In the weeks that followed the 911 attacks on Washington and New York, there was wide spread support and sympathy for a response from the USA. Intervention at the root of the problem, fanatical Islam, seemed likely. Instead they treated the symptoms.

At the time, Afghanistan was divided in civil war between the Taliban and the so-called Northern Alliance. Apart from suicide bombings, the war was conventional with a battle front of trenches.

A demand for Osama bin Laden's surrender was refused by the Kabul Taliban. The USA then began bombing the Taliban trenches in concert with the Northern Alliance. To do this, the USAF flew B1s and B2s and B52s over the North Pole and then landed to refuel at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The Northern Alliance then routed the Taliban and captured Kabul. At that point US policy had widespread support. But then they had to go and act the big tough guy and send in American troops. They could have simply supported the Northern Alliance and let the Afghans fight it out among themselves, which is exactly what will happen in the end. But Bush had to do his John Wayne routine to look as if he was doing something about the problem.

But Bush knew that shooting a bunch of hillbillies in the mountains would not satisfy the voters for long. That is when they cooked up the whole Invasion of Iraq. He actually said Saddam was behind 911, which was a lie, to protect his friends in Saudi Arabia.

Why? Because to go at the jugular of Islamic fanaticism, in particular the Way-habs, would have brought about the fall of the house of Saud, Bush's oil business partners.

I have to say that after seeing the video footage of the Muzlim morality police beating women in the streets of Kabul, I was rather happy to know that American women were in the flight crew of the B1s bombing the sh1t out them on the battlefield.

But Americans let the opportunity to address the problem become muddied by the vested interests in Washington, and so the problem is worse today than ever.

issuevoter wrote on Jul 12^th, 2016 at 6:11am:

Snap!

issuevoter wrote on Jul 12^th, 2016 at 6:11am:

I tend to doubt that the Northern Alliance could have defeated the Taliban all by itself.

In any case, the U.S. had to take out Al Qaeda. The Taliban had the option of just handing him over, but of course, being good Muslims, they weren't about to do that.

So ... they lost control of Afghanistan. The mistake, however, was in caring too much about the future of Afghanistan after the U.S. left. Afghans have been fighting each other, and switching sides back and forth, for centuries. It's all fluid, which is why some Afghans who were supposedly helping American forces actually prevented them from cornering bin Laden when he was on the run.

The4thEstate wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 7:10pm:


That's true, 4th, and you make some good points. But never fall for the fallacy that Obama is soft on illegal immigrants. Bush was the softest of all. Most believe the Hispanic vote in Texas and Florida got Bush over the line in 2000, including Bush himself and his campaign strategist, Karl Rove.

The Global Financial Crisis was caused by sub-prime mortgages - another policy Bush presided over. This was not all Bush's fault. The Democrats supported sub-prime mortgages to help those on low incomes buy their own homes. The Republicans supported sub-prime mortgages to allow them to buy investment properties. Regardless of who was to blame, the GFC was another stage in the decline of the US empire.

Again, the neocons didn't cause the fall, they merely accelerated it. It's difficult to underestimate the loss of face the US suffered after Iraq and Afghanistan. An illegal invasion, hundreds of thousands killed, ultimate defeat, and now, ISIS.

It's ridiculous to justify this by saying the US had to act after Sept 11. Ousting Saddam, along with the whole "Axis of Evil", was on the neocon agenda well before Sept 11. The neocons wanted to cement their power after the cold war. They wanted to make use of their sole superpower status. Forget their economic status alone, the neocons wanted total domination.

If the Yanks wanted revenge for September 11, they mistook Saddam for Osama bin Laden: a pretty dumb mistake to make, considering they have an entire global agency devoted to central intelligence. 

While the Yank electorate itched for a war, they turned around pretty quick. By 2006, they were after Bush's head on a platter. Bush had to fight them every step of the way to achieve the Iraqi troop surges; an incredibly unpopular, but towards the end of Iraqi intervention, necessary step. Basically, the US military had to throw more troops onto the fire to fix the civil war they created. Every one of those dead American troops was a nail in Bush's political coffin.

Operation Shock and Awe was only ever planned as shock and awe, and never an occupation. War might be fun when you're watching the initial air strikes on CNN, but when the sons and daughters and brothers and sisters start coming home dead, the fading American flags in all those shop and house windows turn into a different message: bring the troops home.

Today, Americans are more at risk from their own guns than anybody else's. If anything represents the dearth of the American dream, it's the random, pointless mass shootings occurring now on an almost weekly basis. The American arms industry developed all those weapons for US foreign wars. Today, they're being mass marketed and turned on the American population itself - through either the lone killers or the militarized county police forces with their second-hand assault weapons, armoured troop carriers and military wear, all surplus stock from the Iraq War.

If anything is the sign of an empire collapsing under its own weight, this is it: a country besieged by its own weapons industry, security apparatus and violent dogma.

The4thEstate wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 7:10pm:

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 12^th, 2016 at 10:42am:

I'm not arguing that Bush was tough on illegals, but that doesn't mean Obama has been tougher. Obama's the one who opened the floodgates for tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America to come pouring in, and even reassigned Border Patrol agents to babysit them. Naturally, he had no intention of shipping any of the kids back, even if they overload local school systems, since Hispanics tend to vote Democrat about 80-20 (when they're old enough).

And it was Obama who tried to create new immigration laws from the White House, issued an executive order that would have given legal status to about 5 million illegal immigrants had the courts not struck it down. Also, it was the Obama administration that filed lawsuits against individual border states that tried to enforce immigration law (such as Arizona).

Obama is about as tough on illegal immigration as Al Capone was on illegal alcohol sales.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 12^th, 2016 at 10:42am:

To say the least. And I'm not particularly a Bush fan.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 12^th, 2016 at 10:42am:

Sorry, I can't buy that one. Congressional Democrats were so invested in the notion of "affordable housing" that they undermined Bush's attempted to get a handle on Fannie and Freddie five years before the whole house of cards collapsed.

Read this New York Times story and you'll see what was really going on. Pay particular attention to the whines of Democrat Congressmen Barney Frank, who famously said as late as July 2008 that Fannie and Freddie looked good going forward:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-oversee-freddi...

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 12^th, 2016 at 10:42am:

It's more ridiculous to say the U.S. shouldn't have acted after Afghanistan. Any nation that would tolerate a direct terrorist attack on its soil without responding in any way is selling out its own people, whose first duty it is to protect.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 12^th, 2016 at 10:42am:

Now you're merely parroting the left-wing talking points. I think the war of Iraq was a mistake in retrospect, for a great many reasons, but let's remember that Hillary Clinton, among many other Democrats, voted in favor of it. I never realized she was part of the whole neocon conspiracy!

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 12^th, 2016 at 10:42am:

Ah, it's not half as dangerous here as you imagine. You're an ocean away, so it's easy to swallow the kind of propaganda that uber-progressives like Obama crank out in hopes of gaining even more control over the populace. Collectivists have no tolerance for independent thinkers who live by the philosophy of rugged individualism.

Besides, Obama won't even say "Islamic terrorism," let alone acknowledge its existence in America, so what exactly are average citizens to do if not arm themselves? Stand around and wait to be slaughtered by the next "Allahu Akbar"-screaming jihadist, like the Pulse patrons in Orlando?

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 12^th, 2016 at 10:42am:

Except that gun homicide rates are down nearly 50 percent since the 1990s -- plus, the vast majority of gun deaths are suicides. Of course the propaganda merchants never told you that -- they're too busy trying to convince well-intentioned but naive observers to help them achieve their own agenda, which starts with making citizens beholden to Big Brother.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-p...

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 15^th, 2016 at 12:17pm:

You're welcome to prove that. Again, I'm no particular Bush fan, but I do know that it's a lot easier to make unsubstantiated charges than back them up with credible evidence.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 15^th, 2016 at 12:17pm:

Well, that was a big deal among American lefties, but they're always looking for some reason to hate their own country and feel sorry for the enemy.

If that was your idea of torture, I'll bet I can find you several thousand ISIS victims who would gladly trade their experience for that one.

Abu Ghraib aside, the truth is that harsh interrogation in and of itself is not necessarily tantamount to torture, according to U.S. law. And quite frankly, given the very real possibility of more innocent lives lost in future attacks, it would be irresponsible not to interrogate terrorist leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed under, shall we say, conditions that involve more stress than "No milk and cookies for you until you tell me the truth, Mr. Mohammed!"

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 15^th, 2016 at 12:17pm:

Are you going to try to argue, with a straight face, that the U.S. hadn't been the victim of a terrorist attack on 9/11? What would you have done in response ... send a strongly worded letter to the U.N.?

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 15^th, 2016 at 12:17pm:

That's B.S., because the U.S. didn't seize Iraq's oil facilities and isn't operating them now.

Again, you sound like you're parroting far-left revisionist history word for word. Why not just cut and paste?

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 15^th, 2016 at 12:17pm:

The term "American exceptionalism" has been around since the 1920s, so I wouldn't exactly call it new.

And why are you still beating the Bush drum? Like Elvis, Bush has left the building. Your silence regarding Obama suggests that you're a fan of his -- which would be consistent with leftist philosophy, since any president who makes America weaker on the world stage (such as Carter) is automatically revered by people who want to cut my country down to size.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 15^th, 2016 at 12:17pm:

That's rather silly, because if Bush and bin Laden had really been BFFs, Bush would never have ordered an attack on Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Moreover, the intelligence gathering that helped pinpoint bin Laden's location in Pakistan was started during the Bush administration. Obama was merely the lucky beneficiary of it when it came to fruition.

Quote:


That's not what I said. I said the US went in to secure the world's oil supply, not take over production. The US currently has ships in the Arabian Gulf. Oil is sold in US dollars. Most Middle Eastern oil goes to Europe, not the US. Control of the Gulf is geopolitical. 

Dick Cheney has argued all this as reasons for going into Iraq. "Unfortunately, God decided to put the oil under the bad guys' land". As the sole remaining superpower, Cheney argued that it's the US' job to manage this problem.

Since Sept 11, the world found other supplies of oil, including American and Canadian shale oil, but not  to worry. What Cheney wanted was the pipeline and engineering projects, the bulk of which were granted to Haliburton without a public tender.

The business of America is business - not occupation or even ownership. The Saudis were brought into line in the 1970s through lucrative development contracts, putting them in debt to the eyeballs to American companies like Haliburton. The Saudis have since gone with Uncle - publicly. In private, of course, they funded Sept 11.

Of course the US had no choice but to invade Iraq. The business of America is business, and the Saudis were worth too much to Bush and Cheney.