But of course, a host of other nations have been and still are, Saudi Arabia included. So what makes Afghanistan and the ME so special? The pursuit of Democracy? :m:
So? We're talking about international security and you just shrug your shoulders when asked to actually deliver a policy recommendation. I guess it's much easier to whine and criticize than it is to actually contribute something. Meanwhile, the disintegration of Afghanistan was always going become the concern of other powers. Its too centrally located, too near other developing countries to be ignored. And then, of course, there is the whole fact that it became a hotbed of drug production and transnational terrorism. But yeah, so what, right? You don't know what your talking about. Saudi Arabia has never been a hub of transnational terrorism with training camps churning out thousands of jihadis who fanned out through the world to wreak havoc. Nor is it the hub of heroin production.
countezero: "Saudi Arabia has never been a hub of transnational terrorism with training camps churning out thousands of jihadis who fanned out through the world to wreak havoc." Surely you noticed that hundreds of jihadists hail from the magical kingdom. There are many Arabians who have a lot of money, but consider the Saud family decadent. The rich ones write checks, sending their proxies to school- all sorts of schools. 15 of them were indespensible to the most famous terrorist mission of all time. There are many Arabians fighting USAmericans in Iraq and Afghanistan today. There are regular violent incidents in the Kingdom too, and the Saudi police and secret services are busy keeping things from tipping into something resembling late-1970s Iran. And that's just the Sunni threat. Simultaneously, the Eastern Province (crucial to Petro-infrastructure) is a militant Shia powder-keg.
Yeah, I noticed. But the fact the Kingdom supplies jihadis and has some individuals who finance terrorism is not the same as having a failed state that is a training ground for terrorists who fan out and attack targets all over the world.
The United States has suffered the greatest terrorist blows from Arabian hands over the past decade. There were no Afghan nationals implicated in 9-11, the barracks and embassy bombings, etc etc but many Arabians. The 9-11 money trail led/leads to Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan. Saudi nationals have indeed fanned out to attack targets all over the world, and Saudi nationals do finance terrorism all over the world. Afghanistan and the Taliban state have never been an effective corral for militarily containing and eliminating the people who have attacked USAmericans. Not that the military conquest of the Holy Land would go any better. Invasion forces are stupid counter-terrorism anywhere. Unfortunately, we don't know how to kick terrorist ass in the USA- so far we've only been demonstrating in spectacular fashion how to wreck nations and supercharge terrorist recruitment, and there is at least a generation of blowback coming in response. Fighting terrorism while maintaining the moral high ground is still too advanced a concept for the US body-politic, because we still succumb to blind rage, and still remain the perfect target for terrorists determined to provoke major disruption to the present global and South Asian power structure. We have served very effectively as radical jihad's gullible and easily-manipulable wrecking-ball. We have fallen self-assured for the Tar-Baby trick that has rendered us well hobbled and feeble to regain (or even comprehend) the geopolitical initiative.
I'm not denying any of that. But Saudi Arabia is a sovereign nation and an American ally. You do not invade it because of the acts of a few of citizens (living abroad). Afghanistan was the hub of transnational jihadism, and as such, it had to be rooted out. Yes, they have. The people who planned and orchestrated the attack and were behind its logistics were all in Afghanistan and they were all guests of the Taliban, whom they assisted on some level. That is undeniable.
"You do not invade it" That's right. Invading sovereign nations is not our only counter-terrorism option- in fact it's precisely the Wrong Answer; desert storms are just what our most dangerous foes delight in conjuring. "...they were all guests of the Taliban, whom they assisted on some level." Terrorists move freely about the planet. What little has been revealed in publicized investigations shows that 9-11, and other notorious attacks were multi-level, multi-national efforts. Terrorists can claim the role of guest anywhere. Afghanistan has never been a unique terrorist haven. Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Afghan tribal issues were not the origin of 9-11. The harder we have squeezed Afghanistan, the more terrorists come squishing out in all directions, beckoning us onward in our Last Crusade.
Afghanistan wasn't a sovereign nation, but my point is that you only invade a state for the behavior of the state. Afghanistan qualifies there. You're oversimplifying. Terrorists move, but not easily. They need documents and such. And they certainly do not have havens where, for years, they are allowed to train and collect weapons.
"Afghanistan wasn't a sovereign nation" Can you offer a legal argument for this? "Terrorists move, but not easily." They move much more easily and freely than armies. "They need documents and such." Would you like to buy some documents? Trail of a Terrorist "And they certainly do not have havens where, for years, they are allowed to train and collect weapons." OK, if you say so Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Guns Explosives Meet Saad If you explore a basic education in terrorist careers, you'll find it's straightforward. It hasn't been that way around Mayberry since back in the French and Indian wars, but in much of the world it's easy to get any needed practical help with terrorism. It's even getting easier in the USA because the more disrupted societies become, the easier access becomes to lethal knowledge and technologies. In our times and provided sufficient intelligence and motive, gearing up for shocking terrorism isn't very much more involved than the logistics managed by legally-adventurous world travellers. It's easier to become a world-class and notorious terrorist than to become a globe-trotting pro golfer, surfer, sky-diver, exhibition pilot, etc etc. Millions have the physical and social mobility to live very exciting lives today- life is becoming exponentially more kinetic. The salient foreign-policy choice is what sort of adventures we wish to most intensively encourage from abroad.
And we will tell them that we're not responsible for feeding their babies food until they stop feeding their babies hate.
We're doing enough direct dismemberment of babies (and other innocents) that it's upstaging the nutrition wars (in shock and provocation, if not numbers).
Last Crusade? Huh? Here's a dose of reality for you- the extremists in the middle east stand absolutely zero chance of ever ending a western state. Their supply of resources is large but not infinite, and they can't eat sand once they run out of what we're sending them at present. For several centuries now, the middle east has never been involved in a single war that didn't see them take 10-fold the casualties and suffering they managed to inflict on others. They killed 50 000 Russians in Afghanistan? Russia killed 3 million of them, it's hilarious the jihadists think they actually achieved something there aside from helping the US out. They can hurt America's economy and cause a bump on the unemployment insurance list, but they'll irreparably crush their own futures in the process.
CptBork: "the extremists in the middle east stand absolutely zero chance of ever ending a western state." That's not what they're after. They want to upset the petro-economic apple-cart, and the Project For a Non-American Century begins with the knocking down the hegemon. The destruction of the USA as a nation is unnecessary and irrelevant to violent "jihadist" agendas, who intend to consolidate their own power after the collapse of the present structure in South Asia, whereby the USA enjoyed half a century at the top of the pyramid. I'm glad you bring this up, because it's precisely the spectacle that the militaristic US mindset isn't wired for (definitive wars between functional nations). They're not bothering to destroy the USA (which would be as you point out rather exhausting) because they only need to destroy and humiliate our legitimacy as regional hegemon in local public opinion. On the present trajectory, every government that co-operates with US overkill is losing political stability. It's reaching the point where our power (and willingness) to destroy is far exceeding our power to find stable and stabilizing geo-economic partners. Although there are concentrated short-term profits, we can't sustain our economy on chaos.
Not at all. I have long recommended a US policy of reliable diplomatic initiative, economic carrots, and military abstinence. The US is my country, and the damage it has done to international security in the past ten or fifteen years will take a long time to repair, but a good first step would be to do no more harm. Unfortunately, what that would mean in practice, for most of the past half century, is simply withdrawal of soldiers and warplanes. The US government is not able to follow a policy recommendation of diplomatic initiative and economic carrots, because that would interfere with the agenda of the US based multinationals. So my policy recommendation amounts to militarily pulling out and staying out. And that of course leaves the international security issues up for grabs; but that is better than the status quo, and is in any case unavoidable: hence the "so?" The probability that the 9/11 attacks will eventually end the US is not zero. Look around.
I think we're sufficiently resilient to endure nearly as much as the British (with better information, USAmericans will learn fast in our crash-course) and we'll most likely keep our (humbled) home islands intact.
Yes. The Taliban were recognized, officially, by only two governments in the entire world -- Saudi Arabia and UAE. No other country accepted their rule and viewed Afghanistan as a "state" in the terms you and I understand that to mean. Duh. What's your point? I do say so, and your links are not relevant. Running guns and moving weapons is not the same thing as having a country that was a haven for terrorists and a training ground. Afghanistan had hundreds of camps that were unreachable by the international community and those camps churned out tens of thousands of jihadis who went to everywhere from Turkey, to Chechnya to North Africa spreading violence. These are facts. A good anecdotal account of what I am talking about can be found in a book called Inside the Jihad. It describes the camps, the size and level of training in detail. If you are attempting to diminish the uniqueness and danger of transnational terrorism, which is something very new, then you are completely wrong. That's an idiotic statement, and one made by someone who clearly does not understand the relationship between intelligence, counter-terrorism and terrorism -- or how the same advances in technology you mention have made it harder to move around the world. People can watch you much easier nowadays...
People disappear too. And in many parts of the world, millions of people are anonymous, and looking for an adventurous time. Identities on the macro scale, even with expanding surveillance and data processing, there remains a lot of quantum behavior by nature and design. Have you ever watched people disappear? It happens in Western society too. (I'm not talking strictly about death). There are people around us who go "poof" for a few years and reappear.
One mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. I don't want terrorists or freedom fighters armed with nuclear weapons. The best defense against terrorists and freedom fighters is to give them freedom. We need world government to give justice so that freedom fighter will cease to exist because it is only a matter of time before freedom fighters/terrorists get their hand on weapons of mass destruction. The USA is particularly vulnerable to terrorists because the USA is relatively open and the USA by habitually taking sides and backing factions in the hundreds of political struggles, drug trafficking disputes and civil wars has made itself a potential target of every faction it has sided against.
No world "government" imo- just a stable set of life-enhancing rules, as in smaller fractals of symbiosis.
you do know that a branch of the house of saud married into the line that invent wahhbism(I know its not spelled right deal with it.)
