting. But not because it's untrue but because it's hurtful.
How can you help the people who dont want vaccines? Are you going to force them to have it?
If it were for me super markets should be mask only anyway. I hate old people and kids running around coughing at everything I maybe would have wanted to eat. Even before covid
Wait, so have you been wearing masks before Covid to protect other people who cannot be vaccinated for flu and other respiratory diseases?
If not then you are a hypocrite.
But yeah since I catched a bad case of regional flu in the Airport of Kuala Lumpur about 8 years ago I do wear masks in some situations. Especially when I feel sick but have to go out.
So you dont follow your own advice by not wearing a mask when you are not sick and yet you expect others to do what you say. What is that saying "do as i say not as i do"