QUOTE:
Since the near universally acknowledged appropriate response to 9/11 (attacking Afghanistan)

Er, hang on. This is by no fucking means "universally acknowledged" as "appropriate". And, seven years into this unwinnable messy conflagration, with good reason.

E10 Rifle wrote:

QUOTE:

QUOTE:
Since the near universally acknowledged appropriate response to 9/11 (attacking Afghanistan)

Er, hang on. This is by no fucking means "universally acknowledged" as "appropriate". And, seven years into this unwinnable messy conflagration, with good reason.

So. Despite it being "near universally acknowledged" and not "universally acknowledged", you don't think the "mission creep" with the illegal war against Iraq has anything to do with that?

Just that the US built itself quite a little collection of client states for a country that was dragged into the war against their will.

Isn't that kind of inevitable though, whether it was intended or not? If you're fighting to liberate a country from tyranny you're liable to make a hell of a mess. What happens afterwards? Do you just walk away and leave the locals to clear it up? Helping them out financially and with expertise = client state. Running the place, directly or indirectly = colony. Off the top of my head I can't think of an instance where, post-conflict, one or the other hasn't happened.

I agree with that, which raises the question of how naive the American public was to believe the Administration's claim (implied if not outright stated) that this would be pretty straightforward.

QUOTE:

"mission creep"

That disease sometimes afflicts all sectors of government and perhaps all large bureaucratic organizations trying to justify their own existence and get contracts for their buddies in the private sector.

I doubt think it's an especially American problem.

And I am the Life wrote:

QUOTE:
Sometimes, yes! It's a very hard step to take, and all the easier to commit to if there's no longer any avoiding it, or once the prospect of losing what's already begun can't be entertained.

oh come on. This is the equivalent of knocking up someone you met in a bar, then having to marry them and saying that yours is a relationship that has always been built on love.

Are you saying knocking someone up at a bar means you have to marry her? You only really do that if you fancy you love the girl.

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

QUOTE:
I agree with that, which raises the question of how naive the American public was to believe the Administration's claim (implied if not outright stated) that this would be pretty straightforward.

QUOTE:

"mission creep"

That disease sometimes afflicts all sectors of government and perhaps all large bureaucratic organizations trying to justify their own existence and get contracts for their buddies in the private sector.

I doubt think it's an especially American problem.

Never said it was.

I never said it was.

It's like everything else.

International politics, witless conversations in the pub, discussions on the interweb; and you're left with an ever-escalating set of threat, bluster, and counter-threat that doens't do anything other than alienate and offend people, and make an already tense situation worsse.

E10 Rifle wrote:

QUOTE:
Er, hang on. This is by no fucking means "universally acknowledged" as "appropriate". And, seven years into this unwinnable messy conflagration, with good reason.

Retaliating military against a country that staged an attack against you is a near universally acknowledged appropriate response, yes. Maybe not the only appropriate response, and maybe not the best response, but certainly isn't going to land you in jail without passing go.

QUOTE:
I never said it was.

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that you did. I was just saying it to, like, elaborate on an observation.

Bruno - when did self-obsessed, ideologically insular Afghanistan launch an attack on the US?

I'm questioning the extent to which attacking Afghanistan was "universally acknowledged" to be the appropriate response, when, globally, it simply was and is not.

And in any case "Afghanistan" did not attack America. An amorphous organisation that at various points was harboured and backed by its then-government did. They're not the same thing.

If "staging" is the relevant criterion, was there "universal acknowledgement" that bombing Hamburg would have been appropriate? Bombing Florida? Should London have bombed Leeds after 7/7?

Toro De France wrote:

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Should London have bombed Leeds after 7/7?

If not before.

Toro De France wrote:

QUOTE:
Bruno - when did self-obsessed, ideologically insular Afghanistan launch an attack on the US?

When they allowed the state-sponsored and state-protected insualar, self-obsessed foreign-national American-haters to operate and co-ordinate an attack on the USA from their own soil?

First, I said "near universally acknowledged."

But okay, if you don't consider that the government/country of Afghanistan was the necessary channel through which to get at and disrupt Al Qaeda's base of operations and leadership and financing, or that doing so had become particularly pressing once September 11th happened, fine, make that case. But to anyone who does feel that Afghanistan was largely complicit in and materially supportive of both Al Qaeda's existence and attacks on the U.S. and other targets around the world, and that 9/11 demanded a major response, you would say it was an appropriate one.

Toro De France wrote:

QUOTE:
If "staging" is the relevant criterion, was there "universal acknowledgement" that bombing Hamburg would have been appropriate? Bombing Florida? Should London have bombed Leeds after 7/7?

Germany, Florida and Leeds were all certainly staging areas for acts of mass murder, but their governments did not obstruct investigations into the relevant events. That's a significant difference, Toro.

I think protecting the guilty is the relevant criterion. Had the Taliban handed over Bin Laden (or agreed to co-operate in apprehending him) to the Americans as requested in Sept. 2001, the case for war would have disappeared.

Toro De France wrote:

QUOTE:
If "staging" is the relevant criterion, was there "universal acknowledgement" that bombing Hamburg would have been appropriate? Bombing Florida? Should London have bombed Leeds after 7/7?

You know, for a bloke that's as clearly as clever as you are, you don't half talk some self-evident crap at times.