How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Everything since then has been ridiculous. Getting in bed with heroin-shipping warlords because they were anti-Taliban? Not that the Taliban got over $100 million from the USA in 1999-2001 for opium poppy eradication efforts, which were quite successful, although TAPI pipeline talks didn't go as well in this period.
The whole 'Special Forces' fetishization is also pretty ridiculous. The best of the best of the best, la-dee-dah. Lots of nightime raids, which only pissed off the local population and made them quite willing to hand over power to the Taliban without a fight this year. Didn't 'US leaders' learn that from Vietnam? If the locals all hate you they're not going to support your remotely installed puppet government.
Oh, and the "Afghan Army Training Program" - at a cost of something like $10 billion to train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members who'd be the nucleus of the new independent government... all that cash just went into Dubai bank accounts, didn't it? Or McMansions in Kabul. Gross blatant corruption (and the 'infrastructure projects' oh god... for a million bucks you get a chain of ten subcontractors backed up by one guy digging a ditch with a worn-out shovel... get used to it, that's coming here now).
American foreign policy in the 21st century - what an absolute disaster. Reminiscent of say, France and Britain in the Middle East from oh 1945-1954. Similar long-term results are to be expected.
That would _not_ be a good justification to wage a war, but I think the actual casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction – later found to be non-existent. 215 Republicans and 82 Democrats voted for this. They paved the way for a war of aggression… and I seem to remember that Americans have previously hanged foreign politicians for precisely that.
Edit: Misread above comment and thought he was talking about Iraq. Point still stands, though.
Afghanistan War was 2001. Iraq War was 2003. Your history is off by about 1.5 years.
That's not entirely true. They wanted to negotiate his extradition. As any sovereign nation would.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
US have an excuse all the time, surprisingly, people who represent educated segment don't either want to look to other side, I remember Taliban tried to have a negotiation with US, they tried to get their voice heard in western media, but failed, because everyone was blind sided, no one wanted to hear them and US anyway launched attack, 20 years later, everything is even more fucked up over there.
Now we should be really worried if there are other extremist groups are training and planning another attack soon, this time everyone would know US don't have a justification and obviously will fail again. (I don't remember if US won any war recently? Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan all are in trouble, all of the wars are started wrongly)
Taliban were protecting Bin Laden, period. Their official stance on the subject is clearly false, and they were willing to go to war to provide sanctuary to Bin Laden. The main worry was that any such delays at this point would give Bin Laden more room to get away (and Bin Laden did escape: all the way to Pakistan).
So if anything, we should have pursued Bin Laden even more vigorously back then. The Taliban were successful in buying enough time for him to hide with their false diplomacy.
We were at least successful in destroying the Al Qaeda training centers in Afghanistan (successfully located, blown up, and dismantled). Maybe these bases will return now that we've left Afghanistan, but we at least rendered them unable to train new terrorists for the last 20 years or so (and the new Taliban regime officially doesn't want to sanction any such training sites anymore. They've got an ISIS-K problem because of it too)
But there are multiple questions which should be answered:
1. are we 110% sure that Bin Laden ordered the attack? I am not trying to defend him, but you know there are many organizations who can do that attack, including multiple organizations funded by CIA (don't forget Bin Laden was initially funded by CIA), maybe government could prevent attack but didn't prevent, because they were also interested in natural resources of Afghanistan?
2. Are we 120% sure we can capture and execute Bin Laden without civilian fatalities? if civilian fatalities can't be avoided, did we have numbers in mind, how many people will get killed?
3. Why western media didn't give enough voice to Taliban at that time? If enough people listened to them, maybe US could make public negotiation and if negotiation fails publicly, then everyone would definitely know Taliban is to blame for this war. In reality, US just said, we are super power, we can do whatever we want.
4. Are we sure war wasn't lobbied? You know, US sells lots of weapons, they sometimes need to test, are we sure that war wasn't lobbied? where did 2T$ go? Do you think all were eaten by corrupt Afghan government? even 10% of it would be 200B which would create 100 billionaires.
I am not defending Taliban or Bin Laden, just showing how decisions made was wrong and I still doubt US can make right decision. Now Afghanistan has lots of uneducated people, who lost their families, children. Do you think they would just forgive? Who can guarantee that they won't come over to US and start killing people?
Bin Laden attacked the USA in the 90s (the original twin tower attacks). Then issued a Fatwa declaring a Holy War against the USA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fataw%C4%81_of_Osama_bin_Laden).
Bin Laden's writings on 9/11 are well published, even on Western Media (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver).
There's no doubt in anybody's mind that Bin Laden was involved in 9/11.
> 2. Are we 120% sure we can capture and execute Bin Laden without civilian fatalities?
Of course not. We would have preferred for the Afghan government (aka: the Taliban) to cooperate with us. But they didn't.
> 3. Why western media didn't give enough voice to Taliban at that time?
We have Bin Laden's writings published and the Taliban's writings published. What exactly is missing from their argument that you want published?
> 4. Are we sure war wasn't lobbied?
Oh, Cheney was definitely a Warmonger. But that doesn't make the Afghan War a wrong move.
Thought it was the "other guy"..
Bin Laden made a video in '04 regarding the US presidential election at the time in which he implicitly claimed responsibility.
The problem was, real intelligence on the whereabouts of Bin Laden and Al Qaida in general was extremely rare. It was the vigorousness with which we pursued Al Qaida that helped really poison the relationship with local Afghans. You had local elites claiming that their rivals were somehow related to Al Qaida, which usually resulted in innocent people being taken into custody, tortured and/or killed. You had some legitimate leads (but often on mid-level operatives at best) that resulted in extremely risky special forces operations in remote and treacherous terrain - often resulting in both US and civilian casualties. You do this enough and people hate you, you've got an insurgency.
> We were at least successful in destroying the Al Qaeda training centers in Afghanistan (successfully located, blown up, and dismantled).
Real "training centers" were something of a white whale for the military in Afghanistan. A lot of the supposed Al Qaida "training" was taking place in Kunar and Nuristan provinces, in particularly inhospitable terrain. We'd run military operations in these remote Nuristani valleys, US troops would die, we'd almost never capture anything of value, and local people would slowly get fed up with their husbands/children/etc. getting accidentally blown up in airstrikes.
Bin Laden wrote his last will and testament on December 14, 2001, coinciding with the battle. The commandos who stormed Tora Bora were met with fierce resistance... not by Taliban, but by US Troops who refused to drop bigger bombs or deploy sufficient forces to attack the mountainous terrain.
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Donald Rumsfeld himself was worried that too many troops in Afghanistan at this time would fuel anti-American sentiment. Our problem was half-assing it in the early days of the war, when it mattered.
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/S%20Prt%20111-3...
When the Afghan forces complied with the Taliban / Al Qaeda cease fire, there was nothing for US troops to do anymore but let Bin Laden go. There wasn't sufficient strength to attack.
Perhaps intelligence on the ground was insufficient to allow a bigger military footprint at the time. But given the next 20 years of fighting and insurrection, a bit more force used in December 2001 could have prevented a lot of the force we used later.
Except in the Battle of Tora Bora, where the commanders on the ground said that the 100 troops deployed to the area were insufficient to push into a heavily fortified mountainous region.
And they're right. If those 100 troops pushed in, they would have been massacred. More troops absolutely would have helped at that time.
Plenty of airplanes dropped plenty of bombs. But the use of air-deployed land mines was not authorized, which could have also helped (GATOR mines self-detonate after 15 days, to minimize risks to the local population after battle. They are further battery-operated, and are designed to run out of battery in case the self-detonation fails)
The gloves were still on. We could have easily used more force in that battle, but decided against it.
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Traditionally, you need to outnumber your opponent 3 to 1 if you wish to lay siege to an enemy in their home territory. At some point, just raw manpower is what you need.
As you said: we dropped plenty of bombs in that battle, but bombs aren't boots on the ground. You need people there to know if the bombs are in fact hitting their mark.
Bin Laden thought he was going to die in that battle. We were close: just a little bit more would have done it.
Sure, we didn't know how close we were until afterwards. But when you consider what we did accomplish with just 100 boots on the ground + air support, it really makes you wonder what we could have done with 800 or 2000 men instead.
If you're interested in learning more, I'd strongly recommend Wes Morgan's excellent book "The Hardest Place."
Person who tried to expose what is actually happening is now going to jail, right? I am talking about Julian Assange.
No one needs such "world police", who is trying to build a democracy in other countries, but failing on pillars of democracy by putting journalist to jail in home country.
The complete abandonment of 'nation-building' Afghanistan in 2002 as all efforts shifted to invading Iraq sort of supports this scenario.
These can all 3 be true: The Taliban does not believe that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. They would hand over bin Laden if they saw credible evidence. Their bar for credibility is quite high.
There isn't high bar to cross. They've already decided what they think. That's what I mean by 'bad faith'.
I'm not going to argue for the Taliban. I have no idea whether they're good faith actors or not. Regardless, they're assholes, and I'm pretty sure, as far as I can ever be, that bin Laden is responsible.
But to be fair, "he claimed responsibility" isn't by itself iron-clad proof for anything. All kinds of people claim all kinds of false things for all kinds of reasons. We know this. The Taliban knows this. I could easily come up with a plausible, reasonable explanation why bin Laden would falsely make such a claim. You could too.
When someone rejects evidence that you find convincing, don't assume bad faith. Ask them what evidence they would accept no matter how unlikely. If they have something (e.g. "If I had a private meeting with bin Laden and he assured me personally..."), it means they just have a really high bar.
> it means they just have a really high bar.
Nope.
Truth does not require meeting everyone's bar for evidence.
Motive, Opportunity, Means, Confession. Done. Unquestionably culpable, even if only through negligence (in controlling his own messaging).
Just as the US is for various "mistakes" made in targeted attacks.
"Afghanistan's ghost soldiers undermined fight against Taliban" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564
IIRC there were complaints being published at least as far back as 2009 about that problem.
And some estimate that the number may be as high as 100,000.
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In contrast, the US sent ~110,000 soldiers at its peak (2011 surge), and lost ~7000. The Afghan Army took the bulk of the attacks by any reasonable analysis.
"Oh sir, we have suffered great casualties in our fight against the terrorists, here are the records."
No. Because the Afghan security forces would be lying to try to improve their morale.
If anything, the official death count is almost certainly an underestimate. No army likes to admit that their death rates are in the 25%+ level, when you admit such a thing, you won't be able to find recruits.
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Besides, we paid the Afghans on number of soldiers on payroll. Not on number of deaths. So the number they were corrupt on was #-of-soldiers.
If we put in mind what we know post hoc about the torture and inhumane interrogation techniques used in both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, wouldn't you agree that it's reasonable to assume that there was a high risk of torture? and isn't torture a well-accepted reason to block extradition.
In fact, let's take it even a step further in light of the fabrication of evidence seen in Iraq. The general atmosphere of hate at the time. not to mention that we now know that bin Laden not only was not tried but was thrown in a bag with the fish. How can we be so sure that he would have had received a fair trial? How would you even find an unbiased jury[1]?
Do we deem it ok to extradite someone to a place with a high risk of torture and unfair trial?
[1] - this is a rhetorical question but I'm actually curious how would one find such a jury that hasn't already made its mind?
Maybe for blocking from the UK to US, but Afghanistan legally tortured/tortures so not sure why they would care about that regarding extradition.
I don't see what's so unreasonable about handing him over to the US tbh.
Given the context of also asking for bombing to stop, that seems like they were trying to stop the US from using military pressure to force their will on Afghanistan. The deal wasn't even considered, who knows what they were actually trying to negotiate.
>I don't see what's so unreasonable about handing him over to the US tbh
History has now shown the US was willing to torture people associated with al Qaeda, and execute Bin Laden then desecrate his corpse. They were absolutely right to distrust the US there.
Afghanistan wasn't more trustworthy, the amount of trust necessary was far lower.
I think that addresses your accusation. I barely understand what you consider "utterly transparent" in my comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
I believe the above post wanted to drill down why it was hard for Afghanistan to give him over.
After that the Pakistan discussion can happen if energy exists.
When you rule the way Taliban did the idea that you're not extraditing someone because you're worried about them getting hooked up to a car battery or beaten with a rubber hose is laughable.
This is a pretty common misunderstanding by civilians. Special forces come in tiers and usually they're designated for certain kinds of work. It doesn't mean they're "best of the best", just special training that may or may not be useful in a place like Afghanistan. Historically they're used for training foreign fighters. From what I read in this article, this looks like work that line companies should have been doing.
> Oh, and the "Afghan Army Training Program" - at a cost of something like $10 billion to train and equip 350,000 Afghan Army members who'd be the nucleus of the new independent government...
I don't think that money went any conspicuous. I served in 2012, when a lot of that ANA training and colocation was going on. You're absolutely right that it was a failure. The problem was that the President was telling the American people things were going well, when in reality troops were getting shot in the back on patrol by their counterparts, people were deserting post while high on hash, and most ANA were paid over four years the equivalent of a dowery.
> Getting in bed with heroin-shipping warlords because they were anti-Taliban?
This was surprising to me when I was in country, but I get it. Most of these dudes are the equivalent of governors and own their own armies. They just didn't want to follow the Talibans rules, so "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Quite complicated, but I don't know how it'd be different.
The most ridiculous I saw from your post:
A reasonable citizen, who saw from the very beginning the ridiculousness of the whole thing, in the end, seems to suggest the whole thing should not end so abruptly?
It's a war - it's chaotic by nature.
The term used by any American imbued with the option of extrajudicial killings is only to - at best - match your pre-existing agreement with the action or your likelihood of agreeing with authority. “Justified”, for these people, does not mean “other actions were evaluated in a hierarchy and we were in a circumstance that this greater level of force was necessary” such as how a civilian is evaluated, it means “this choice was in a catalog of equally weighted choices, any of the choices including inaction would be justified”. I don’t view this as good enough, as it makes investigations and courts a waste of time and energy, when the only resolution can be to say “and now I present as evidence: the catalogue of choices that happens to list the choice taken” acquitting all.
like, a lot of support comes from evaluating each event in isolation from more neutral people, but I think even more hawkish as well as bigoted people would say "hm this is not okay for domestic or foreign policy"
> What of the many deadly, the many pestilential statutes which nations put in force? These no more deserve to be called laws than the rules a band of robbers might pass in their assembly. For if ignorant and unskillful men have prescribed deadly poisons instead of healing drugs, these cannot possibly be called physicians’ prescriptions; neither in a nation can a statute of any sort be called a law, even though the nation, in spite of being a ruinous regulation, has accepted it.
Cicero
- Special task force ordered strike. They didn't have to go through normal checks and balances because they were doing it under emergency provisions apparently due to an emergency request from arab allies on the ground.
- They claim they didn't see the civilians because they were relying on SD quality drone feed.
- The group is accused of falsifying log records afterwards.
Who is lying about the surveillance quality?
>A 5th Special Forces Group officer in the task force looked at the drone footage and didn’t see any civilians, a task force officer said. But the drone he relied on had only a standard-definition camera. Central Command said there were no high-definition drones in the area that could get a better view of the target...In fact, a high-definition drone was available. The task force did not use it.
We once had a TF call in requesting a strike on military-aged males carrying rifles. In the strike cell, we had a newer drone on station and checked out what they were calling in. I'm glad we did. With higher fidelity video, we could see that it was actually teenaged males with fishing poles. The strike request was (of course) denied. In our case, it worked out the way one would hope, but with aging equipment and poor networking, it's definitely a "there but for the grace of God go I" moment.
they need a complete reboot. rewrite the constitution (it's overdue). rebuild the democratic voting functions (they're a mess and don't work).
time for democracy 2.0
What’s your proposal? How do you find that altruistic leader, and if you find them, how do you get them elected, and if you do, how do you arrange to get them enough support in Congress?
I don’t like democracy that much, and it looks like Churchill didn’t either. But neither Churchill nor me can come up with anything better.
There have been dozens of incidents of non-combatants bombed to paste over the last decade and it seems USAF will just simply not fix what it is doing wrong.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/17/politics/kabul-drone-strike-u...
I'm still waiting for the big apology from Biden and the actual retaliation to ISIS, murdering 10 innocent people including 7 children doesn't count.
I heard from him we still had great intel and over-the-horizon capability. That seemed to be a lie.