Opinions on the wars 1

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regardless of the apparent justification for invading afghanistan, surely at the end of the day it differs little from the invasion of iraq? i am not aware of any evidence held by the aggressors to suggest that the september 11th attack was an orchestrated plan carried out by the afghan state, would this lack of such evidence not then suggest that declaring war on a nation on such a basis might also be a contravention of international law?

War against the Afghan state? Certainly we've been dropping bombs on land within Afghanistan, but the target is not the government of Afghanistan.

Actually, these "quite unique definitions of Socialism and Communism" of "[my] own" were in my textbook, Contemporary Business, by Louis E. Boone & David L. Kurtz, which was used in the Introduction To Business class, GEB 1011 Introduction to Business, Rasmussen College, Ocala campus. I.e., Business 101.

Wow you have your very own quite unique definitions of Socialism and Communism. Funny that

well the government was overthrown, was it not?

also, bear in mind that the decision to invade afghanistan was taken before the events of september 11th.

see here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/ma ... ber11.usa2

Rise and Fall of the Taliban

The Taliban had risen to power in the mid-1990s in reaction to the anarchy and warlordism that arose after the withdrawal of Soviet forces. Many Taliban had been educated in madrassas in Pakistan and were largely from rural southern Pashtun backgrounds. In 1994, the Taliban developed enough strength to capture the city of Kandahar from a local warlord and proceeded to expand its control throughout Afghanistan, occupying Kabul in September 1996. By the end of 1998, the Taliban occupied about 90% of the country, limiting the opposition largely to a small mostly Tajik corner in the northeast and the Panjshir valley.

The Taliban sought to impose an extreme interpretation of Islam--based upon the rural Pashtun tribal code--on the entire country and committed massive human rights violations, particularly directed against women and girls. The Taliban also committed serious atrocities against minority populations, particularly the Shi'a Hazara ethnic group, and killed noncombatants in several well-documented instances. In 2001, as part of a drive against relics of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past, the Taliban destroyed two huge Buddha statues carved into a cliff face outside of the city of Bamiyan.

From the mid-1990s the Taliban provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national who had fought with the mujahideen resistance against the Soviets, and provided a base for his and other terrorist organizations. Bin Laden provided both financial and political support to the Taliban. Bin Laden and his Al-Qaida group were charged with the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam in 1998, and in August 1998 the United States launched a cruise missile attack against bin Laden's terrorist camp in southeastern Afghanistan. Bin Laden and Al-Qaida have acknowledged their responsibility for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States.

Following the Taliban's repeated refusal to expel bin Laden and his group and end its support for international terrorism, the U.S. and its partners in the anti-terrorist coalition began a military campaign on October 7, 2001, targeting terrorist facilities and various Taliban military and political assets within Afghanistan. Under pressure from U.S. military and anti-Taliban forces, the Taliban disintegrated rapidly, and Kabul fell on November 13, 2001.

Afghan factions opposed to the Taliban met at a United Nations-sponsored conference in Bonn, Germany in December 2001 and agreed to restore stability and governance to Afghanistan--creating an interim government and establishing a process to move toward a permanent government. Under the "Bonn Agreement," an Afghan Interim Authority was formed and took office in Kabul on December 22, 2001 with Hamid Karzai as Chairman. The Interim Authority held power for approximately 6 months while preparing for a nationwide "Loya Jirga" (Grand Council) in mid-June 2002 that decided on the structure of a Transitional Authority. The Transitional Authority, headed by President Hamid Karzai, renamed the government as the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan (TISA). One of the TISA's primary achievements was the drafting of a constitution that was ratified by a Constitutional Loya Jirga on January 4, 2004. On December 7, 2004, the country was renamed the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

regardless of the apparent justification for invading afghanistan, surely at the end of the day it differs little from the invasion of iraq? i am not aware of any evidence held by the aggressors to suggest that the september 11th attack was an orchestrated plan carried out by the afghan state, would this lack of such evidence not then suggest that declaring war on a nation on such a basis might also be a contravention of international law?

We are commonly given such trite, caricatured definitions in American schools.

Parakeet: According to the definition of socialism you gave, fascism is a form of socialism. If you have studied the history, this tells you the definition must be wrong. Fascism and socialism were antagonistic ideologies, diametrically opposed to each other. Any definition that makes the two equivalent is just absurd.

perhaps boone and kurtz are not coming from a particularly unbiased position?

The supposed goals of socialism having ever been met or in most instances becoming rule by military force?

Anyhow, their definition refers to the economic part of socialism and communism, not to the ideology.

Show me one single individual person who has no bias, and I'll show you that they aren't breathing.

I believe we invoked the "Bush Doctrine" in invading Afghanistan to claim that we needn't make any distinction between terrorists and nations which harbor terrorists. I don't the Bush Doctrine could be considered legitimate, so yes, our invasion of Afghanistan is also quite likely in violation of international law. It's just that the case of Iraq is so much more clear; one has to be willfully ignorant of reality to claim that we were within any reasonable interpretation of international law when we attacked Iraq.

Incidentally, the US invasion of Iraq was in blatant violation of international law, including a number of treaties to which the US is a signatory.

I disagree. Saddam Hussein had been in violation of the agreement that ended Gulf "War" I from the instant the ink on it was dry. He gave the US ample grounds for invasion just about every day from the end of Gulf "War" I until the invasion started. I mean, if locking onto aircraft with radar for the purpose of targeting them with SAMs isn't a provocation for war, what is? And that is far from the only thing he did.

Besides, compared to the conduct of the British, US and Soviet militaries in World War II, Iraq was and has been handled with kid gloves. As in, no German prisoners taken during the Battle of the Bulge counterattack (they were shot out of hand when they surrendered), indiscriminate firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, just about every female between the ages of six and sixty getting gang-raped when the Soviets took Berlin, and the dubious logic used to justify using atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Were the US, UK and USSR in "blatant violation of international law" to fight the war as they did?

The fact that the US public was sold a bill of goods about WMDs, that the costs of the conflict were understated by something approaching four of five times whatever the real costs will be, and that the US public probably would have never supported the invasion for the above reason (treaty violation)? I dispute none of this, and a great deal more (the neo-Trotskyite philosophy that got us into this mess, the "they will welcome us with flowers" attitude, etc.) just so there's no confusion.

BUT compare the house by house taking of Mosul vs. the firebombing of Dresden. Had the US wanted to it could have done to Mosul what the US and UK did to Dresden, and probably even more efficiently. Yet it did not. And which one is thought of as the "good war" again?

I disagree.

Saddam Hussein had been in violation of the agreement that ended Gulf "War" I from the instant the ink on it was dry. He gave the US ample grounds for invasion just about every day from the end of Gulf "War" I until the invasion started. I mean, if locking onto aircraft with radar for the purpose of targeting them with SAMs isn't a provocation for war, what is? And that is far from the only thing he did.

Besides, compared to the conduct of the British, US and Soviet militaries in World War II, Iraq was and has been handled with kid gloves. As in, no German prisoners taken during the Battle of the Bulge counterattack (they were shot out of hand when they surrendered), indiscriminate firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, just about every female between the ages of six and sixty getting gang-raped when the Soviets took Berlin, and the dubious logic used to justify using atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Were the US, UK and USSR in "blatant violation of international law" to fight the war as they did?

The fact that the US public was sold a bill of goods about WMDs, that the costs of the conflict were understated by something approaching four of five times whatever the real costs will be, and that the US public probably would have never supported the invasion for the above reason (treaty violation)? I dispute none of this, and a great deal more (the neo-Trotskyite philosophy that got us into this mess, the "they will welcome us with flowers" attitude, etc.) just so there's no confusion.

BUT compare the house by house taking of Mosul vs. the firebombing of Dresden. Had the US wanted to it could have done to Mosul what the US and UK did to Dresden, and probably even more efficiently. Yet it did not. And which one is thought of as the "good war" again?