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And you need to be able to say, with a straight face, that you've done what you can to deter and disrupt future attacks that might cause more deaths.

Right. You're not saying the invasion has had, or could ever have had, that effect, are you?

Difficult counterfactual. There haven't been any more 9/11s "spectaculars". Would there have been had bin Laden maintained his infrastructure intact in Afghanistan? Your guess is as good as mine.

Yes, there have been more attacks on western countries (Madrid and London in particular), but a) I'm not sure where the current consensus is on whether they were local jobs or whether they were Afghan/Pakistani jobs and b) allegedly, they were in response to the war in Iraq, not the invasion of Afghanistan.

So, one could argue that in fact the Afghan War on its own, had it not been followed by an Iraq war, would have achieved precisely this goal.

I'm not entirely sure I would be the one to make that argument, mind. I'm just following the line of logic here.

AG, so who should the British government have "gone after" in the aftermath of July 7? Leeds (where the bombers lived)? Pakistan? (where some of them trained)? Was it remiss of them not to have scrambled the bombers over west Yorkshire or the subcontinent?

But even if the war on Afghanistan was justifiable in your terms, the pragmatic question remains: does this approach have a cat in hell's chance of succeeding? The answer was as emphatically no then as it is now.

And I'm not sure about the twin towers attack
having "the effect of giving Bin Ladenism a wholly undeserved anti-capitalist tinge". This sounds like one of those smears that certain people tried - and largely failed - to get off the ground in the aftermath of 9/11 that 'anti-capitalists' had some nascent sympathy with the attack. Which was bollocks.

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All true, Reed. But I doubt that many people outside the US would have seen it as an attack on a civilian target. And I think that would have affected their willingness to back an invasion.

I don't think there would have been an invasion. At some point, it's just gruesome arithmetic. 125 people died in the Pentagon attack. Several thousand in the WTC, plus the collapse of those towers was on TV. I don't think America would have been nearly as horrified by the Pentagon attack alone.

Also, I think there's a feeling in the US and throughout the world that the Taliban are nasty fuckers who deserve a good kicking regardless. So they were an easy boogeyman. If 9/11 were just committed by a bunch of Middle Easterners with no connection to Al Queda and therefore no connection to Afghanistan and the Taliban - and I don't see why such a plan couldn't have been executed without Bin Laden's help - we wouldn't have had anything to attack but Saudi Arabia, and we're not going to do that.

E10 Rifle wrote:

QUOTE:
AG, so who should the British government have "gone after" in the aftermath of July 7? Leeds (where the bombers lived)? Pakistan? (where some of them trained)? Was it remiss of them not to have scrambled the bombers over west Yorkshire or the subcontinent?

The Leeds/Afghanistan analogy would presumably only hold if the Leeds police were refusing to co-operate with London police in their inquiries and actively sheltering known suspects.

edit: and what Reed said about the response being at least somewhat proportionate to the scale of the attack

QUOTE:
But even if the war on Afghanistan was justifiable in your terms, the pragmatic question remains: does this approach have a cat in hell's chance of succeeding? The answer was as emphatically no then as it is now.

I think you're viewing this through the lens of Iraq. In the spring of 2002, it was by no means clear that this was true.

QUOTE:
And I'm not sure about the twin towers attack having "the effect of giving Bin Ladenism a wholly undeserved anti-capitalist tinge". This sounds like one of those smears that certain people tried - and largely failed - to get off the ground in the aftermath of 9/11 that 'anti-capitalists' had some nascent sympathy with the attack. Which was bollocks.

It's not meant as a smear. My understanding was that some elements of the left do view radical Islam as an ally in the fight against capitalism, even if they do not always approve of its methods. Am I wrong in thinking this? If this is true, I owuld view its "anti-capitalist" tinge as being undeserved because I think they are actually anti-modern, which means they are anti-socialist, too.

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Am I wrong in thinking this?

Yeah pretty much. There are some on the left who are perhaps a bit more indulgent towards what we might call radical Islamism than they should be (see elements of the Respect coalition project in the UK, which has in any case collapsed in part precisely because of the incompatibility of the left and hardline religion) but people aren't saying "I tell you what, them Taliban could give us the kick-start the left's needed for so long".

But of course there are some (not you, of course) who see any attempt to explain or understand Islamic fundamentalism as an attempt to appease or ally with it. Nonsense, of course.

Re Afghanistan, even in 2002, the lessons of that country's history would appear to suggest its probable failure. But since the entire 'war on terror' project - in Britain as well as the US - appears to have been conducted by people who would have failed an 11-year-old pupil's history exam, it should come as no surprise that these lessons went unheeded. Knowing about history is so passe in a contemporary politician.

E10 Rifle wrote:

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Re Afghanistan, even in 2002, the lessons of that country's history would appear to suggest its probable failure.

Right, but that's something different. Invading Afghanistan and expecting to hold it was perhaps foolish. But expecting that it would deprive Al Qaeda of a safe haven and disrupt its ablity to plan and execute acts of terrorism was not.

What Antonio said. Every word of it.

Isn't there grounds for saying that Mullah Omar's offer wasn't really a "fuck off"? That it was more in the nature of an opening bid? I'm (now) not convinced that thread was followed as much as it should have been by Washington.

Though I do agree completely that the US was in principle entitled to disable the threat, and that the "In that case why not bomb Yorkshire?" line of argument badly misses the point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/17/afghanistan.terrorism11

That doesn't mention Islamic law or 'our jurists'. Seems to offer a basis for negotiation, no?

If the offer was real, and not fabricated by the ISI as a way to forestall a US atttack on their friends in Kabul, yes.

But there's a distinct lack of attribution and detail in that story. It's not clear this guy is actually speaking for Mullah Omar, for a start. The only people being quoted are people at one or two removes from the alleged talks, etc.

Wyatt - do you know of other evidence about this offer? Is there somewhere I could look it up and read about it?

I still can't quite work out what you're saying here AG (and, I guess by extension, PG).

Are we supposed to imagine that the US could have made some kind of "good" intervention, but that, by accident, it didn't?

E10 Rifle wrote:

QUOTE:

QUOTE:
Am I wrong in thinking this?

Yeah pretty much. There are some on the left who are perhaps a bit more indulgent towards what we might call radical Islamism than they should be (see elements of the Respect coalition project in the UK, which has in any case collapsed in part precisely because of the incompatibility of the left and hardline religion) but people aren't saying "I tell you what, them Taliban could give us the kick-start the left's needed for so long".

And, of course, there are plenty of people out there who do - knowingly and disingenuously - smear the anti-war Left with the 'Pro-Islam' brush. Which pisses me off no end.

There's a decent part of the left that rejects the anti-Islam stance as well. Thankfully.