War and Morality. Al Qaeda v USA

Oh, right. i forgot the part where the Afghanistan army invaded our country, flew bombers over our weddings, killed us with unmanned aerial vehicles etc.Tell me Coyote, what DOES Afghanistan have to do with 9/11? Or is this your hit and run and yell "socialist!" and not actually bring anything to the table?

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"Why don't you call upon your God to strike me? Oh, I forgot it's because he's fake like Thor, so bite me" -Greydon Square

As an American, I get outraged every time i see footage like that. How dare they? I feel no remorse over any casualties we cause...they should have picked their side.

Al Qaeda is essentially an Islamic sect with an ideology that is a threat to not just the west but even more so to more traditional Muslims.I think the trouble with our actions in both Iraq and Afghanistan is that we too often view the enemy in strictly human terms, so that killing bin Laden seems like a major victory. IMHO the enemy isn't the Taliban or Al Qaeda, but the ideology they espouse. The war then, in my view is about competing ideologies. We in the west want our ideology to be embraced by the majority of citizens of the countries we have become involved with.The method that they use to spread their ideology is one of intimidation and fear. I maintain that if we use intimidation and fear, (such as shock and awe), the we are going to be viewed in no better light than Al Qaeda, the Taliban or Hussein's regime for that matter.Sure we have the best weapons and just possibly we might win a physical war, (the jury is definitely out on that), but that will never defeat the real enemy. The only way to win this war is to challenge their ideology with our own in the real battle which is for the hearts and minds of the citizens of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya and even some in the west.With this in mind, I’m not convinced that the military actions that we’ve embarked are actually going to make us safer in the long run. As long as we can be easily portrayed as a military force that threatens their homeland there will be no shortage of new recruits.I remember in the early seventies in Prague talking to a Czechoslovakian taxi driver who told me about the experience of the Russian soldiers in his city. He told me that they now stayed outside the city because they kept having accidents from things like falling bricks. The Czechs knew that there was a better ideology available than what the Russians had to offer. I think that there are a couple of things to take from that. One would be that occupiers are resented and will never be safe, so obviously we want Al Qaeda and the Taliban to be seen as the occupiers and not us, and secondly when the local population is able to understand and desire another ideology they will bit by bit take matters into their own hands.Ideologies aren’t changed overnight. If we are going to win this war we are going to have to realize that it will take a lot longer than we in the west are presently willing to wait. Each President or Prime Minister wants the results to be manifested in his or her term of office. This will have to be a generational thing and there will be no final military solution, or at least not one that will be to our liking.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Well im giving you an ultimatum your arian gangs have killed to many non whites you have 5 days to hand them all over to the european court in HAG or we will find them ourselves and bomb the shit out of America doing so.And i will have no remorse for the civilian casualties if you do not comply you have chosen your side.Do you think such an ultimatum is reasonable?

War is never pretty. Seeing as how the terrorist organizations are not willing to sit down and talk with us about their differences, nor are we dealing with a nation....i think our response was in line with the outrage that we suffered.If another nation was attacked by a gang that had its base within America, they would have a right to demand that we bring this gang to international justice. Of course, they couldn't demand it since we are stronger than they are...and history is written by the victors.Perhaps America could have won public relations points with the rest of the world by accepting the slap on the cheek without retaliation. I agree that it would have been cheaper and more rational to do so. But what do your tell the families of 3000 killed? Do you tell them that we are sorry that it happened but that we don't have the power to do anything about it?

No one has ever said that the US should have done nothing after 9-11, what folk have been saying is that what we did do was really, really juvenile.What do the police tell folk after a robbery?What did the police say after Oklahoma City?Edited by jar, : find another way around the censoring that is now so common at EvC

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This column was in this morning's paper. It presents a perspective on how the military aspect can be combined with the battle for the hearts and minds of the people in Afghanistan.

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Jonathan Kay, National Post
In March, 2004, Israeli soldiers manning the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus witnessed a shocking sight: An adolescent Palestinian boy named Abdu lifted up his shirt to reveal a large suicide vest. Everyone braced for an explosion. But instead, the boy froze, and declared to the Israelis that he didn’t want to blow himself up.
Abdu (who later turned out to have developmental problems, according to his parents) kneeled on the ground and appeared terrified. He removed the vest and then was taken into Israeli custody. The entire pathetic spectacle was captured on video. His picture appeared on the front page of the next day’s Israeli newspapers, with headlines such as I wanted virgins in paradise.
In the long campaign to defeat and discredit Palestinian terrorism, this was a decisive moment. The fact that the terrorists would use a mentally disabled boy as their bomber showed that they’d become desperate for recruits. Worse, from their own propaganda perspective, it showed that they would resort to any tactic -even killing a Palestinian child -to further their campaign.
I thought of Abdu this week when I saw news that an eightyear-old Afghan girl had been tricked into blowing herself up near a police station in Uruzgan Province. (She died, but no one else was hurt.) The case is not isolated: In Pakistan, terrorists recently strapped a suicide vest to a nine-year-old girl they’d abducted and drugged (the girl was saved and returned to her family). Neither plot is likely to have originated with the Taliban itself, which tries to avoid using children. But both incidents will help discredit the instrument of terrorism upon which the Taliban rely.
The killing of Osama bin Laden in May captivated the world’s attention, and some Western leaders have cited the al-Qaeda leader’s death as evidence that we can draw down troops in the region. But the death of that eight-year-old girl likely will do as much to bring about the jihadis’ defeat than any American commando raid or battlefield victory.
In a fascinating new book, How Terrorism Ends, U.S. National War College professor Audrey Kurth Cronin catalogues the many different ways in which terrorist groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda collapse. Simply killing or capturing the leader, she emphasizes, can only work in cases where the group operates as a rigid top-down hierarchy (such as Peru’s Shining Path or Turkey’s PKK). Nor do broad military campaigns usually work -because exterminating an entire terrorist group typically requires more brutal methods than democratic governments feel comfortable using. (There are exceptions, however, as Sri Lanka’s brutal victory over the Tamil Tigers attests.)
In the case of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, a more promising strategy comes under the heading that Cronin describes as Targeting errors and backlash -an abstract label that described the horror and revulsion that locals feel when terrorists use brainwashed recruits, and even children, to engage in mass slaughter. Terrorist groups generally are effect-ive at building popular support when they limit their targets to occupying soldiers or their allied local police assets. But when those military and police targets become hardened, as has happened in Afghanistan thanks to the presence of NATO soldiers, the terrorists go after softer targets. And that’s when the backlash starts.
Cronin lists plenty of precedents in the targeting errors and backlash category: The Real Irish Republican Army, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine/ General Command, Quebec’s own FLQ, the Sikh separatists who bombed Air India Flight 182, Shamil Basayev’s Chechen terrorist group (which was responsible for the Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia, one of the most unconscionable single terrorism-related incidents in modern history), Spain’s ETA, the Red Brigades, and Egypt’s al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (responsible for the Luxor Massacre of 1997, among other bloody attacks). In all of these cases, the terrorists used methods that went far beyond the tolerance of the local population on whose behalf they professed to be fighting. The resulting popular backlash either destroyed the group outright, or served to legitimize the more aggressive methods used successfully by the state.
In the case of modern Muslim terrorist groups, the red line is very clear: Local populations turn against terrorism when it results in the death of innocent Muslims. That’s why victims such as the eight-year-old girl killed in Uruzgan resonate so strongly, and negatively, against the terrorists’ cause.
In the second-tolast chapter of How Terrorism Ends, Cronin supplies an interest-ing parallel between the war against terrorism in central Asia and the more successful campaign in Iraq.
In 2005, at a time when it appeared that Iraq might be descending into an all-out civil war, the tribes of western Iraq suddenly began to turn against al-Qaeda and its local proxies. Their brutal methods, such as assassinations of opponents, enforced suicide bombings, forced marriages and imposition of sharia law, repelled Iraqi Sunnis, Cronin writes. The result was bloody internecine fighting among jihadis, some of whom followed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s strategy of slaughtering fellow Muslims (and especially Shiites) in a bid to sow chaos, while others adhered to a well-publicized directive from al-Qaeda’s thendeputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, imploring an end to Muslim-on-Muslim bloodshed.
The campaign against terrorists in Afghanistan is more complicated than the situation in Iraq for a few reasons. First, the Taliban get support from a foreign power (Pakistan) in a way that Iraqi terrorists never did. Second, the Taliban campaign is wrapped up in a larger, generations-old struggle to unify Pashtuns on both sides of the border into a greater Pahstunistan. And third, the forbid-ding terrain of the Hindu Kush region makes it difficult for NATO to launch the sort of conventional military campaigns that resulted in, say, the clearing of Iraq’s Anbar province. But in broad strokes, the end of the Taliban and al-Qaeda likely will look like the end of Iraq’s terrorist groups: a building backlash caused by indiscriminate attacks against Muslim civilians.
What does this mean for NATO nations, including Canada, which are reducing their troop strength in Afghanistan?
First, it means that we should stop treating every terrorist attack against Afghan civilians -such as the truck bomb that exploded near a maternity hospital in Logar province on Sunday -as a military failure in the war on terrorism. These attacks are humanitarian tragedies, but history shows that their cumulative military effect is to weaken the enemy, not strengthen him. The Taliban themselves know this, which is why they desperately try to disavow responsibility when an attack like this occurs.
Second, it means that NATO military commanders have been correct to adopt a military strategy that minimizes civilian casualties. It does us little good for the Taliban to be regarded as murderers if the same label can be credibly attached to us.
Third, it means that we have to carefully consider whether we should withdraw from Afghanistan. Cronin argues convincingly in her book that democratic countries cannot defeat terrorist groups through strictly military strategies. But one thing that a strong military presence can do is force terrorists to avoid the most politically appealing targets -legislature buildings, military outposts, presidential convoys, major commercial hubs, airports -which have been hardened by our troops. Once those troops are gone, these are the targets that the Taliban will go back to targeting.
The result of this will be that a terrorist group that had been destroying its reputation and local support base with indiscriminate attacks will once again be able to get back into the more reputable business of real insurgency. Our best strategy, I would argue, would be to stick around and watch the Taliban self-destruct.

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Here is the link to the article. How the Taliban EndsEdited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

WTF? We're always at war!How can we have ANY regard for human rights when we invade two countries FOR war?Have you read any of the Wikileaks on the US lies about civilian casualties? Wikileaks lifts lid on official lies about civilian deaths in Afghanistan

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Today’s publication in the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel of leaked US military documents — over 90,000 reports — relating to Afghanistan have raised anger in the US government who have accused Wikileaks of putting the lives of US army personnel at risk.

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The leaked documents reveal details of numerous incidents of Afghan civilians being killed that went unreported at the time including killings by UK forces.

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More here: Afghanistan leak exposes NATO's incoherent civilian casualty policyUrgent investigation needed into civilian deaths in Afghanistan And lets not forget our history! Hiroshima? Nagasaki?What's that yummy number of human civilian casualty?The fact that anyone can, in good conscience, suggest that the US has a higher regard for human rights and civilian casualties, just shows what a great job is done to mold the opinion of US citizens through news and media outlets. Really? Ok, lets look at the numbers:

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Civilian casualties (2001-2003)

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According to Marc W. Herold's extensive database, Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing, between 3,100 and 3,600 civilians were directly killed by U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom bombing and Special Forces attacks between October 7, 2001 and June 3, 2003.

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Civilian and overall casualties (2005)

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An estimated 1,700 people were killed in 2005 according to an Associated Press count, including civilians, insurgents and security forces members. Some 600 policemen were killed between Hamid Karzai's election as president of Afghanistan in early December 2004 and mid-May 2005.

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Civilian and overall casualties (2006)

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A report by Human Rights Watch said that 4,400 Afghans had been killed in 2006, more than 1,000 of them civilians. Some 2,077 militants were killed in Coalition operations between September 1 and December 13.

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Civilian and overall casualties (2007)

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More than 7,700 people were killed in 2007, including: 1,019 Afghan policemen; 4,478 militants; 1,980 civilians and 232 foreign soldiers.

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Civilian and overall casualties (2008)

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The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that 2,118 civilians were killed as a result of armed conflict in Afghanistan in 2008, the highest civilian death toll since the end of the initial 2001 invasion.

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Civilian and overall casualties (2009)

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2009 was again the most lethal year for Afghan civilians in the American-led war since the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001. According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), 2,412 civilians were killed by the war in 2009, a jump of 14% over the number that lost their lives in 2008. An additional 3,566 Afghan civilians were wounded as a result of the war in 2009.

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Compare that to 19 hijackers not even from Afghanistan killing 3,000 people.So, 19 hijackers kill 3,000 civilians, and we retaliate by killing 12,810 civilians in Afghanistan -- and that you consider a high regard for human rights and civilian casualties?I'm actually shocked the you got hoooah to agree.- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

from a declassified Eisenhower Administration memo:President Eisenhower, in an internal discussion, observed to his staff, and I'm quoting now, "There's a campaign of hatred against us in the Middle East, not by governments, but by the people." The National Security Council discussed that question and said, "Yes, and the reason is, there's a perception in that region that the United States supports status quo governments, which prevent democracy and development and that we do it because of our interests in Middle East oil. Furthermore, it's difficult to counter that perception because it's correct."[59]Bernard Lewis - WikipediaThe NSC concluded that is precisely what we should be doing.

I agreed insofar as that we don't openly and admittedly target civilians. Yes, civilians are a large part of who we kill, but that is because the "bad guys" hide amongst them. And no, I do not say that to imply that I think they are just "casualties of war". The U.S. has not exactly been discriminatory about singling out the operatives.

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"Why don't you call upon your God to strike me? Oh, I forgot it's because he's fake like Thor, so bite me" -Greydon Square

Instead of invading you could pressure the country for a co op hunt for these terrorists invading with a large force to hunt down 100 people sent the wrong message to the people in that coutntry and the world.Means of pressure embargoes, cutting aid ..... they would be singing to your tune and you would need to get the guys would be a few hundred possibly a thousand men and some intel. with the whole war thing they got allot more recruits alot more support and its easy to fight a guerrilla ware.Its not like the majority wants to harbor terrorists down there its about the same as the us harboring the crips, or the bloods, or the kkk. Edited by frako, : No reason given.

"They" who? Average Afghani families?Not a single one of the 9/11 hijackers was from Afghanistan. To my knowledge, hardly any of them had ever even been there.Phat, what should the average Afghani family be doing to "pick their side" and thus avoid being bombed by drones?

We are in Afghanistan because Al Quida was being hosted there by the Taliban.The people allegedly didn't like the Taliban.They should have done something about them.Now, as we are trying to leave, the people are saying "If you leave the Taliban will come back".It's RIDICULOUS.When the French left, we didn't revert to back to the British Monarchy.If the Afghanistanis don't want the Taliban, then they should do something about it. If they don't care about the Taliban, then we shouldn't be there at all.We got Bin Laden. Time to go home.

Not nearly the number of casualties that would have had to have happened if we had to go door to door killing every man woman and child in Japan.Remember, they were swearing total war.Those two bombs put an end to a war that could have dragged on almost as long as it has taken us to effect no real change in Iraq

The 9/11 hijackers lived in Florida longer than they ever lived in Afghanistan.When we bagged bin Laden he had been living in Pakistan for almost a decade. Should we therefore invade? Done what? Die in front of AK-47's?How about the fact that the Taliban were the only force in Afghanistan that could keep the narcotics trade down? Hey, now you're thinking. But that's kind of the problem, isn't it? There's no basis for saying we "won" in Afghanistan, so any time we leave it looks like a "defeat." And who is going to be the guy who gives the order and, by doing so, becomes the Man who Lost Afghanistan? Who is going to commit political suicide in order to bring our troops home? I'm not sure I blame a guy for not having that kind of courage. Politicians, after all, think they're there to have the opportunity to do good.So, bagging bin Laden becomes an excuse for more commitment to the war, because now they're really going to be after us.It certainly drives home the importance of not fucking starting wars. Hello, Libya!