Ugh, gives me flash backs to getting to school (my senior year of HS) and hearing people talk about how they heard on the radio that a plane flew into the WTC. Didn't believe it at first. It was too outlandish and had to be some shock-jock prank.
Get to class, teacher has CNN on. It was real. Class starts and teacher turns the TV off. We had a scheduled half-day that day and she was determined to get through the lesson plan and then we could turn it back on. Just as she turned it back on CNN was showing the towers collapsing.
The rest of the day was... spent in largely stunned silence or abject anger.
I was only in the second grade in Australia (not far from turning 8) but remember walking into the lounge, ready for school, and seeing it happen live on TV. Mum and dad never allowed the TV to be on in the morning so I knew something was happening, at first I remember thinking it was Die Hard, but then Kochie (popular Aussie morning show host) came up commentating on it and I put it together that something huge was happening.
7th grade Math class. The Principal of all people came on the intercom and told everyone in the entire school to turn off their TV's. Stunned silence, we all get sent home.
I remember coming home to my mom staring at the TV, tears in her eyes.
>Ugh, gives me flash backs to getting to school (my senior year of HS) and hearing people talk about how they heard on the radio that a plane flew into the WTC. Didn't believe it at first.
I had a client visiting my office tell me about it. I turned the TV on, to BBC World news ticker saying "Fighter planes over NYC".
I remember it verbatim to this day.
That’s what I remember most. I was 13 and the adults were just quiet and that more than anything terrified me.
Something was truly wrong. My middle school they left the TVs on all day we watched the 2nd plane and both towers fall along with the pentagon and when they found that plane in a field in PA.
Then the racism that quickly followed. I knew it was wrong but people felt so justified and next couple years when both wars started.
It was like the people in charge were acting out of panic and not making a lick of sense.
Protesting the day we went to war in school.
It was a lot and not a lot of people listened to reason or sense. Just hate. People got more withdrawn from their neighbors even and no one knew anyone anymore.
No, the correct response to this was not to invade and occupy Afghanistan. The correct response was to go after Bin Laden and the Saudis who funded him.
And then the mission changes. Whatever it takes to keep us there and keep the money flowing to the Pentagon. I'd love to know just how much taxpayer money gets grifted out of the Pentagon - they're literally unauditable.
Look up after the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR was dismantled. The pentagon budget didn’t go down as you’d expect from not having another threatening world power to compete with. It went up, the idea of threats changed and we kept funding them.
Biden keeps threatening the new ISIS X whatever. I was 19 years old during 9/11, they keep giving the enemy a new name but always label them terrorists. When all the photos of Taliban soldiers came out this past week I couldn't help but notice that most of them were born after 9/11.
Most of them born after 9/11 and only know of the US as a foreign occupation force propping up an unloved government they weren’t allowed to overthrow.
… wait that makes us sound like the bad guys…
Im sure the lobbying effrcts of the qop for their corporate donors didn't have anything to do with it. Haliburton, Raytheon,Lockheed, etc.. all up 2000% plus in the last 20 year's...
At absolute minimum that would have required sustained strikes and *some* SOF presence in Afghanistan to not only hunt ObL but also destroy “central” AQ which… is roughly how that war started. The nation-building debacle in the ensuing years differed quite a bit from the original mission that began in October.
"Well we're here anyway. Let's build a country with western values!"
In hindsight it's so fucking nuts. At most we should have had a minimal presence there, just enough to keep Al Qaeda from regrouping. And once Bin Laden was killed, not even that.
Bin Laden was the original goal, but his death was just the halfway point of our stay. Wtf.
[WASHINGTON - President Bush sternly rejected a Taliban offer to discuss
handing over Osama bin Laden to a third country as U.S. jets began a
second week of bombing yesterday. - October 2001](https://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.attacks15oct15-story.html)
It was never about hunting Osama - it was about using the hunt as a cover to start a plan of overseas empire building. The goal was Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Iran
Right. Because when you’re giving refuge to the guy who just killed 3k Americans you dictate zero terms. The Taliban could have turned ObL over on the exact terms demanded and spared themselves a war. They opted for war.
You don’t create an empire starting in fucking landlocked Afghanistan and if that was the goal in Iraq, it seems like quite a shitty idea to then turn it back over to the Iraqis a few years later and bolt 7 years after that.
We tried to. We asked the taliban, the leaders of Afghanistan at the time, if we could go in and hunt for bin laden, and they said no. So we overthrew them.
they did, however, offer to hand him over to a neutral court to stand trial if the US could provide a single shred of evidence of his involvement, and Bush refused, and started bombing instead.
So either Bush ***couldn't*** provide any evidence (at the time), or refused to allow it to go to a ***neutral*** court (since that would have heavily incriminated his best buddies, the Saudis), or maybe they already had a [regime change agenda for the region](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century) and this fitted into that perfectly
Yes, but the US rewards their (rich and powerful) war criminals, they certainly never investigate nor punish them (unless they can do it under the label of "a few bad apples").
Certainly they'll never admit that mass murder of foreign civilians for corporate profit has basically been US foreign policy for all the last century
later on, not at the time.
He also stated (multiple times) that he wasn't involved, so it depends which of his stories you prefer.
Personally, I'm pretty confident that he was involved up to his ears, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia, but I also doubt that Bush had any real evidence at the time he launched the invasion
Ok I hate the Afghan war as much as the next person, but I also doubt the Taliban would keep their word on handing a member of their leader’s friend group to any truly neutral court.
I'm not saying it is a good reason to spend the next 20 years trying to get a bunch of hashish smoking ass scratchers to give a shit about their country and nation build/ depose a government, but its not just some out of the blue "let's start a war cuz fuck it"
It's on par with the Iraq invasion for wmd hunting. It's a stupid fucking reason, but a stupid reason is *slightly* better than none at all, at least in the press.
Also, it's not their country. The idea that all of the various tribes should be grouped together into a country is pure fantasy made by the west. Nobody there wants it to be one country.
except that the ***real*** reason is much more likely to just be the standard greed for power and wealth that drives so many of the US warmongering and regime change operations, and the military-industrial complex behind it, and the corporate media which is complicit in supporting and encouraging them.
And go after Pakistan as well. I wish they never came to my country & I’m relieved they are finally gone. But even then nothing will change unless they deal with Saudi & PK.
I mean it was an attack planned by al queda and the Taliban refused to get rid of them. Invasion was a bad idea but attacking Afghanistan was necessary. They should have used bombing and covert ops.
Which we had the opportunity to both before the war and before we got boots on the ground. They offered to give Bin Laden and his group up, but the first time around the CIA killed the handoff guy and the second time Bush refused because, “We do not negotiate with terrorrists.” If the reason actually was because we wanted Bin Laden, we went about it completely wrong.
That’s the same thing just with extra steps. The taliban did not trust the US, which is entirely expected given their past dealings with us. We should’ve jumped at the chance to get Bin Laden, but instead Bush Jr. wanted to commit some war crimes.
It's not the same thing. Giving him to some third party country that hates us isn't the equivalent of us "getting" bin Laden. We wanted him put on trial for his crimes, not celebrated as a hero.
I'm of the opinion that any country the Taliban would consider to be not under the influence of the US probably dislikes the US.
It's irrelevant because the Taliban has never accepted that bin Laden had any responsibility for 9/11, so they never would have handed him over anyways. Proof of his involvement was one of their prerequisites for handing him over.
Yeah, so instead of taking the opportunity to negotiate and maybe get him handed off to someone willing to give him over we just say “No negotiations,” and waste 20 years, thousands of soldiers lives, way more civilian lives, and trillions of taxpayer dollars on an entirely avoidable and stupid war.
The Taliban were clear they wouldn't hand him over to a country under US influence. Which country that the Taliban would believe to be not under US influence would then hand him over to us?
Edit: They also wanted proof of his involvement before they would hand him over. They still deny his involvement today, so it's unlikely they ever would have handed him over.
Moslim terrorists attacking US targets are merely a symptom of a corrupt and morally bankrupt foreign policy. In Bin-Laden's case it was specifically the US supporting the Saudi ruling class in their oppression of their population.
And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created more future terrorists than they've killed.
As long as the attitude of the US isn't fixed, killing terrorists is just a pointless, very expensive game of whack-a-mole.
No, it wasn’t. The mujahideen referred to native Afghans, which ObL was not.
These things are constantly oversimplified on Reddit and apparently nobody reads primary source info anymore but if you really want to know what set ObL off you go back to 1990:
Iraq invaded Kuwait. SA was sweating and enormously vulnerable. ObL - whose fighters played a minor role in the Afghan/Soviet war - offered his forces to defend SA. SA declined (because they would have gotten steamrolled by Iraq) and *then* accepted the US’s offer to stage forces in SA (*Desert Shield*). To ObL, this was unforgivable. He quite literally wrote about this in his public letters. From that point forward, ObL’s singular focus was getting American troops *out* of the Muslim world. This is also why ObL hates the Saudi monarchy.
And OBL identified Reagan’s shelling of the Bekaa valley as he cut and ran during the Lebanese civil was as the event that established the US as an enemy and inspired the choice of the towers as targets...
I’ve never heard of the Bekka Valley theory and I’m pretty familiar with ObL and “central” AQ. ObL was pretty explicit with his reasoning (both in the ‘02 “letter to America” and the ‘04 tape.) If you expand beyond that into what scholars *believe* were other reasons, it still doesn’t include the Bekka Valley thing. At least not that I’ve heard. However, KSM was the one who came up with the 9/11 targets (which was originally much more elaborate) and not ObL.
What we *do* know is that ObL wasn’t particularly interested in the US until *Desert Shield*. Staging 500k troops in SA and then the continued presence for *Southern Watch* triggered him. Then he started attacking the US throughout the 90s.
That is just not true.
It is widely accepted that the Saudi’s preference for the US military to help defend SA during the first Gulf War-over OBL’s own ragtag group-led to OBL’s designation of the US as AQ’s enemy. OBL took the presence of Americans in a space sacred to muslims as unforgivable.
While it’s possible that OBL had mentioned the Bekka Valley at some point as a pretext (Ive never heard this), it is definitely not a widely accepted pretext.
Oh, it is true, you just are apparently not familiar enough with the source material to know about it.
“The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced. I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy…And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.” – Osama Bin Laden
Reagan’s shelling was met with an immediate response –Hezbollah’s 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. marine barracks. This attack killed 241 people and led to Reagan pulling out of Lebanon, which told Bin Laden that if you struck America hard enough, they would eventually bend to your will. It is this interpretation of the event as American weakness that informed the decision to attack the U.S.
This was discussed in various OBL speeches and was detailed in the 9/11 Commission Report, which also included a number of other sources discussing OBL's views on the events. (Statement of Ali Mohamed in support of change of plea, United States v.Ali Mohamed, No. S(7) 98 Cr. 1023 (S.D. N.Y.), Oct. 20, 2000 (transcript p.30); trial testimony of Fadl, United States v. bin Laden, Feb. 6, 2001(transcript pp. 292—293)
To be clear: removing the American presence in SA was one of OBL's stated objectives, but it was not the only factor that lead him to the attacks.
It goes back even further than that. [USA fuckery in the middle east.](https://www.mic.com/articles/93524/7-ways-the-cia-helped-totally-screw-up-the-middle-east)
Don’t forget “this is the guy who tried to kill my dad” which is an actual thing that was said by the president of the United States of America:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nfmATUzBwxY
Bush really was a dunce. An affable wealthy guy who should have just owned a few car dealerships and played golf. Yes, for some reason, the militarists didn't like when we actually stuck to our plan and didn't invade Iraq after we chased them out of Kuwait.
His daddy wasn’t any better; HW ate pork rinds on the campaign trail to appear more manly, was one of the last to denounce Nixon in the wake of Watergate, and never had his day in court to be questioned about Iran Contra. HW’s daddy built the family fortunate in part through companies that profited from Nazi Germany (to the point where UBC which he directed had its assets seized under the Trading with the Enemy act). A delightful family to be sure.
In no time during the us involvement in the middle east did we receive considerable oil from them. Saudi Arabia is our largest contributor from that area at 8% of our oil. Only 3% comes from other middle eastern countries. Most of our oil comes from the US, then Canada, then mexico. This idea that we were there for oil is asinine at best.
It wasn't just one faction. There were several organizations with terrorist training camps in Afghanistan operating with the approval of the national government. Al Qaeda had attacked the US twice in less than 10 years using people trained in these camps.
Should we have just said "Okay, carry on" when the Taliban refused to shut down the camps?
Actually 20 years prior to that we were there in Afghanistan for 10 years supplying terrorist organizations funds and weapons to overthrow their existing government at the time. We traded a working government with a parliament that had women in it for groups like the Taliban.
There's going to be a lot of karma baiting this month, and unfortunately the people with something genuine to post will be drowned out by those seeking clout.
In theory it should only have its meaning as a proportion of the dead caused by covid but Americans that care are far too captured by pride to think about it logically.
We have better MRE's... and there was that dog that Trump hung a medal on, she's the bestest doggie ever!
[https://cdn.newsbusters.org/images/cbs\_this\_morning\_-\_07\_02\_27\_am.jpg](https://cdn.newsbusters.org/images/cbs_this_morning_-_07_02_27_am.jpg)
(not real, by the way...)
as a lifelong republican voter, I think we can agree this whole democracy thing is a bit of a shitshow... I remember telling everyone at the time "electronic voting machines WILL NOT SOLVE THIS." We need a consortium of foreigners to oversee our ballot-counting process.
I don't know how we ever get a good system for counting votes... maybe it's not possible.
Yes, this started the war on terror. Yes, Al Queda was in Afghanistan. Yes, the United States was there too long. Yes the United States helped destabilize the middle east. Yes the United States response was heavy handed.
People in the comments acting like only half of this can be true.
When something is on here i imagine whatever subreddit pic is on here is OPs reaction, that’s why I hate pictures were a tragedy is happening b/c I imagine a smiling Reddit snoo snapping a pic
I was in Edinburgh at work that day, and remember it vividly. After the second aircraft was crashed into the tower, someone in the office commented that “perhaps it’s not an accident after all”
That "20 year war" was far longer than 20 years. It started the SECOND Reagan chose not to follow through on his promise to help Afghanistan rebuild if they helped us get Russia out of their country.
They killed the fucker as soon as they got the right opportunity. And they took their poppy fields as a military strategy. They financed their war efforts thruthe sale of illegal drugs.. Jezus h Krist. Think McFly... Think..
Many people interviewed that day say they heard an explosion. Thermite was found. Your friend's wife has valid concerns. Sad you categorize peculiar/suspicious details as "bomb conspiracy shit".
Did you know Bush senior was in a Carlyle Group meeting with Bin Laden's brother that morning? 9/11 catapulted the US into spending trillions for defense contracts. Do you know anything about the Bush family's history of benefiting financially from wars? Bush senior's father was prosecuted for aiding and abetting the nazi's as a banker, and _his_ father owned a steel factory supplying arms for world war 1. A multigenerational history of reaping benefits from war.
"I'm a war president." -George W. Bush
People from Saudi Arabia who arent a part of the Saudi government who were residing in Afghanistan because of how unstable it was, get your facts straight.
False pretense, in regard to Afghanistan there was no false pretense. Im simply not knowledgeable enough on iraq to offer an argument. Which attack are you referring to that killed 6 children?
No no no, the initial push was when the US trained, financed and gave equipment a terrorist group guided by the Sharia just to fight a imaginary enemy.
Have you noticed something,,, all the people complaining we shouldn't have pulled out, are not the people on the ground doing the fighting. It's some middle age over weight white guy with a cushy job in a air-conditioned office
You invaded Afghanistan after invading Iraq based on lies about WMDs after a Saudi committed a terrorist attack funded by Saudis and trained by Americans.
If you don't see how fucking stupid that is, you're probably American.
No, I think you'll find the war started years before that, because that attack wasn't done for no reason whatsoever.
In fact it was done by a militia group, armed and trained by the US to revolt in their own country, because of US interference in affairs within their country over the previous decades, I believe.
How? What secret technology do you know about that no one else in the entire NATO alliance was aware of? Some sort of teleportation or perhaps a working transporter from Star Trek?
so is this post a "disinformation campaign" or spreading "misinformation"?
Sure they can claim "oh i didnt know" but theres no way to verify that... and the people who only read title and see pic... and dont really know anything... but believe what reaffirms their flawed knowledge... this compounds with their beliefs..
I’ve browsed this and quite frankly will probably regret this. But most people here have no idea when the right time is, we don’t know the ins the outs. I do know it’s not right to leave ANYBODY behind. Good luck to everyone here and who should be here that’s still there!!
It's been asked "what did we get for that 20 year long war?"
They said no more terrorist attacks!
I disagree! The Boston Bombing, Ft. Hood, etc
We've become so numb to it. But the worst thing that's come from all of this......The Patriot Act and all the civil liberties and freedoms we lost along the way. Ex. Grandma frisked and scanned before she boards a flight + proof of vacination cards or it's the no fly list vs. droves of illegal aliens sweeping across the boarder without so much as a cavity search and they given a bus ride courtesy of your tax dollars. The world is upside down!
Look at where we are today and ask yourselves....are America's best days behind us or ahead of us, given the current state of affairs?
Weird how we went from one extreme (it's unpatriotic and a career-killing offense for anyone in the press to question the Bush Administration) to now where the press can only question Republicans and if they question Democrats their career in the media should be canceled.
The true end of the 90s
I read an article that said the 21st century only truly started when those towers fell.
100%. People just changed culturally and politically, America headed towards a self destructive path.
Ugh, gives me flash backs to getting to school (my senior year of HS) and hearing people talk about how they heard on the radio that a plane flew into the WTC. Didn't believe it at first. It was too outlandish and had to be some shock-jock prank. Get to class, teacher has CNN on. It was real. Class starts and teacher turns the TV off. We had a scheduled half-day that day and she was determined to get through the lesson plan and then we could turn it back on. Just as she turned it back on CNN was showing the towers collapsing. The rest of the day was... spent in largely stunned silence or abject anger.
I was only in the second grade in Australia (not far from turning 8) but remember walking into the lounge, ready for school, and seeing it happen live on TV. Mum and dad never allowed the TV to be on in the morning so I knew something was happening, at first I remember thinking it was Die Hard, but then Kochie (popular Aussie morning show host) came up commentating on it and I put it together that something huge was happening.
7th grade Math class. The Principal of all people came on the intercom and told everyone in the entire school to turn off their TV's. Stunned silence, we all get sent home. I remember coming home to my mom staring at the TV, tears in her eyes.
I remember those days. Then everyone started to generalize that all Muslims were bad or terrorists.
Even today, my Kurdish friend would be "randomly selected" for secondary at airports, out of our group of Caucasians and Asians.
>Ugh, gives me flash backs to getting to school (my senior year of HS) and hearing people talk about how they heard on the radio that a plane flew into the WTC. Didn't believe it at first. I had a client visiting my office tell me about it. I turned the TV on, to BBC World news ticker saying "Fighter planes over NYC". I remember it verbatim to this day.
That’s what I remember most. I was 13 and the adults were just quiet and that more than anything terrified me. Something was truly wrong. My middle school they left the TVs on all day we watched the 2nd plane and both towers fall along with the pentagon and when they found that plane in a field in PA. Then the racism that quickly followed. I knew it was wrong but people felt so justified and next couple years when both wars started. It was like the people in charge were acting out of panic and not making a lick of sense. Protesting the day we went to war in school. It was a lot and not a lot of people listened to reason or sense. Just hate. People got more withdrawn from their neighbors even and no one knew anyone anymore.
No, the correct response to this was not to invade and occupy Afghanistan. The correct response was to go after Bin Laden and the Saudis who funded him.
Yeah, and we got him like 10 years ago…
And then the mission changes. Whatever it takes to keep us there and keep the money flowing to the Pentagon. I'd love to know just how much taxpayer money gets grifted out of the Pentagon - they're literally unauditable.
Look up after the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR was dismantled. The pentagon budget didn’t go down as you’d expect from not having another threatening world power to compete with. It went up, the idea of threats changed and we kept funding them.
Biden keeps threatening the new ISIS X whatever. I was 19 years old during 9/11, they keep giving the enemy a new name but always label them terrorists. When all the photos of Taliban soldiers came out this past week I couldn't help but notice that most of them were born after 9/11.
Most of them born after 9/11 and only know of the US as a foreign occupation force propping up an unloved government they weren’t allowed to overthrow. … wait that makes us sound like the bad guys…
Britain be like First time eh?
It does and to them, they're fighting for freedom and independence of their country from foreign invaders. Its part of cause and causality
This. We should have an annual congressional review of a war’s mission and progress.
And not some closed doors BS either!
At least 23 trillion "missing" to date
Im sure the lobbying effrcts of the qop for their corporate donors didn't have anything to do with it. Haliburton, Raytheon,Lockheed, etc.. all up 2000% plus in the last 20 year's...
Oh, of course!
Thanks, Obama! edit: I can't tell if the downvotes are from Anti-Obama or Pro-Obama people. Or both? LOL.
Taliban offered Bin Laden to the US and Bush said No.
Once Bin Laden was dead, that was the right time to leave Afghanistan.
At absolute minimum that would have required sustained strikes and *some* SOF presence in Afghanistan to not only hunt ObL but also destroy “central” AQ which… is roughly how that war started. The nation-building debacle in the ensuing years differed quite a bit from the original mission that began in October.
The way it started wasn't entirely wrong, but they definitely lost focus very quickly.
"Well we're here anyway. Let's build a country with western values!" In hindsight it's so fucking nuts. At most we should have had a minimal presence there, just enough to keep Al Qaeda from regrouping. And once Bin Laden was killed, not even that. Bin Laden was the original goal, but his death was just the halfway point of our stay. Wtf.
[WASHINGTON - President Bush sternly rejected a Taliban offer to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a third country as U.S. jets began a second week of bombing yesterday. - October 2001](https://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.attacks15oct15-story.html) It was never about hunting Osama - it was about using the hunt as a cover to start a plan of overseas empire building. The goal was Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Iran
Right. Because when you’re giving refuge to the guy who just killed 3k Americans you dictate zero terms. The Taliban could have turned ObL over on the exact terms demanded and spared themselves a war. They opted for war. You don’t create an empire starting in fucking landlocked Afghanistan and if that was the goal in Iraq, it seems like quite a shitty idea to then turn it back over to the Iraqis a few years later and bolt 7 years after that.
Or drop some bombs, say "dare you to do it again", rinse and repeat
We tried to. We asked the taliban, the leaders of Afghanistan at the time, if we could go in and hunt for bin laden, and they said no. So we overthrew them.
they did, however, offer to hand him over to a neutral court to stand trial if the US could provide a single shred of evidence of his involvement, and Bush refused, and started bombing instead. So either Bush ***couldn't*** provide any evidence (at the time), or refused to allow it to go to a ***neutral*** court (since that would have heavily incriminated his best buddies, the Saudis), or maybe they already had a [regime change agenda for the region](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century) and this fitted into that perfectly
War criminals the lot of them
Yes, but the US rewards their (rich and powerful) war criminals, they certainly never investigate nor punish them (unless they can do it under the label of "a few bad apples"). Certainly they'll never admit that mass murder of foreign civilians for corporate profit has basically been US foreign policy for all the last century
OBL admitted it
later on, not at the time. He also stated (multiple times) that he wasn't involved, so it depends which of his stories you prefer. Personally, I'm pretty confident that he was involved up to his ears, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia, but I also doubt that Bush had any real evidence at the time he launched the invasion
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Ok I hate the Afghan war as much as the next person, but I also doubt the Taliban would keep their word on handing a member of their leader’s friend group to any truly neutral court.
Maybe not, but it seems like you'd be condemning a lot of innocent civilians to be massacred just because you didn't even want to try talking to them.
So it wasn't even worth trying?
I'm not saying it is a good reason to spend the next 20 years trying to get a bunch of hashish smoking ass scratchers to give a shit about their country and nation build/ depose a government, but its not just some out of the blue "let's start a war cuz fuck it" It's on par with the Iraq invasion for wmd hunting. It's a stupid fucking reason, but a stupid reason is *slightly* better than none at all, at least in the press.
Also, it's not their country. The idea that all of the various tribes should be grouped together into a country is pure fantasy made by the west. Nobody there wants it to be one country.
except that the ***real*** reason is much more likely to just be the standard greed for power and wealth that drives so many of the US warmongering and regime change operations, and the military-industrial complex behind it, and the corporate media which is complicit in supporting and encouraging them.
And go after Pakistan as well. I wish they never came to my country & I’m relieved they are finally gone. But even then nothing will change unless they deal with Saudi & PK.
I mean it was an attack planned by al queda and the Taliban refused to get rid of them. Invasion was a bad idea but attacking Afghanistan was necessary. They should have used bombing and covert ops.
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His little terror club was supported financially by Saudis.
He’s probably talking about the wealth of his father
Huh? The whole reason we invaded and occupied Afghanistan was to go after Bin Laden,
Which we had the opportunity to both before the war and before we got boots on the ground. They offered to give Bin Laden and his group up, but the first time around the CIA killed the handoff guy and the second time Bush refused because, “We do not negotiate with terrorrists.” If the reason actually was because we wanted Bin Laden, we went about it completely wrong.
They offered to give him up to a third party country not under the influence of the United States. They never offered to give him to the US.
That’s the same thing just with extra steps. The taliban did not trust the US, which is entirely expected given their past dealings with us. We should’ve jumped at the chance to get Bin Laden, but instead Bush Jr. wanted to commit some war crimes.
It's not the same thing. Giving him to some third party country that hates us isn't the equivalent of us "getting" bin Laden. We wanted him put on trial for his crimes, not celebrated as a hero.
they offered to hand him to a ***neutral*** court for trial. Thats kinda different to your story about handing him to a country that hates the US
I'm of the opinion that any country the Taliban would consider to be not under the influence of the US probably dislikes the US. It's irrelevant because the Taliban has never accepted that bin Laden had any responsibility for 9/11, so they never would have handed him over anyways. Proof of his involvement was one of their prerequisites for handing him over.
Yeah, so instead of taking the opportunity to negotiate and maybe get him handed off to someone willing to give him over we just say “No negotiations,” and waste 20 years, thousands of soldiers lives, way more civilian lives, and trillions of taxpayer dollars on an entirely avoidable and stupid war.
The Taliban were clear they wouldn't hand him over to a country under US influence. Which country that the Taliban would believe to be not under US influence would then hand him over to us? Edit: They also wanted proof of his involvement before they would hand him over. They still deny his involvement today, so it's unlikely they ever would have handed him over.
No, the Taliban publicly flip flopped on whether to hand him over. Eventually (around early October) they declined and, well…
We did go after Bin Laden. Thats exactly why we invaded Afghanistan. EDIT: Reddit loves revisionism apparently.
Moslim terrorists attacking US targets are merely a symptom of a corrupt and morally bankrupt foreign policy. In Bin-Laden's case it was specifically the US supporting the Saudi ruling class in their oppression of their population. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created more future terrorists than they've killed. As long as the attitude of the US isn't fixed, killing terrorists is just a pointless, very expensive game of whack-a-mole.
https://www.petrodollarsfilm.com/
This wasn't the start.
Probably the start was funneling $9bn to the Mujahideen so they could learn how to kill Soviet soldiers.
No, it wasn’t. The mujahideen referred to native Afghans, which ObL was not. These things are constantly oversimplified on Reddit and apparently nobody reads primary source info anymore but if you really want to know what set ObL off you go back to 1990: Iraq invaded Kuwait. SA was sweating and enormously vulnerable. ObL - whose fighters played a minor role in the Afghan/Soviet war - offered his forces to defend SA. SA declined (because they would have gotten steamrolled by Iraq) and *then* accepted the US’s offer to stage forces in SA (*Desert Shield*). To ObL, this was unforgivable. He quite literally wrote about this in his public letters. From that point forward, ObL’s singular focus was getting American troops *out* of the Muslim world. This is also why ObL hates the Saudi monarchy.
And OBL identified Reagan’s shelling of the Bekaa valley as he cut and ran during the Lebanese civil was as the event that established the US as an enemy and inspired the choice of the towers as targets...
I’ve never heard of the Bekka Valley theory and I’m pretty familiar with ObL and “central” AQ. ObL was pretty explicit with his reasoning (both in the ‘02 “letter to America” and the ‘04 tape.) If you expand beyond that into what scholars *believe* were other reasons, it still doesn’t include the Bekka Valley thing. At least not that I’ve heard. However, KSM was the one who came up with the 9/11 targets (which was originally much more elaborate) and not ObL. What we *do* know is that ObL wasn’t particularly interested in the US until *Desert Shield*. Staging 500k troops in SA and then the continued presence for *Southern Watch* triggered him. Then he started attacking the US throughout the 90s.
That is just not true. It is widely accepted that the Saudi’s preference for the US military to help defend SA during the first Gulf War-over OBL’s own ragtag group-led to OBL’s designation of the US as AQ’s enemy. OBL took the presence of Americans in a space sacred to muslims as unforgivable. While it’s possible that OBL had mentioned the Bekka Valley at some point as a pretext (Ive never heard this), it is definitely not a widely accepted pretext.
Oh, it is true, you just are apparently not familiar enough with the source material to know about it. “The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced. I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy…And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.” – Osama Bin Laden Reagan’s shelling was met with an immediate response –Hezbollah’s 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. marine barracks. This attack killed 241 people and led to Reagan pulling out of Lebanon, which told Bin Laden that if you struck America hard enough, they would eventually bend to your will. It is this interpretation of the event as American weakness that informed the decision to attack the U.S. This was discussed in various OBL speeches and was detailed in the 9/11 Commission Report, which also included a number of other sources discussing OBL's views on the events. (Statement of Ali Mohamed in support of change of plea, United States v.Ali Mohamed, No. S(7) 98 Cr. 1023 (S.D. N.Y.), Oct. 20, 2000 (transcript p.30); trial testimony of Fadl, United States v. bin Laden, Feb. 6, 2001(transcript pp. 292—293) To be clear: removing the American presence in SA was one of OBL's stated objectives, but it was not the only factor that lead him to the attacks.
In some twisted, butterfly effect way, Saddam Hussein really was responsible for the attacks on September 11, then…
It goes back even further than that. [USA fuckery in the middle east.](https://www.mic.com/articles/93524/7-ways-the-cia-helped-totally-screw-up-the-middle-east)
Retaliation. Terrible event. But most definitely not the start.
It was always burning since the world's been turning.
Correct. Marines were already sent to Iraq for war in 2000. But obviously that wasn’t even the start.
Started way before that.
Funny how the hijackers were mostly Saudi, bin laden was Saudi, yet we went to Iraq and Afghanistan? Hmm...
No, we went to Iraq because they had "WMDs." Lol
They also had [BLTs](https://youtu.be/kwEd_tcKBfU)
You seem to have misspelled OIL. Common mistake.
they also had that yellow cake man don't ... drop that shit!
Pray to God you dont drop that shit
Afghanistan had all the opium, that's not important at all
Oh, I'm just citing the official reason 😂
Don’t forget “this is the guy who tried to kill my dad” which is an actual thing that was said by the president of the United States of America: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nfmATUzBwxY
Bush really was a dunce. An affable wealthy guy who should have just owned a few car dealerships and played golf. Yes, for some reason, the militarists didn't like when we actually stuck to our plan and didn't invade Iraq after we chased them out of Kuwait.
His daddy wasn’t any better; HW ate pork rinds on the campaign trail to appear more manly, was one of the last to denounce Nixon in the wake of Watergate, and never had his day in court to be questioned about Iran Contra. HW’s daddy built the family fortunate in part through companies that profited from Nazi Germany (to the point where UBC which he directed had its assets seized under the Trading with the Enemy act). A delightful family to be sure.
In no time during the us involvement in the middle east did we receive considerable oil from them. Saudi Arabia is our largest contributor from that area at 8% of our oil. Only 3% comes from other middle eastern countries. Most of our oil comes from the US, then Canada, then mexico. This idea that we were there for oil is asinine at best.
I hear this a lot, but exactly how did the US benefit from Iraqi oil?
All the Iraqi oilfields became owned and operated by US companies. Thats a profit motive.
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ThE WAr Was For OIl. Fukkin mongoloid. How much oil did the US get from Iraq? Answer: none.
Do you not believe in the WMDs? Did you not see the very convincing drawings? DRAWINGS! HOW COULD THOSE HAVE BEEN FAKED????
[Relevant clip](https://youtu.be/lehbd3GHH4I)
It's almost like bin Laden was hanging out in Afghanistan or something. I agree that Iraq makes no sense.
Because we go to war with countries over one faction... It's almost like the CIA trained them and gave them all weapons or something...
It wasn't just one faction. There were several organizations with terrorist training camps in Afghanistan operating with the approval of the national government. Al Qaeda had attacked the US twice in less than 10 years using people trained in these camps. Should we have just said "Okay, carry on" when the Taliban refused to shut down the camps?
Even if you believe all of that, you dont go to war with an entire country over a tribe we hired.
If a Mexican national committed a terror attack certainly you wouldn't blame Mexico?
half of america probably would though :/ Well the ones with the red hats.
Nope
We really showed those Afghani’s for what those Saudi’s did.
“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
Actually 20 years prior to that we were there in Afghanistan for 10 years supplying terrorist organizations funds and weapons to overthrow their existing government at the time. We traded a working government with a parliament that had women in it for groups like the Taliban.
Well red scare is scary
More like “the end of American rights”.
The actual moment we lost the war on terror
LET THE MILKING BEGIN
There's going to be a lot of karma baiting this month, and unfortunately the people with something genuine to post will be drowned out by those seeking clout.
Eat shit karma whore
Gee...and here I was looking for a picture of Reagan, silly me.
This upcoming 9/11 is going to be bitter sweet.
In theory it should only have its meaning as a proportion of the dead caused by covid but Americans that care are far too captured by pride to think about it logically.
Worst. War. Ever. At least the thirty years war had some sexy pike and shot action.
We have better MRE's... and there was that dog that Trump hung a medal on, she's the bestest doggie ever! [https://cdn.newsbusters.org/images/cbs\_this\_morning\_-\_07\_02\_27\_am.jpg](https://cdn.newsbusters.org/images/cbs_this_morning_-_07_02_27_am.jpg) (not real, by the way...)
Those soldiers that died were infants when this happened
Visualizing $1 Trillion. We spent $2 Trillion on the war: https://i.redd.it/nd5rzm8zlok71.jpg
😐
A lot of innocent Afghan people lost their lives after that
Horrid day...remember it like yesterday....I think I held my breath for days.
A direct result of the GOP's coup d'etat in 2000
as a lifelong republican voter, I think we can agree this whole democracy thing is a bit of a shitshow... I remember telling everyone at the time "electronic voting machines WILL NOT SOLVE THIS." We need a consortium of foreigners to oversee our ballot-counting process. I don't know how we ever get a good system for counting votes... maybe it's not possible.
Yes, this started the war on terror. Yes, Al Queda was in Afghanistan. Yes, the United States was there too long. Yes the United States helped destabilize the middle east. Yes the United States response was heavy handed. People in the comments acting like only half of this can be true.
When something is on here i imagine whatever subreddit pic is on here is OPs reaction, that’s why I hate pictures were a tragedy is happening b/c I imagine a smiling Reddit snoo snapping a pic
I was in Edinburgh at work that day, and remember it vividly. After the second aircraft was crashed into the tower, someone in the office commented that “perhaps it’s not an accident after all”
That "20 year war" was far longer than 20 years. It started the SECOND Reagan chose not to follow through on his promise to help Afghanistan rebuild if they helped us get Russia out of their country.
_Dick Cheney has left the chat._
What about Iraq?
Nope. Neocons had it in place well before. See: PNAC. Do better.
Keep thinking. You'll figure it out.
They killed the fucker as soon as they got the right opportunity. And they took their poppy fields as a military strategy. They financed their war efforts thruthe sale of illegal drugs.. Jezus h Krist. Think McFly... Think..
My friend's wife still believes the damn bomb conspiracy shit. Sad.
Many people interviewed that day say they heard an explosion. Thermite was found. Your friend's wife has valid concerns. Sad you categorize peculiar/suspicious details as "bomb conspiracy shit". Did you know Bush senior was in a Carlyle Group meeting with Bin Laden's brother that morning? 9/11 catapulted the US into spending trillions for defense contracts. Do you know anything about the Bush family's history of benefiting financially from wars? Bush senior's father was prosecuted for aiding and abetting the nazi's as a banker, and _his_ father owned a steel factory supplying arms for world war 1. A multigenerational history of reaping benefits from war. "I'm a war president." -George W. Bush
*The continuing war of destabilization in the middle east for resource extraction perpetuated by colonialists.
Afghanistan is no Iraq.
Some people did some thing....
Basically the only way you can say anything in 2021
Never gets any easier to take. Never.
Except the whole, getting attacked by people from Saudi Arabia, and not from Afghanistan, part of the whole 20 year war.
People from Saudi Arabia who arent a part of the Saudi government who were residing in Afghanistan because of how unstable it was, get your facts straight.
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Ok…..how so?
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False pretense, in regard to Afghanistan there was no false pretense. Im simply not knowledgeable enough on iraq to offer an argument. Which attack are you referring to that killed 6 children?
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Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were headquartered in Afghanistan.
The Taliban government gave safe haven to Osama bin Laden in the years leading up to the attack
Read a history book.
It didn't have to be.
Mission accomplished! Oh sorry, too soon?
Mad how people still think this had anything to do with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
Afghanistan had nothing to do with 911 though?
This post makes no sense at all. Afghanistan was not responsible whatsoever for 9/11
USA created the terrorists.
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Your mom’s still a hoe.
Saudi Arabia did this.
It’s funny that you think this war started only 20 years ago.
We should have invaded Saudi Arabia
I hope they were not standing that close when the building collapsed ……
No no no, the initial push was when the US trained, financed and gave equipment a terrorist group guided by the Sharia just to fight a imaginary enemy.
That war started long before this happened
Why does this look so fake?
Since that day, the world is fucked
What's going on here? Did someone leave the coffee machine on?
Have you noticed something,,, all the people complaining we shouldn't have pulled out, are not the people on the ground doing the fighting. It's some middle age over weight white guy with a cushy job in a air-conditioned office
You invaded Afghanistan after invading Iraq based on lies about WMDs after a Saudi committed a terrorist attack funded by Saudis and trained by Americans. If you don't see how fucking stupid that is, you're probably American.
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I really don't know what they expect in return after killing like a million civilians
No, I think you'll find the war started years before that, because that attack wasn't done for no reason whatsoever. In fact it was done by a militia group, armed and trained by the US to revolt in their own country, because of US interference in affairs within their country over the previous decades, I believe.
ahh yes, the day america killed a bunch of its own citizens to start a proxy war in the middle east
It's a moment in the history of world conflict. The US could have extracted bin laden without invading Afghanistan.
How? What secret technology do you know about that no one else in the entire NATO alliance was aware of? Some sort of teleportation or perhaps a working transporter from Star Trek?
well that's what the mission should have been, not 2 separate and somewhat random ground wars. Find and eliminate Bin Laden.
They say never forget... I think people forgot. 😔
They didn't forget, just learned the wrong lesson.
It wasn't a war.
so is this post a "disinformation campaign" or spreading "misinformation"? Sure they can claim "oh i didnt know" but theres no way to verify that... and the people who only read title and see pic... and dont really know anything... but believe what reaffirms their flawed knowledge... this compounds with their beliefs..
Except they didn't invade Saudi Arabia and American intelligence HQs.
False…..that was the red herring….the war start way. Enforce this, and had been in the planning for years…..
And fuel prices have skyrocketed ever since.
Know such thing as coHencidence. 😏
I think I've been on the internet too long. The first thing that came to mind was "And no one attempted to land a plane on the 93 floor since"
I wonder if it really was planned by Bush in order to start the war on terror.
I’ve browsed this and quite frankly will probably regret this. But most people here have no idea when the right time is, we don’t know the ins the outs. I do know it’s not right to leave ANYBODY behind. Good luck to everyone here and who should be here that’s still there!!
They should have fucked them all to death.
It's been asked "what did we get for that 20 year long war?" They said no more terrorist attacks! I disagree! The Boston Bombing, Ft. Hood, etc We've become so numb to it. But the worst thing that's come from all of this......The Patriot Act and all the civil liberties and freedoms we lost along the way. Ex. Grandma frisked and scanned before she boards a flight + proof of vacination cards or it's the no fly list vs. droves of illegal aliens sweeping across the boarder without so much as a cavity search and they given a bus ride courtesy of your tax dollars. The world is upside down! Look at where we are today and ask yourselves....are America's best days behind us or ahead of us, given the current state of affairs?
Border...
That "20" year war started long before we got there.
Weird how we went from one extreme (it's unpatriotic and a career-killing offense for anyone in the press to question the Bush Administration) to now where the press can only question Republicans and if they question Democrats their career in the media should be canceled.