Can someone explain to me why the afghan war is unjust?

[Thumpalumpacus]

You lay down with dogs, you're gonna get fleas.

Do all dogs have fleas?

So, I'm guessing you missed the point. But to follow your derail, no, they don't. However, when you want to address my point (when you associate with bad folks, bad shit will often happen to you, too), I'm all ears.

[psychoslice]

All wars are unjust, its a sad part of life.

[Anomalocaris]

It's unjust because we didn't conduct it with the proper focus and dedication needed to shoulder the responsibility that comes with taking over a country. Instead we messed it around like a high handed Imperial adventurist with many bigger fishes to fry, and after screwing with them for 14 years left them ready to descend back into the same radicalized talibanized mess as before.

Afghans who died as result of our intervention, and couldn't give a rat's ass about OBL, therefore died for nothing.

[Napoléon]

No, no....that was the OTHER stupid Bush war.

Fucking hard to keep track to be honest.

[Minimalist]

The Afghans did not attack us.

Neither did Iraq.


Both are therefore unjust.

The Afghans supported AQ, and refused to stop doing so after 9/11.

You lay down with dogs, you're gonna get fleas.

So, a guy shoots up a bank and then hides in an apartment building. Are you okay with dropping a 1000 pound bomb on the building and killing everyone in there because of him?

And what about the damage we inflicted on ourselves?

Are the Taliban miserable muslim scumbags? Yes. So are the bastards we support.

[pocaracas]

The conspiracy theory states that the US armed the Taliban way back in the 70's To fight the Soviets over that cold war thing.
It worked, right?

But then, the Taliban must have refused to share some of the aged upon wealth, or refused to become westernized, or whatever...some US big head/s must have lost money on the deal, and lobbied for war on those who wronged him/them.

As justified as the Trojan war!

[abaris]

Both wars have been idiotic before we even come to the question of unjust. Rushing into a country, where the Soviets quite recently were decimated, without having any kind of exit strategy, was moronic.

Now, was the Afghan war unjust? I'm split over that question. On the one hand, something had to be done, on the other hand it had been done in the most foolish way. The removal of the Taliban certainly was a good thing, but what happened afterwards, starting with installing the corrupt Karzai clan, wasn't. Karzai was just the first ass licking crook they could find.

[Creed of Heresy]

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

We didn't have an exit strategy because there was no real exit strategy that could ever be formulated. War isn't static. It's fluid, always changing, always unpredictable. There was only one real certainty; Osama had to die, and so did all of his supporters, allies, and friends.

Problem was, the POTUS at the time is a monstrously selfish, greedy, arrogant worm with a cabinet of equally selfish, greedy, arrogant worms surrounding him, so rather than commit to the war in Afghanistan, he went for his REAL goals in Iraq. But, strip away all that? The war in Afghanistan was very well-justified. Is Afghanistan a perfectly safe haven? No. Is it better for our interference? It's very shades-of-grey there, but overall, I'm willing to say that, yes, it's better. I don't live there, though, so I can't say that conclusively or even with much conviction. I know the Taliban has been Talibanned from most of the civilized areas of the country, and I know they were a cancerous infection on the ass of humanity that desperately needed surgical removal, and I know that at least women there can go to school, business can flourish (yes yes yes I know, the poppy trade, blah blah blah, but hey, that's capitalism and the free market for you; there's a demand, and they saw an opportunity to be the supply, so I can't really fault them for that), and even if Karzai is a thug, at least the basis of election by the people is there. So, at least they now have better prospects for self-governance and self-determination, and I honestly hope that in the not-too-far-future I get to see Afghanistan become as influential as any European nation at the least, with a quality-of-life index to match (but not a QoL to match the US; I'm hoping for good things for them, after all) and a government as populist, as well.

Given how things were beforehand, and the prospects they had before we kicked the taliban and the other sweater-monkey groups out of the cities and more-populated areas of Afghanistan, I'm comfortable with stating the war in Afghanistan, while as ugly as war will always be and with the usual accompaniment of blood and tears to go with it, it was still just, and I hope that, in the long run, it will turn out to be worth it. Fuck knows the Afghanis deserve some peace, quiet, stability, and prosperity for once...

[FreeTony]

One conservative right wing religious regime attacks another conservative right wing religious regime. Neither side believed in womens rights, nor the rights of non believers and both were convinced God was on their side. Both sides also believed that their respective countries were not religious enough, and that was the cause of their problems.

The following is based on my understanding of the situation having read the excellent "The Looming Tower" which is an indepth history of the roots of al Qaeda up until the 911 attacks. I read it a few years ago, so some of this may just be plain wrong:

Al Qaeda was funded with a lot more Saudi money than Afgan money. Bin Laden was the son of a rather rich Saudi and had connections to the Saudi government. The Saudi Government wanted to control Bin Laden but ultimately couldn't and he was forced out of the country. However Bin Laden did get a lot of funding from rich Saudi individuals to fund al Qaeda.

The whole mantra behind 911 was to get the Americans to start a war in Afghanistan. Bin Laden had fought against the Soviets in the hills in Afghanistan (this was partly funded with American money of course) and thought that by bringing America into a similar war, he would again be victorious and that this would cause the collapse of America, much like the collapse of the USSR. So you could say that Bush did exactly what Bin Laden wanted him to do. Now the plan didn't quite work out as America hasn't collapsed.

None of this of course addresses the notion of whether the war was "just" or not. My understanding of the Talibans role in harbouring al Qaeda is that it was at times uneasy, and at other times mutually beneficial to both. I'm not sure that the Taliban knew of the 911 attack beforehand or not. Of course your average Afghan has nothing to do with any of this.

My personal feeling is that almost all war is advoidable and utterly pointless, and that the term "just" is pretty meaningless in terms of a war. If every time someone does something to you, your first response is to retaliate with force, then society would collapse. It also doesn't fit in to the "love thy neighbour" liberal Jesus philsophy. Not that right wing Americans would accept this, as they probably think that Jesus would have shot first and asked questions later.

[Tonus]

We didn't have an exit strategy because there was no real exit strategy that could ever be formulated.

I don't think that there was ever an exit strategy. The middle east is a socio-political powder keg sitting on a very valuable resource. That resource confers power to those who control it, and so people will fight to control it. (I read recently that the USA is now the world's biggest producer of oil, which is one reason that OPEC has not limited production and allowed gas prices to tank. Imagine if we'd known this in 2003?)

A map of the middle east shows that Afghanistan shares a border with both Iran and Pakistan. Having some level of influence in Afghanistan lets the USA have some influence on those nations; having military bases and personnel there lets the USA potentially have a LOT of influence. Same with Iraq, except that it shares borders with Iran (again), Syria, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Iraq pretty much sits right in the middle of the middle east.

I think the plan was to make those two nations "friendly" and have them allow a significant US military presence, which would grant enormous political power in the region. The plan went badly because the odds of the plan going badly were simply that high. Getting friendly governments installed via 'democratic' means would have been extremely difficult even without the widespread religious fundamentalist guerrilla army with deep ideological ties to the people (and the visitors with their deep religious divide with those same people).

It's one of the reasons I think we should bring nearly all of our troops home and concentrate on defending our shores and leaving everyone else to their own devices. I don't think it's realistic, but it would prevent this kind of pie-in-the-sky planning that will nearly always end badly, and nearly always end badly in ways we didn't imagine.