Not ordered by the state seems the more solid grounds. That it should have been stopped or consisted of a few lightly armed blokes doesn't rule out pretty major damage.

The Horse wrote:

QUOTE:
Are we saying here that if a crime is committed on your soil - not an attack by another country, such as might bring the international law doctrine of self-defence into play, but a crime, perpetrated by individuals - and you suspect another country is harbouring accessories to that crime, you can demand that they hand the suspects over and if they refuse, you can launch a military assault? This seems to be the prevalent view here, but to me it seems, well, totally fucking psychopathically insane. What have I missed?

To be fair, it was the largest act of pre-mediated murder by a non-state actor in world history. We're not talking a poison umbrella tip or something. We're talking about the deaths of 3,000 people, nearly all of whom were civilians.

I think this counts for something. I think it crosses the line from a "crime" to something different.

Especially since the perpetrators quite clearly had form and were likely to attempt similar attacks in the future if allowed to do so.

That's all very, very woolly. The scale of the horror - impressive, but not completely unfamiliar in terms of terrorist atrocities if we remove the condition that they can't be perpetrated by governments - isn't, or shouldn't be, enough to overturn the basics of international law and justice. It's easy to be swept away by the fact that they were famous buildings and that it happened to us and not some poor people a long way away. Before you know where you are you can start making actually quite sickening statements like "the invasion of Afghanistan had gone about as bloodlessly as these things can" - a casual dismissal of the fact that the attack on Afghanistan soon claimed more lives than 9/11 (although nowhere near as many as it might have - this thanks to good fortune and not the US/UK, who were quite willing to risk mass starvation caused by interrupted aid routes). We're not talking about abstract political manouevring here - we're talking about the deaths of a lot more than 3,000 people, nearly all of whom were civilians.

Acting in this way should be unthinkable, but apparently not. In a sane world you respond to a crime by recourse to the law, not vigilante justice. If recourse to the law "doesn't work" that doesn't mean you can just circumvent it. Especially not if you personally are the one who's made damn sure the law doesn't work.

Woolliness doesn't in itself invalidate the argument, if by "woolly" you mean that it's difficult to know where to draw the line. It's not inconsistent to support the right of states to invade other states in order to disable a threat to thousands of their civilians, while opposing their right to invade in order to catch people who've, say, failed to abate a smoky chimney. The doctrine that the line ought to somewhere between those two doesn't have to include a universally applicable set of criteria for where exactly it ought to fall.

In fact, your claim, that the national security of the US wasn't in fact under threat, seems to concede that things might be different if, in your view, it had been. Unless you think that national security can only, in principle, be threatened by the actions of states.

Well, perhaps you know the line when you see it. I dare say it's possible that individuals could threaten a nation's security, but they'd have to be vastly more tooled up and organised than any terrorist individuals in history, so it doesn't seem worth worrying about now. My point was less that no non-state action could ever carry such a threat, and more that this one didn't. That they never, in reality, do carry such a threat seems helpful to note.

The Horse wrote:

QUOTE:
That's all very, very woolly. The scale of the horror - impressive, but not completely unfamiliar in terms of terrorist atrocities if we remove the condition that they can't be perpetrated by governments - isn't, or shouldn't be, enough to overturn the basics of international law and justice.

No, not unfamiliar if you remove that stipulation. But if it had been done by a government, it certainly *would* be casus belli under international law, no? Which is precisely why, I think, you need to treat it differently than an ordinary "crime".

QUOTE:
It's easy to be swept away by the fact that they were famous buildings and that it happened to us and not some poor people a long way away. Before you know where you are you can start making actually quite sickening statements like "the invasion of Afghanistan had gone about as bloodlessly as these things can" - a casual dismissal of the fact that the attack on Afghanistan soon claimed more lives than 9/11 (although nowhere near as many as it might have - this thanks to good fortune and not the US/UK, who were quite willing to risk mass starvation caused by interrupted aid routes). We're not talking about abstract political manouevring here - we're talking about the deaths of a lot more than 3,000 people, nearly all of whom were civilians.

Completely fair point about civilian casulaties. But again, you have to weigh that up against potential *future* civilian casualties on the other side if al Qaeda were left to work unimpeded.

Could you explain a little bit about this "luck" though? What did it consist of? Did the US and UK really have *nothing* to do with it? They didn't bring in or distribute any aid themselves? That's not my understanding of how things went down, but I'm open to learning more and revising my opinion.

QUOTE:
Acting in this way should be unthinkable, but apparently not. In a sane world you respond to a crime by recourse to the law, not vigilante justice. If recourse to the law "doesn't work" that doesn't mean you can just circumvent it. Especially not if you personally are the one who's made damn sure the law doesn't work.

Whatever we may think of the US government's refusal to join the ICC, I don't think it materially affected the Taliban's refusal to hand over bin Laden, do you? (or am I misinterpreting you, here?)

I think that's right (AG, I mean): if this has been done by agents of a hostile state, which it could have been with the rationale unaltered (and I think that's crucial), it would have been an act of war.

That doesn't mean it makes sense to treat it as a war in every sense, still less to regard the enemy's personnel as neither soldiers nor criminals, which however you slice it is either a crime or a war crime on America's part. But it does suggest that people who oppose, even in principle, a state's entitlement to protect itself by force against such attacks can't simply argue via an analogy between this kind of crime and "ordinary" murder.

In any case, America's argument was, in effect, that al Q were at least in part proxy agents for hostile states, such as Afghanistan and Syria. I don't think that's a stupid idea, though some of what's come out since has, as I say, cast doubt on it in the former case at least.

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Go back to 2002. Al Qaeda was beaten.

Really? Are you sure? I don't recall people saying that at the time, not least our rulers who were busy going around scaring the shit out of people that the threat from Al-Queida was 'very real'. Those whose loved lones were blown to pieces in Bali (autumn 2002) might also beg to differ.

Which is the problem: the al-queida franchise has never been a nation-based actor. It wasn't a proxy of the Afghan state, nor that of Bali for that matter. A war by one nation on another to deal with them totally missed that point, which is why it's failed.

No, well, of course our leaders didn't say it - they were busy stirring things up for Iraq. My point is to look at the situation in 2002 objectively.

Fair point about Bali (I'd forgotten that one). But Jemaah Islamiyah isn't al-Qaeda, is it?

If you're asking me whether an invasion will ever stop "terrorism", or "religiously-inspired terrorism" or "islamist terorism", or even "bin-Laden inspired terrorism" the answer is of course no and why the "War on Terror" is a recipe for unending Orwellian conflict (a la 1984). But I didn't claim that; what I said was it seems (fingers crossed) to have ended the threat of more "spectaculars" from an organization with substantial assets, both physical and financial, along with their training facilities.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure Al-Qaeda *wasn't* franchised in 2001. It had a cell structure, as all secret societies do, but I think the franchising was a strategy that came about in response to the loss of a safe haven.

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It's not inconsistent to support the right of states to invade other states in order to disable a threat to thousands of their civilians, while opposing their right to invade in order to catch people who've, say, failed to abate a smoky chimney.

I don't think whether it's consistent or not should be the key here. It's not inconsistent, but I agree with the Horse that it is pretty fucked up. This was a crime (OK it was massive and heinous and terrible crime, but it was a crime nonetheless - and to call it anything else actually legitimises it on some level). It seems to me, that while sanctions would probably have not been a terribly effective ploy, pretty massive sustained international pressure could have been brought to bear on the Taliban to cough up Bin Laden and co (and as we've since seen, it didn't actually need to be that massive as they were fairly willing to cough him up anyway - though arguably they would have no more been in a position to do so than all the US and allies' troops that have since combed the country to no avail)

Ironically WE's counter example, of the smoky chimney, seems to me almost a legitimate reason why a nation like Kiribati might be justified in invading the USA, since thanks to global warming they're unlikely to have a country to live in for much longer.

QUOTE:
It seems to me, that while sanctions would probably have not been a terribly effective ploy, pretty massive sustained international pressure could have been brought to bear on the Taliban to cough up Bin Laden and co (and as we've since seen, it didn't actually need to be that massive as they were fairly willing to cough him up anyway - though arguably they would have no more been in a position to do so than all the US and allies' troops that have since combed the country to no avail).

That's the key question for me as well: how effective could diplomatic pressure have been. And on that I've shifted my ground a lot since the time.

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Ironically WE's counter example, of the smoky chimney, seems to me almost a legitimate reason why a nation like Kiribati might be justified in invading the USA, since thanks to global warming they're unlikely to have a country to live in for much longer.

Heh. It was a Wodehouse allusion; will I never learn?

Can someone please give me some leads on this "The Taliban were ready to give bin Laden up" thing? Beyond the Grauniad article Ball Comrade already cited? I would like to know more.

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But if it had been done by a government, it certainly *would* be casus belli under international law, no?

Er, possibly, but you'd deal with it differently because you might have little alternative. Terrorist attacks can be stopped by lawfully pursuing the perpetrators, and by simple policing, in a way that attacks by other states can't. Attacks by other states are also much easier to repeat, unlike 9/11 which was, for al-Qaeda, a massive operation. There's also a clear target: it's that country, there, that did it. Here, we think the guy we think organised the attack is hiding somewhere in that country, we think the government there have the power to catch him and hand him over, and we think that if they refuse we can invade and kill him (rather than invading only to find he went to Pakistan several weeks ago). It's a totally different situation. Preventing further attacks by al-Qaeda via military attack was not just hideously barbaric, but also futile. But mainly it was hideously barbaric.

QUOTE:
I didn't claim that; what I said was it seems (fingers crossed) to have ended the threat of more "spectaculars" from an organization with substantial assets, both physical and financial, along with their training facilities.

I don't see that at all. There could be any number of reasons why they haven't repeated their big hit. Apart from that, there have been more attacks - that they were probably motivated more by Iraq doesn't mean they, or other attacks, wouldn't have taken place anyway. We're talking about an extremely nebulous organisation here, plus copycat nutters - the idea of stopping them by bombing their HQ, as presented in Donald Rumsfeld's notorious underground lair diagram, is ludicrous.

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That's the key question for me as well: how effective could diplomatic pressure have been.

Hmm, the trouble there is when you start thinking like that, you get close to AG's crazy "no other option" talk. If diplomatic pressure hadn't worked, it could just be that that's all your options exhausted. America doesn't have a God-given right to take its revenge.