This is untrue. Our attacks were intentionally targeted against enemy troops, not against people at random nor against landforms at random. Are you explicitly arguing that we intentionally targeted civilians?
... knowing full well that civilians would die ...
Always the case in warfare.
... because their leaders had allowed people whose terrorist acts we disapproved of (as opposed to all those terrorists whose acts we in the West have either approved of or at least tolerated) to set up camp there.
Necessarily, because after 9-11 we could no longer accept other countries providing sanctuary to our enemies. The price of inaction had proven too high for us to tolerate.
We bombed people who might have been terrorists - but weren't. We bombed people who happened to live near terrorists - or near where we thought terrorists might be. And sometimes we bombed all sorts of other things, like Al-Jazeera and the International Red Cross.
Hell, we've even bombed each other - at least five Canadian soldiers have died from American bombs. Wouldn't surprise me if members of other national forces have died in the bombing, too.
This is a long-winded way of saying "We fought a war." These things always happen in wars. There is no avoiding them, save by avoiding wars in general.
Why did we do it? We had the time to explore other options, up to and including assassination attempts.
ROFLMAO!!!
Hah, that was funny. Unfortunately, real life doesn't follow the rules of thriller fiction. The Taliban regime was guarding the Al Qaeda leadership and camps with its own military forces: expecting small bands of assassins to successfully penetrate these defenses and kill the Al Qaeda leadership would have been at best naive, and it probably would have led to the futile deaths of some of our best troops in the attempt.
WE could have negotiated with the Taliban - they sent out fellers of being willing to deal.
What concessions or reparations were they offering us along with the extradition of the Al Qaeda leadership, by way of apology for having based them in the first place?
I suspect you mean that they were "willing to deal" if we offered them concessions. Sorry, after 9-11 we weren't willing to play that sort of sucker's game anymore.
We could have treated the whole thing at a police/intelligence level - and maybe gotten better results with less damage.
Given that "intelligence" gives you nothing but information, and that the only "police" operating in Afghanistan were those of the Taliban, this strikes me as a rather faint hope. If you mean, "stayed home and kept our guard up," this would have meant that the Al Qaeda leadership would have been completely safe, with only their poor dupes exposed to any danger.
But no, we wanted to bomb Afghanistan. And in doing so, we killed a lot of innocent Afghans. And you know, I don't really care if we have actually killed fewer innocent civilians that we usually do when we bomb countries and people.
Ah, so your criticism is completely detached from reality. If so, why should anyone pay any attention to it?
no subject
This is untrue. Our attacks were intentionally targeted against enemy troops, not against people at random nor against landforms at random. Are you explicitly arguing that we intentionally targeted civilians?
... knowing full well that civilians would die ...
Always the case in warfare.
... because their leaders had allowed people whose terrorist acts we disapproved of (as opposed to all those terrorists whose acts we in the West have either approved of or at least tolerated) to set up camp there.
Necessarily, because after 9-11 we could no longer accept other countries providing sanctuary to our enemies. The price of inaction had proven too high for us to tolerate.
We bombed people who might have been terrorists - but weren't. We bombed people who happened to live near terrorists - or near where we thought terrorists might be. And sometimes we bombed all sorts of other things, like Al-Jazeera and the International Red Cross.
Hell, we've even bombed each other - at least five Canadian soldiers have died from American bombs. Wouldn't surprise me if members of other national forces have died in the bombing, too.
This is a long-winded way of saying "We fought a war." These things always happen in wars. There is no avoiding them, save by avoiding wars in general.
Why did we do it? We had the time to explore other options, up to and including assassination attempts.
ROFLMAO!!!
Hah, that was funny. Unfortunately, real life doesn't follow the rules of thriller fiction. The Taliban regime was guarding the Al Qaeda leadership and camps with its own military forces: expecting small bands of assassins to successfully penetrate these defenses and kill the Al Qaeda leadership would have been at best naive, and it probably would have led to the futile deaths of some of our best troops in the attempt.
WE could have negotiated with the Taliban - they sent out fellers of being willing to deal.
What concessions or reparations were they offering us along with the extradition of the Al Qaeda leadership, by way of apology for having based them in the first place?
I suspect you mean that they were "willing to deal" if we offered them concessions. Sorry, after 9-11 we weren't willing to play that sort of sucker's game anymore.
We could have treated the whole thing at a police/intelligence level - and maybe gotten better results with less damage.
Given that "intelligence" gives you nothing but information, and that the only "police" operating in Afghanistan were those of the Taliban, this strikes me as a rather faint hope. If you mean, "stayed home and kept our guard up," this would have meant that the Al Qaeda leadership would have been completely safe, with only their poor dupes exposed to any danger.
But no, we wanted to bomb Afghanistan. And in doing so, we killed a lot of innocent Afghans. And you know, I don't really care if we have actually killed fewer innocent civilians that we usually do when we bomb countries and people.
Ah, so your criticism is completely detached from reality. If so, why should anyone pay any attention to it?