Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
UhOx - you were just a small kid when that happened.
Aghanistan is a totally backwards and very poor country. The majority of the population cannot read, and they live on a dollar a day or something like that. They couldn't find the US on a map, and alone, they couldn't hurt any country because they are too primitive.
The nation of Afghanistan had nothing at all to do with 9-11.
Bin Laden had set up shop there because it offered him asylum after he fell out with his royal family in Saudi.
Truth is, we don't really know too much about him, other than that he hated both the USSR, and then later the USA. USSR because of the invasion of Afghanistan, and the anti-religious stance of the state there, and the USA because it soiled the "holy land" with its bases and is generally corrupt and decadent, from an islamic perspective. There was talk that he had set up "terrorist schools" in Afghanistan. Interesting, because nobody has come across any terrorist trained at a terrorist school. The ones that have caused trouble in the UK and elsewhere in Europe are homegrown. Likewise the Tsarnaev brothers. So what happened with the "graduates" of these schools. I think it's largely hype. People have better things to do with their lives than go to "terrorist schools. "
Probably it was nothing more than a religious school that sometimes ranted on a bit against the West, and with some military training because lots of guys enjoy to run around and pretend its a war.
At the same time, Bin Laden had activities in Sudan, at home in Saudi and in Pakistan.
Yet, Afghanistan was singled out.
Because the US already knew it wanted to take down the taliban and invade the area. It had wanted it from the minute the USSR left.
and that's well documented.
Muslim hospitality is regulated in the Koran. They MUST religiously protect their "moslem brethren".
So they could not stay true to their faith, and hand over Bin Laden. The country is so primitive and poorly organised that they probabably didn't even know for sure that he was there! I vaguely recall this from the papers at the time.
The USA had wanted to invade Afghanistan since long before 9-11 and there is plenty of documentation on it.
If the US didn't keep military bases in Saudi Arabia, 9/11 would never have happened. Can anyone give a legitimate reason why US needs bases there, when it's a friendly nation and located on the other side of the globe from the US? Oh yes, they are there to support even more unnecessary bases elsewhere in the region, and illegal invasions.
The attacks were a tragedy, but frankly it's surprising there haven't been more of them, considering how the US network of bases spreads like a spider web across the globe.
9-11 was EXACTLY the type of excuse they wanted. There was a vague link between Bin Laden and Afghanistan, namely that Bin Laden sometimes stayed there.. But as it turned out later, he also had residence in a nice suburban villa in Pakistan, and that's where he was while the US was wreaking havoc with civilians in Afghanistan!
If Bin Laden wanted more supporters to his cause, the US invasion in Afghanistan was a god-send.
For every person that was killed by the US, a whole family from mothers to brothers and fathers were radicalised.
I understand that this is partly what happened for the USSR which went in to protect some elected Communist government (?). But in doing so, people got killed and the tides turned against them and fuelled radicalism. I was too young at the time, but later I remember people commenting on the hypocrisy that my gov't still hated the USA for Vietnam, yet said nothing about the USSR in Afghanistan. Oh the irony, how tides have turned! Today, I can see that those two conflicts were probably quite different and can't really be compared. For one, Afghanistan bordered the USSR.

The US agenda is proven by the fact that the US is now INSISTING (and won't take no for an answer) that they keep a military presence in Afghanistan. That's what the US wanted all along, and Bin-Laden + 9/11 was just a convienient excuse to kick off the plan. Which is totally absurd since it's on the other side of the planet from the USA and nothing that anyone did there could threaten the US in the slightest.

The only American politician I somewhat respect, is Ron Paul and he knows very well all of what I just said.
His royal family? I thought Osama Bin Laden was an Afghan but if Afghanistan was really primitive then yeah, that doesn't add up. Anyway, that's a lot I didn't know about all that. So he was really from Saudi Arabia but he was hiding from his family in Afghanistan? Did his family try to arrest him after he attacked America? That's a really confusing war. I need to learn a lot more about it.

Quote Originally Posted by eisenherz View Post
@ UhOhxplode
your preference is entirely your choice;
nevertheless, interesting that the one very government (US), whose foreign policy you have been criticising quite voacally here, still rates with you amongst the 2 best governments in the world.
Would you stop liking your country just because the foreign policy was messed up? That would be like not liking your desktop PC just because it didn't have a really sick case. Just buy a cool case for it... problem solved! Yeah the foreign policy thing is part of my country but only one part. Most of my country isn't all about foreign policy. It's about a ton of other stuff and mostly cool stuff.

Quote Originally Posted by maxmixiv View Post
I'm not an expert, but it looks like there is no normal border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, so Taliban could function freely on territories of both states. Pakistani government struggled with them and did not allow to control entire country, but Afghani authorities could not, and Taliban took over. So it seems more correct to say "war against Taliban", than "war against Afghanistan".
Thanks for that! I don't know very much about the Taliban and I definitely didn't know that they considered Afghanistan and Pakistan to be just one country.

Quote Originally Posted by diogen_ View Post
That’s really cool. Now I seem to know where are you coming from, and we can come back to our “axis of evil” issues, if you don’t mind.
You wrote:
I tend to agree with your to some extent about Iran but not about North Korea. Osama bin Laden used to be friendly with the USA during the war with the Soviet Uninon and than turned his back to the former ally. Hence, friendliness is just a temporary characteristic of a person rather than something permanent and can evaporate anytime.
We know also that North Korea possesses some rudimentary nukes and it is actively trying to develop means of its delivery. Thus,
North Korea and weapons of mass destruction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hence, I’m asking myself, why do they need these nukes and means of its delivery in the first place. They’re certainly doomed to be defeated in any open armed conflict with the USA right of the bat, with all their stockpile being destroyed within first few hours of the war. The only reason that comes to my mind is that they want to be ready to perpetrate a terrorist attack in the same way as it was done by mad Arabs on 9-11, i.e. without any particular reason just because of their perverted nature, for example, in order to annihilate the main “class enemy” and die as “heroes” afterwards. So, I’m wondering maybe it’s better for the USA to press even harder on these commies and destroy their capacity to harm the USA long before they will be able to commit any heinous act of crime. Thoughts.
I have lots of thoughts about that. I'm hoping Russia can derail North Korea's nuclear program but if that can't happen then I still say this:
I support the war on terror, drone strikes, and the NSA... and that war on terror includes Kim Jong-Un and all the other terrorists in the North Korean government. North Koreans should listen to K-Pop, NOT Kim Jong-Un! Nobody should ever listen to Kim Jong Nutjobs!