I often see these angles, how we should have prepared better or attacked this instead of that, or the unexpected strategy from the adversary. What about not bombing? The best safety trick the US can use is not bombing others.
It's a lot more than "just" not bombing. We also need to stop meddling in other countries' affairs. 9/11 and the war on terror are a direct result of all of our "nation building" over the prior decades. If we'd left well enough alone, the twin towers would likely still be standing, and we might still be able to bring as many liquids as we want on planes, and see our loved ones off at the gate when they're taking a trip and we're staying behind.
We need to stop treating business's resource extraction from foreign countries as "national security".
And I'd be all for "nation building" if it actually worked and moved countries to be democratically run. The +$6T spent on Iraq and Afghanistan are an indictment of our efforts to "help".
We just fucked with Venezuela -- where are the reports of us "helping"?
I would love for nobody to bomb or kill anyone. Did Ukraine bomb Russia? Is Taiwan bombing China that declares it is going to take Taiwan by force?
There isn't a single conflict in the world today where I can see that someone can just say "we're going to stop" and they'll be safe. There is always something more to it. If Ukraine says we'll just stop attacking Russian soldiers is that war over? If Russia says we'll just stop attacking Ukraine and stay where we are is that war over? Is there any other conflict where the answer is simply stop and it'll be fine?
The US are also the major enabler of Israel's colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This was clearly expressed by Bin Laden himself as one of the motives behind the 9/11 attacks.
> Were you thinking the US was just minding its own business and some bad guys came and attacked it
As I remember, this was exactly the way the US explained 9/11: "they hate us for our freedom".
No, he didn't. His "letter to America" starts with the question:
"As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
Because you attacked us and continue to attack us."
And proceeds to list all the ways the US are militarily attacking and oppressing Muslims in the Middle East. It's a long list.
Homosexuality is mentioned only once in the letter, in the next section, where he criticises American society and morals in general and calls it to embrace Islam. This is explicitly an exhortation and not part of the reasons for the attacks (so probably intended as a diagnosis of the symptoms of a moral disease and the proposal of a cure - note that I'm not endorsing it, just explaining its function in the letter).
No, there is no "or else", you are plainly making it up. As I've said, this is the exhortation part of the letter and it's not listed among the reasons for the attacks. Regressive, certainly. Brought as a justification for terrorism, no.
You asked "who did the US bomb before 9/11" and you got the answer. Now you're arguing that they shouldn't have reacted even if the US bombed them before (calling it "an excuse")?
As for the peace process with Palestinians, it was always a sham. The US (as it's evident now to many) are entirely unable to apply any sort of pressure on their "ally". What they've done is just buying time for Israel to expand its colonisation under the temporary pretense of some ongoing "peace process".
"excuse" is a funny way of wording it -- "motivation" or "explanation" might be more appropriate here. is the expectation that the US can and should be able to kill and destroy and the victims just turn the other cheek?
West bank and Gaza were never under full Palestinian control since 1967 both were under brutal occupation or blockade + contant Israeli meddling into internal affairs.
Well yes, and actually instead of wasting billions creating understandable cause of hate, this could be injected into domestic social spendings, and there would probably still be a lot staying on the table to throw in humanitarian endeavors around the globe creating love through so called soft power.
Pacifism at such a large scale is a self-defesting strategy though. If its well understood that a country will never respond, eventually someone will take them over or wipe them out.
> When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time.
Where's the proof that Iran has, or is even remotely close to having, nukes? I mean, actual proof, not the kind of "proof" that led us to invade Iraq in '03.
> I'm not at all mad at the US government for deciding to get rid of Iran's regime.
Ah, you're one of those people. You probably thought "Team America: World Police" was an instruction manual, and not satire, yeah?
Iran having nukes is unsubstantiated. I also don’t think they wanted to have nukes. But they also enriched Uranium up to 60% according to IAEA which has no non-military use. They perhaps wanted to use that as leverage in negotiations which turned out to be not much of a deterrence.
Difficult to reconcile the justification of current efforts of "Iran can't have nukes" with the unequivocal claims made less than a year ago that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been "obliterated".
North Korea started out with a "nuclear weapon": Seoul is within artillery range of the border. Consequently the Kim regime has been able to starve and torture its own population, and yes - develop nuclear weapons - without anyone willing to stop them.
You think the problems inside North Korea are ok? Koreans are human too.
Why are we ignoring the problems inside of North Korea? I take slavery and starving people pretty poorly regardless of where it happens.
That said North Korea routinely acts against the rest of the world in ways that are only possible because the rest of the world is unable to retaliate, with the government sponsoring everything from extorting hospitals with ransomware, to dealing drugs, to counterfeiting currency, to abducting film makers (from Hong Kong).
> I take slavery and starving people pretty poorly regardless of where it happens.
A great many of us feel that way, however historically GreatPowers do not - it's control of resources that move the needle for them.
Currently the US makes much of 30K protesters killed in Iran (number in dispute) but it is very much an action rooted in petro dollar geopolitics, oil, and Israel.
Starving people globally no longer get USAID .. a fractional cost compared to the Iran excursion.
The US didn't feel the need to get involved in regime change following any part of the Rwanda Genocide, and the US took the side of Indonesia (who were going for the resource control) against the West Papuans .. the US and UN turned a blind eye to exactly who and how people were tortured to get a favourable vote.
There's a long long list of starving and essentially enslaved people globally that have been ignored in favour of others by the French, the Dutch, the British, Belgium, USofA, etc.
> That said North Korea routinely acts against the rest of the world in ways that are only possible because the rest of the world is unable to retaliate
In real politik terms the same can be said about the USofA and has been said about the former British Empire.
> When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time.
There was also the choice of “Iran let us verify that they are not making nukes, and in return we remove economic sanctions from them”. It was called the JCPOA, and according to non-proliferation experts it worked. And then on the 8th of May 2018 Trump unilaterally withdrew from it.
Let’s not pretend that there were no other options.
Unilateraly on the level of countries. The other signatories (China, France, Russia, the U.K., Germany and the EU) believed that the deal was good and Iran was holding up their end of the bargain at that time.
If the USA government had credible evidence that it is not so, they could have picked up the phone and presented their case to the other signatories. Or at least to their allies. Then once those countries were convinced that something is off they could have withdrawn together from the agreement. Would have less of a terrible optics than how it went down.
I seek only to point out that we, the United States, have a constitutionally-outlined treaty-making process which involves Senate ratification, and that in the case of the JCPOA, the Senate did not ratify.
Re international agreements: yes, the idea is that _broad support_ is required for binding international agreements. Senate ratification represents broad support.
> Iran has been the driving force behind a lot of instability in Middle East
I'm loving the current stability that the USA has gifted the world and looking forward to many decades of peace and calm in the middle east. Thank you so much.
That choice is doubly false. On the one hand, there was a diplomatic option. It was working until Trump decided to kill it. On the other, it's insane to think that you can bomb a large, industrialized country of 90 million people out of the ability to make nuclear weapons short of wiping them out of existence.
