Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "People Cling To Departing U.S. Plane As Taliban Take Afghanistan" video.
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@siyiroancreint We went in to do what we thought was right?
Note the euphemism, "we went in." No, we invaded, we conquered, we committed war crimes, we installed a government amenable to our interests.
That doesn't get to the question of "right." States cannot just do what they think is right. They must abide by international laws and norms. The legal grounds for the invasion of Afghanistan are more ambiguous than for the invasion of Iraq, which was obviously illegal, but I have never been able to see the justification for invading a country because they wouldn't extradite a terrorist, a non-state entity, without proof, which is what the Taliban asked for and the US refused. (The Taliban were supported and funded by the US in the war against the USSR.) I can't imagine the US invading Germany or, say, Ecuador, because they refused to extradite someone to the US without proof of a crime.
The US didn't invade Afghanistan for some lofty notion, because we thought we were doing "the right thing." The US wanted revenge, it wanted to remind the world of its power, no matter the cost in human lives. It invaded Afghanistan because it could: Afghanistan was a weaker nation militarily, and it was a nation of non-white people.
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@siyiroancreint What a bunch incoherent nonsense.
"you are steeped in your echo chamber"
Says the guy parroting American exceptionalist propaganda and war apologia.
"the us didn't go it alone"
Again with the euphemisms. We invaded. The UN never gave authorization. America and Britain first engaged in a bombing campaign which distinguished legal scholar Marjorie Cohn called "patently illegal," in violation of article 51 of the UN charter (and therefore, as a ratified treaty, also in violation of the US Constitution), because the US never obtained UNSC authorization and "the attacks in New York and Washington D.C. were criminal acts, not 'armed attacks' by another state." Any other country which joined the US in the illegal bombing and invasion of Afghanistan—like Britain and Australia—therefore also did so illegally and in violation of international norms.
"A multinational coalition of UN forces attempted to rebuild a region"
This is pure delusion. The ISAF was created only after the invasion and did not legitimate it post hoc. The notion that the US invaded Afghanistan to "rebuild a region" is pure propaganda and laughable given developments over the last 20 years. The US invaded to secure a hold in the Middle East, to siphon money to the MIC, and as a reprisal for 9/11—even though Afghanistan did not perpetrate the attack.
"maybe we did inevitably hurt ourselves"
We killed, directly or indirectly by invading, hundreds of thousands of people. That should be first on one's mind.
"THOUSANDS of years of war"
This is a common dunderheaded, ideological approach to the problem. Those Muslims in the Middle East—all they know is war. What can we, with the white man's burden, possibly do to civilize them? But we don't need to go back thousands of years. We can go back a few decades, e.g. to when the US funded the mujahideen (like the Taliban and Bin Laden) against the Soviets. The most egregious thing about this framing is that Afghanistan did not start the war with the US—the US invaded Afghanistan. We were the bellicose ones. Not them. The US hasn't known peace for even two cumulative decades in its entire history.
"people you ignorantly call extremists"
Please cite where I used the word "extremists." You can't because I never did.
"we did not conquer"
We did. We overthrew the government, installed a puppet regime, and kept troops there for 20 years. I realize you like euphemisms, but this was a conquest.
"we tried to play world police since the international laws you speak of are toothless"
I need to repeat that in this case we were not the "world police." We were the criminals. We broke international laws. In fact, we broke the most serious international law, aggression against another state. We did not have the authority, moral or legal, to invade a country for revenge. There were legal, institutional avenues toward resolution which the US did not avail itself of, instead choosing to expedite its reprisal through an unauthorized war.
"if these so called "extremists" take the country, its important to remember its their country"
It isn't their country. The country belongs to the people, not to a gang of religious whackos (that goes for the US, too). Polling shows the opinions of most Afghanis to be in opposition to the Taliban on a host of issues, like women's rights. The Taliban regime will be repressive, as it was before the US invaded in 2001.
"and its important to remember they did it largely without firing a shot."
More misinformation. There've been many battles on the road to Kabul in addition to revenge killings, torture, and executions. Do you think this was some kind of velvet revolution? Do you think those AKs the Taliban fighters are holding are props?
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