The Future President, Donald Trump

(fun graphic but they've excluded/left off Mr. Sanders - if there was a comment section on the article I'd have said something)

BTW, you seem to be getting partisan downvotes so I've voted you up.



Sure, and I'm not disputing a legal or moral right to have invaded Afghanistan, the only criticisms I can come up with for the decision to invade and occupy is that it likely represented a less-than-ideal strategy.

And specifically as to the claim that we just wanted Osama or we wouldn't have invaded I know we said as much but it really wasn't completely true. Just like the ultimatum to Saddam we made we were still coming in and occupying. The ultimatum was more of a "surrender while we invade" than a real opportunity to avoid the war. That's the case I'll be making.



Yes, you quoted a Taliban member saying they didn't want to turn him over but other parts from the same article make it clear that this was not a cut and dried and is more complex than you are making it out to be:



At this time, prior to 9/11 we should acknowledge that various countries had punted on Osama and how to handle him. Prior to Afghanistan Sudan claimed they offered Osama to both the Saudis (confirmed, they rejected this and didn't want him extradited there as they had stripped his citizenship) and to the US (not confirmed, though it is confirmed that the US position on this was to try to facilitate an extradition to Saudi Arabia to have them deal with it). We even refused to talk to Sudan about the matter on various occasions until he was expelled from Sudan. They didn't know where to send him and at that point it was not yet clear whether the US wanted him (or for someone else to take care of the problem). There just wasn't enough evidence of his crimes and dangers until shortly before 9/11.

The bottom line is that without the benefit of hindsight when it comes to stopping Osama before 9/11 a lot of countries were not sure how to handle it, including US. We had an opportunity to take him ourselves. The CIA (specifically agent Billy Waugh) tracked down Bin Ladin in Sudan had an operation planned to capture him that was not approved by his US superiors (probably for good reason, at that point it was not clear what if anything he was guilty of other than being an extremist).

If we really wanted Osama before then we could have had him, but the bottom line was the stuff he was guilty of before then was not yet serious enough for America to take him out. We only made half-hearted attempts to pressure countries to deny him safe haven but all of them didn't know what to do about that (send him where? Charge him for what? What was the jurisdiction and evidence). It was being prosecuted as a lower-level policing case more than a military issue at that time.

The case against him was still building then, if the US wanted to apprehend him we could have but we were going through slower extradition channels that have their own set of complications to navigate.



And the key thing to read between the lines here is that we were NOT offering to not invade Afghanistan and occupy it, the wheels were furiously already in motion. We were offering them terms of unconditional surrender as we went about it. We provided no evidence of the claim it was Osama (we did not have good enough evidence to provide yet).

They were legit scared at this point, and were open to cutting ties with Osama (they offered to provide him to a neutral third party court, "the world" or the UN or somesuch but we weren't really going to not invade no matter what they decided, we were going in and telling them they could surrender (Osama, and their power) or get killed. Once the bombing started the again offered to turn him over to a third party country but we said we were not interested in negotiating (because quite frankly we just weren't, the goal of the demand was to pacify some of the anti-war sentiment more than it was to prevent it).

It's a big of a minor bone to pick with you, not about the legitimacy of the campaign (and I certainly disagree with the "false pretenses" claim you are arguing against). But the bottom line is that at the point Bush made that demand, Afghanistan was about to be invaded and occupied no matter what the Taliban did. That was not an offer to avoid occupation, it was an offer to unconditionally surrender to it and it was going to happen anyway. Saying the ultimatum makes the war more palatable but it was intentionally a demand they could not meet and even if they had met it we would not have turned the ships around (and the special forces boots that were already about to land on the ground).

Ultimately what I'm trying to convince you that you have wrong is that the Taliban legitimately had any options after 9/11 where their country was not going to be invaded. Just like the Iraq ulitmatum where we told Saddam he had 48 hours to leave before war stared ("at the time of our choosing") and they told the Iraqi military to stand down. But what many people don't notice is that was not an offer to avoid an invasion of Iraq. It was a "we are about to invade and you can cooperate if you want."

In the Iraq case this was more explicitly stated as Bush said:

"It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor and protect your country by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attacked and destroyed. I urge every member of the Iraqi military and intelligence services, if war comes, do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life."

So sure, they could not have allowed him to enter the country and could have expelled him beforehand but then again we could have just captured him ourselves before he went there or just accepted the offers to give him to us. They bear responsibility for the persons that acted within their borders but it wasn't as unreasonable as it sounds after 9/11.

The Taliban were not the only people who got Osama wrong in hindsight, everyone did. We didn't take him seriously enough either. Once 9/11 happened nothing the Taliban could do would have stopped the invasion. We were simply telling them we are coming in the door AND to surrender, not that if they had given him up we weren't going in.

Another unjustifiably downvoted post. Not sure why anyone would argue this. It may have been unwise, there might have been better other options and those are things that reasonable people can differ on, but calling it "false pretenses" doesn't meet the smell test.

That doesn't make the invasion based on false pretenses. It does make the ultimatum at most a bit disingenuous (more designed for a domestic audience than them) but it was crystal clear to anyone closely following the situation what would happen. The war was in motion, we'd invoked our treaty with our NATO allies, we were not going to just let them hand him over and back down, we were demanding he be handed over to spare them some of the death coming their way.

I thought that was funny, but more because whoever hated Trump and did that art still has to spend a bunch of time imagining Trump's junk.

Not sure who is the winner between them there.

Your absolutism in these statements is a poor bedfellow with the extremism of the positions you advocated. You are much more reasonable when you moderate your absolutism.

The overwhelming majority of liberals obviously do not sympathize with the 9/11 attackers. Liberals are not motivated by "hatred of American freedom" they just want a different set of freedoms than you do (e.g. the freedom to live in a gun-free society vs your desire for the freedom to carry arms). Liberals do not "always try to justify the murder of innocent civilians".

These statements are absurd on their face and do your more reasonable side absolutely no favors.

I've deliberately mucked up the links as I don't support any of the sites ... but ... feeling the invasion of Afghanistan happened under false pretenses isn't a rare view

http://whatreally//happened.com/WRHARTICLES/fivelies.html

http://edition.//presstv.ir/detail/392055.html

http://www.//oonsonline.net/14674/us-invasion-of-afghanistan-based-on-false-pretense/

http://the//rebel.is/en/forum/afghan-war-based-on-false-pretense

http://www.loon//watch.com/2012/04/now-we-all-agree-the-afghan-war-was-not-worth-fighting/

that is your feeling

others don't agree

I get the angles people use to call it false pretenses (and yes, often the war drum beats come with some overstatement or lies to it). I just think it's a bit of a stretch to write off the entire invasion as false pretenses. There may have been some false pretenses included (the demand for Osama's surrender was a bit along those lines) and the political wrangling to get support for wars can often have a lot of the usual political bullshit involved but while Iraq was clearly a case where it can be considered reasonable to say the entire affair was based on false pretexts I personally don't think there's much of a case to be made that Afghanistan on the whole was the same.

I'm sure a lot of BS was uttered about Afghanistan at some point, truth is the first casualty of war, but the war was a response to being attacked. That is the core casus belli and it is not a false pretext. There was also little geopolitical gain to be had (compared to Iraq where a military footprint was desired and there were resources to connect to our economy that were desirable). Afghanistan was a war the overwhelming majority of the world agreed with and supported the US in. The US definitely was incredibly disingenuous to immediately start spinning that political capital into an invasion of Iraq but despite my own many criticisms of the war in Afghanistan and how it was prosecuted I just can't see a reasonable basis to describe the whole thing as a false pretext.

But there are even a significant number of people who think that the US inflicted 9/11 on themselves to justify such wars. So I guess my point is that for every outlandish theory you can find backers. I don't find that convincing on its own.

Btw, just googled a site I couldn't remember to share with you: http://www.donotlink.com/

You seem to not want to help a variety of sites, so this is kinda like a "link condom" where you can direct people to them as you intended, but without providing them as much of the benefits from a citation (such as SEO juice or referral logs to encourage them). Though all links posted to a2k are currently already "no follwed" (we tell search engines to igore them all to discourage spammers) that is another thing you can do if you want to share a link without giving them the benefits of a citation.

Sure but that doesn't say anything useful to me. There are a lot of people who believe all sorts of stupid things. If any of their arguments are things I am not considering well enough I'm open to looking (didn't bother trying to unmangle your links so let me know if there is any argument there that you find substantial for me to address) but just because people are out there with different opinions doesn't make them a counter balance to mine. Not all opinions are created equal.

Just like 9/11 conspiracy theorists my opinion/feeling is right and they are wrong. There's only a bit of subjectivity to this, the casus belli was clear and legally legitimate. People can speculate about other things to their heart's content but it doesn't automatically put it on equal footing with all positions.

Some opinions and feelings have more validity than others. Some people think the moon is made of cheese, they are wrong.

thanks - saved the donotlink

__

my point was about the downthumbing - that you seemed to feel it unlikely people actually disagreed with the point brandon (?) was making

you actually now say

if you get that, then you should get the downthumbing (or at least some of it)

Oh I understand the downvoting, I just disagree with its utility and put mine in to counter one of theirs. They disagree with Brandon for whatever reason, ultimately. I just find downvoting merely for disagreement to be a poor use of the feature (better for people who are not contributing to the discussion, being rude etc IMO) and wanted to throw my vote in to counter it.


The only time I ever do a "disagree" downvote is if I see something voted up a lot that I disagree with but don't want to respond to but if it's at 1, I don't' see any benefit to me or the community to downvote just because I don't agree.

I disagree with Brandon too on parts of his posts here but think being downvoted to the degree that he was does not help the community or the discussion so I countered the unhelpful downvoting.

Some people don't have much more than a reflexive downvote to contribute to the community and its discussions. These people are next to worthless to the community and I do my part to counter their effects.

German engineers had dismissed the official explanation within months. The fact that building 7 wasn't even mentioned in the NIST report, and most Americans weren't even aware that it fell, is the smoking gun for many.

Well-researched articles are out there, like this one, from an org run by pilots, engineers, et al, which shows forty reasons to not believe the NIST report.




Circumstantial evidence rarely convinces a judge and jury. If that were the case, you'd also believe that the official explanation was fabricated.

article here

Lots of people say or believe incredibly stupid things. I already knew that. The 9/11 conspiracy theories are not worthy of dignifying with more time to debunk.

You made a claim, re the cassus belli.

You now expect people to find it, and nod in your direction.

That's not how debate works.

I'd posit that you're experiencing the very common condition, known as cognitive dissonance. You've chosen to hand over your power of research, to an admittedly underfunded enterprise, set up to fail.

Work beckons; it's morning Down Under.

I'll get back to this later, and glad you liked the painting of the Don. :-)

Cool.

So if the NIST did a report on building 7 then there would be no conspiracy?


Gosh... the NIST did do a complete analysis.
http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id=861610

It seems those that believe in the conspiracy are promoting lies as truth. I guess that makes them what? Members of a conspiracy to keep us from the truth?

I expect only people to understand that this is a simple fact and not a matter to debate. Similarly if someone is charged with the crime of murder they are charged with the crime of murder. That is a fact. It is not an opinion. They may or may not be guilty but identifying the legal instrument used to charge them is a simple fact and not a matter of opinion.

Similarly there is only one casus belli to invoke, the US was attacked. Without this there is no casus belli and no way to invoke NATO treaties etc. This was not some idiotic conspiracy and it was yes the 9/11 attacks were the casus belli of the war, it was what invoked the treaties and this is a simple fact. You can argue that there ware some nebulous ulterior motives and that's fine, but those nebulous theories still would have used the 9/11 attack as casus belli just as if you might argue that OJ Simpson was framed but you can't argue that what he was tried for was murder.

The casus belli of the war in Afghanistan was the 9/11 attacks. This is not something to debate any more than the nutty 9/11 conspiracy theories are.




I posit that you harbor nutty conspiracy theories and are projecting but there's really no point in continuing to discuss this. In the eternal war waged against stupidity we are all entitled to elect retirement. We are badly outnumbered and deserve a break at some point.

I personally am not going to spend any of my time debating your 9/11 conspiracy theories. They are frankly too silly to take seriously and spend time debating for me. Others have done it well and it's not going to change your mind so just like flat earth theorists 9/11 "truthers" are not worth my time.

So you choose to attack the player, rather than the comment. That's an admission of defeat, you realise?



Ah, but they're not my theories. I linked you to a site created by pilots, engineers, PHD researchers, et al. You chose to ignore it.

Your casus belli story was hatched by the same people who gave false evidence to justify invading a soveriegn nation, not once, but twice.

Those who give false testimony don't get the right to lie again, or is that okay in your world?

As for NATO, they're not the world's police. They aren't even recognised by the BRICS nations as being legitimate any more. Not since invading Libya, and leaving that nation to rack and ruin.

You didn't read it, did you? Dated November 2008. 130 pages only.

This is a completely separate report (1A might have been the clue you missed)
from the WTC NIST report into the September 11 2001 terror attacks.

Nice try, but no banana, this time.