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Today marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. These were "a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks [...] against the United States of America on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001."
Of the 2,977 people who died, 2,605 were U.S. citizens and 372 non-U.S. citizens (excluding the 19 perpetrators). More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks, including the United Kingdom (67 deaths), the Dominican Republic (47 deaths), India (41 deaths), Greece (39 deaths), South Korea (28 deaths), Canada (24 deaths), Japan (24 deaths), Colombia (18 deaths), Jamaica (16 deaths), Philippines (16 deaths), Mexico (15 deaths), Trinidad and Tobago (14 deaths), Ecuador (13 deaths), Australia (11 deaths), Germany (11 deaths), Italy (10 deaths), Bangladesh (6 deaths), Ireland (6 deaths), Pakistan (6 deaths), and Poland (6 deaths).
It was a tragedy not only for America, but for the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:05AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faOUDoRmK_E [youtube.com]
Trevor Moore was one of the latest victims of 9/11. RIP.
(Score: 5, Informative) by darkfeline on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:12AM (27 children)
Remember how 9/11 was used to enact a wide range of privacy invading and freedom restricting laws? Good times.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:53AM (25 children)
The thing about the Patriot Act that few people understand is, it was ready and waiting. Congress didn't pull those thousands of pages out of thin air. The Patriot Act was authored long, long before 9/11/01. They were just waiting for a crisis, to pull it off the shelf, blow the dust off, and announce, "It's time!"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:11AM (10 children)
There is a lot of truth to this, that it was a law enforcement wish list. Aside from the Patriot Act, 9/11 also pushed us into a state of perpetual war. We had occasional military interventions like the Gulf War, airstrikes against Iraq when Clinton wanted to distract from Ken Starr's investigation, and Clinton's illegal war in the Balkans. There wasn't anything sustained over the long term, and there just wasn't public support for wars. After 9/11, we've been fighting the so-called war on terror for 20 years, going from country to country with no real plan and no real end in sight. I believe that some excuse would have been invented to enact the provisions of the Patriot Act, with or without 9/11. I am far less certain that there would have been public support for starting forever wars were it not for 9/11. At this point, we don't have the willingness to repeal the AUMFs from that era, and I don't know what would actually make us willing to do so.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @10:04AM
Congress repealed the AUMF for both Iraq wars just a few weeks ago.
The one for Afghanistan can't quite be repealed yet because they are still busy bungling the withdrawal.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:23PM (6 children)
We were already in a state of perpetual war, it was just not known or advertised to most Americans. "Communists" were the excuse until they weren't, then "filthy brown turrists" became a replacement target.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @04:03PM
The Communists/Socialists/Statists HAVE been at perpetual war with the West since WWI.
They took command during the coronavirus scare, after laying the groundwork for many years.
New World Order--that Aussie politician said so herself.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday September 11 2021, @05:48PM (4 children)
A striking example is that the US has been involved in the fighting in Colombia since the 1980's with approximately zero public debate. Allegedly to stop the growing of cocaine, but mostly to prop up the fairly-right-wing government we supported.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:57PM (3 children)
> fairly-right-wing
I guess the Overton window has moved so far to the right that anyone to the left of Hitler, even if only on a single issue, is a centrist now.
Bolsonaro is an actual fascist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @10:24PM
Bolsonaro is Brazilian?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @10:34PM
With takes like that, you must need a helmet to eat soup.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Sunday September 12 2021, @01:05AM
Bolsonaro is indeed fascist, but he's president of Brazil, not part of the government of Colombia. I know this may come as a surprise to you, but different countries in South America are different from each other and have different internal politics.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @06:10PM (1 child)
and the Jews are behind all of that and more, aided by their shabbos goy race traitor whites of course..
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Sunday September 12 2021, @12:07AM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by UncleSlacky on Saturday September 11 2021, @12:25PM
Yep, in fact Joe Biden bragged on several occasions that he wrote what became the PATRIOT act: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/surveillance-joe [buzzfeednews.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday September 11 2021, @06:07PM (12 children)
Project for a new American Century [wikipedia.org] was a think tank of neo conservatives, many ended up in the G.W.Bush administration, that in 1998 published a report that contained a "wish list" of changes to surveillance laws and search powers by law enforcement agencies, The PATRIOT act enabled every one of those changes.
The report also called for regime change in Iraq.
Of particular note is the fact that the report itself pointed out that the listed changes would be impossible to enact unless there was a "modern Pearl Harbor".
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:15PM (10 children)
For what it's worth, that PNAC site changed pretty dramatically in the months after Bush was elected. First time I landed on the page (someone posted a link in a forum) it spelled out pretty explicitly that the goal was to have every man, woman, and child on earth working to enrich Wall Street. Over several months, the language was sanitized, to be less obvious about enslaving the world for Wall Street profit. Neocons are little better than neonazis.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday September 11 2021, @11:36PM (9 children)
So, everything was a lie? Except for the Bin Laden part? I'm still waiting for justification for the invasion
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 12 2021, @12:04AM (8 children)
Haven't we had this discussion before? Bin Laden justified a punitive expedition. He did not justify a lifetime of killing brown men and women and children. I'm surprised liberals don't call it a genocide - we were intent on erasing a way of life, and imposing our own way of life on them.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 12 2021, @01:12AM (6 children)
You have yet to show how, other than official press release
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 12 2021, @02:05AM (5 children)
I say it was justified. Laden bloodied our noses, he ran off to hide in Afghanistan, brief talks with the Taliban saw them thumb their noses at us, so we should have gone in and kicked ass. Then, as I've said several times already, we should have GTFO. Total length of campaign 18 months, with a target of 10 months.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 12 2021, @02:12AM (4 children)
Not true. They demanded evidence before turning him over, as any reasonable person would do. The US refused and invaded.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 12 2021, @02:30AM (3 children)
They didn't demand proof so much as they demanded payment, and that bin Laden would be tried in a "neutral" country - that is a Muslim country.
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/09/20/newly-disclosed-documents-shed-more-light-on-early-taliban-offers-pakistan-role/ [foreignpolicyjournal.com]
Note that these negotiations were taking place BEFORE 9/11/01.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 12 2021, @02:48AM (2 children)
Heh, your link confirms everything I said about the refusal to provide evidence. The invasion was already planned and authorized. Your Bin Laden was the sales pitch, and you fell for it. You chose to believe the lie.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 12 2021, @06:07AM (1 child)
You're ignoring that bin Laden was the primary source of contention, before and after 9/11?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 12 2021, @04:59PM
You never verified the authenticity of any "Bin Laden" communiques. You certainly never allowed any cross examination. You accepted the belligerent's translation at face value. See, because the ones I remember admitted no guilt, only pleasure. Your hearsay is even more feeble (and deadly) than Russiagate.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday September 13 2021, @01:51PM
Attacking a country, because they bombed you first, doesn't mean you are committing genocide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide [wikipedia.org]
I'm still on the fence with regards to having responded in any direct way. Let alone, starting a war, so we could target an individual for Assassination. Which, is still illegal, right?
Ah, there we go, "targeted killing" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing [wikipedia.org]
So, as long as you declare war, it's open season.
Then there's this bit:
I guess it's "not a problem", until it becomes one. That is one slippery slope.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday September 13 2021, @06:44PM
Not to be crude [youtu.be] (ok, fine, no way of getting around it), but I'm imagining the reaction of the authors and proponents of that legislation after the initial shock ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:02AM
The USA had some sympathy from the rest of the world after 9/11 but the USA sure fixed that quickly.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:44AM (6 children)
Rehash is based on Slash, the code that powered Slashdot at one time. Slashdot's motto for many years was "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." On 9/11, Slashdot mattered more than normal. Pretty much every news website went unresponsive from the traffic of everything trying to make sense of the news and the reporting. Some tweaks were made to Slashdot's configuration that day to keep the site running smoothly, but the hardware and the Slash software were able to handle the load of many more visitors than normal looking for information. Were it not for Slashdot providing updates throughout the day and managing to stay online as other news sites went down, I probably wouldn't have had access to the news until I got home that evening.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:53AM (1 child)
Here it is. [slashdot.org]
What was more important, unless you had family or friends directly involved, was the erosion of civil liberties in the following years as covered by sites like Slashdot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @04:06PM
Wrong. Both were important to everyone in the West. You are going to handwave away a coordinated attack that showed how completely vulnerable the "open" West was?
(Score: 1) by Acabatag on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:02PM (1 child)
I found out about the airplane attack on the first tower that morning by reading one of the first off-topic comments about it on an unrelated thread on Slashdot.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:37PM
I found out about it in a more old fashioned way, when a friend called my parent's landline and told me to turn on the TV. There, I saw live coverage of smoke coming from the north tower, and heard one of the talking heads speculate that maybe it was an accident. A few seconds reflection and I decided "No way! That was no accident!"
Then I saw the second plane hit the south tower. At first, I thought that because they hadn't collapsed immediately, the towers would stand. That would show the terrorists! But as the fires kept burning, I became more doubtful. I was still watching when I saw the south tower kink at the impact point, the section above beginning to lean over, and I thought it was going to topple, but then the whole thing just pancaked straight down.
(Score: 3, Touché) by isostatic on Saturday September 11 2021, @06:50PM
Then came Jon Katz [slashdot.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:39PM
Waaah waaah a couple buildings were destroyed by a bunch of Saudis.
Now imagine what it feels like to have "terrorist"-colored skin and live in a country subjected to drone warfare. Every day is a 9/11 as the most powerful military in the world, funded to the tune of 3/4 of a TRILLION dollars PER YEAR, wages warfare from beyond the horizon against you and your loved ones.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:52AM (24 children)
... the 360k+ full US citizens who died of covid in 2020.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:54AM
OK. And, when was the last time you commemorated the millions who died of the flu in 1918?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:58AM (11 children)
Nobody cares about the flu dead from 2001 to 2019 either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:02AM (3 children)
But they do care for 2,605 U.S. citizens. And, by God, this is normal.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday September 11 2021, @10:48AM (2 children)
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few....unless there are many more than that. Then, who cares. :/
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:28PM
Nobody cares what happens to POOR people! There were succesful businesses in that tower! The TRUE American People, the ones with money!
(Score: 3, Touché) by bzipitidoo on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:38PM
That's sort of what Stalin said.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:06AM (6 children)
Starting Dec 2020, US had over 9/11 level of covid deaths every day until about Feb 2021.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:12AM (2 children)
This is a good thing. The Boomer Remover will accelerate social change in America and improve the lives of the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:34AM
Even better a reason for a 20y commemoration. Or a memento of where they'll be after another 20.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:13PM
Well, yes, if you're a boomer and believe that COVID is just a secret ligbutt plan to terk er guns, it makes sense that LGBTQIABIOPCOMGWTFBBQ demons will be unaffected by COVID.
If you're worried, you should get vaccinated. Won't somebody think of the children who can't presently be vaccinated as the MOTU force them all into superspreading classrooms?
(Score: 5, Informative) by stretch611 on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:15AM (1 child)
It is still a tragedy now...
After slipping to only 200 dead a day, we are back up to the equivalent of a 9/11 every other day with over 1500 dying a day in just the US.
And nearly all of them are unnecessary now, due to having a safe and effective vaccine.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @10:16AM
Those who will commit suicide salute you.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:35PM
For perspective, ~8000 people die in the US every day in "normal" times. So 9/11 was about ~25% increase in a single day's mortality. We don't have the stats on covid, but it's probably not 25% overall due to other reductions from lockdown and voluntary withdrawal.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Opportunist on Saturday September 11 2021, @11:57AM (5 children)
Yes, but Covid just kills people, who gives a shit about that? 9/11 destroyed values! Companies lost millions! Some companies even ceased to exist!
Covid only kills people. Mostly old people who just cost insurances money anyway. 9/11 killed highly trained office workers that are hard to replace because you have to spend a lot of money training the replacement before they can be as efficient.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Acabatag on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:06PM (2 children)
The 9/11 attack killed several whole office buildings full of important people in one of the world's financial hubs.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mhajicek on Saturday September 11 2021, @04:01PM
And destroyed the financial records that were to be used to investigate GOP crimes. And made many tons of gold simply vanish.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday September 13 2021, @11:08PM
You really find a silver lining in everything, don't you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @02:18PM
This but unironically.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday September 13 2021, @06:47PM
Don't forget the maiming [bbc.com]!
(Score: 1, Troll) by PiMuNu on Saturday September 11 2021, @06:54PM (3 children)
There is a moral difference - 11/9 was authored by people against other people. Covid was an act of nature.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Common Joe on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:31PM
Covid is an act of nature. Our response to Covid is not. I think it is quite fitting to remember why 360+k people died. I think it's also appropriate to remember the various ways governments around the world responded to the crisis including the lack of transparency of information. And while we're at it, we should also remember the roll that the media and social media play in pouring gasoline onto burning flames instead of trying to make sense of the situation -- like explaining how science works, what we know, and why our knowledge and responses change over time.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:24PM
https://web.archive.org/web/20210907011127/https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new-details-emerge-about-coronavirus-research-at-chinese-lab/ [archive.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:21PM
Sorry, it's not that easy to dismiss decades of research, dozens of papers published, and patents filed on SARS viruses, gain of function, and weaponizing SARS viruses. The only real question is, whether COVID was released intentionally.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Tuesday September 14 2021, @07:11AM
Well. the war's over. We gave the enemy the weapons we used against them. We finished our military retreat without evacuating all our people and allies. And we have no plan or intent to stop treating people like criminals when they travel by air. What do you consider a similar set of end conditions for the pandemic?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:45AM (2 children)
These mostly Latino crews cleaned up after Sept. 11. They still seek residency. [nbcnews.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:44AM
Battle of Blair Mountain - August 29 1921 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @06:13PM
Oh the poor invaders. They should be shipped home as their reward.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by istartedi on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:05AM (3 children)
Too many things, really. This anniversary means that we have a whole generation who knows nothing of life before. So many big things, so I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to leave one *little* thing for the youngsters to consider.
You know how on the cable news channels, and even on the morning news programs from the old networks (if you even still watch them), there is a steady stream of text going by? Some call it "the crawl". If you're of the post-9/11 generation, you probably never gave it a 2nd thought.
Well give it some thought. Before 9/11, we'd seen those before. They were trotted out for any serious event, such as a major weather disaster. They'd use it during the height of the emergency and then it would go away. The early days of 9/11 certainly fit the bill, but get this--the crawls never went away after that. They've subconsciously kept us in a state of emergency, with advertising in there also.
That kind of sums it up--a perpetual state of emergency that we can use to make a little more money than we made before. It's one little thing. Now go back and consider the bigger things.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:17AM
It's also used to spread falsehoods and even create false memories. People can't look away from the chyron and thus those that can read end up reading it. In that way it takes priority in their awareness over the speaking. For a specific example, Faux News can show President Biden speaking, but the words people will remember will not be his but those presented in the crawl. All the while they will swear they heard him speak yet in reality they tuned him out and mapped his voice onto the text and its the falshoods in the text they remember albeit in his voice.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mhajicek on Saturday September 11 2021, @04:08PM
Yes, a whole generation that has never known freedom. Used to be we could board an airplane or visit Canada or Mexico without being searched like a criminal. It has been proven that those searches do not achieve their stated goal, but they do achieve their true goal of conditioning people to accept authoritarianism.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday September 11 2021, @05:33PM
Crawlers? Similarly, the constant barrage of split screen guest "experts" spewing narratives. Make their "experts" look more impressive by looking like they are teleconferencing from some other state. The vast majority of the time they were actually in another room in the same studio. Only in the last couple of years, due to covid, have guests really been teleconferencing.
Also, a whole generation will know nothing of what it was like to fly an airplane without having the TSA to grope or scan them. Or to enter a workplace without a guard at each entrance and security badge locks every step of the way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:29AM
And Randolf Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of the 19th Century.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday September 11 2021, @10:21AM (10 children)
It's IN MEMORIAM not IN MEMORIUM, you nitwit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @10:28AM (8 children)
MEMORARIUM
(Score: 4, Funny) by janrinok on Saturday September 11 2021, @11:32AM (7 children)
Thank you. My Latin is not rusty - it is non-existent. And I couldn't find a living Lat to ask......
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday September 11 2021, @12:08PM
It's a set phrase that's part of the english language, like caveat emptor or in absentia. That's why it's in the English dictionary [merriam-webster.com]. Those with a modicum of education in the English language should know it (hey, modicum... another one).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday September 11 2021, @12:10PM (5 children)
Also, don't use locutions if you don't know how to write them properly.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Saturday September 11 2021, @05:00PM (4 children)
May I ask why? By being corrected by smartasses, you can learn without effort. Next, you learn about others and fill the comments on SN. What's not to like?
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday September 11 2021, @05:17PM (3 children)
Because if you're an editor - be it a SN or /. editor, or a journalist - you write publicly, possibly for a living, and there's a reasonably expectation that you master the language you write in. It's the editors, journalists and other professional writers who should be correcting and educating the smartasses, not the other way round.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:21PM
asinum non esto.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:26PM
I have an idea. We'll just cut our editor's pay by 10% every time they make a mistake! I leave you to do the division by zero math . . .
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 13 2021, @02:27PM
They are volunteers. I quite doubt they are professional editors or writers. If you want grammatical and punctuation perfection, you should go check out a for-profit publication. Oh, wait! Those places fired all their proofreaders ages and ages ago, and use the completely imperfect spell-check functions in MS Word instead.
Sorry, friend. I know it's hard for a punctilious man, but you really have no choice any more but to get used to it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:53PM
IN MEMORANDUM.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Opportunist on Saturday September 11 2021, @12:09PM (23 children)
Instead of sitting down and pondering why the heck this happened and why they did that, we reacted like a beaten animal: We bit back. And when we couldn't find the person who hit us, we just bit anyone. In the words of a German comedian:
"Did we kill Bin Laden?"
"Nope, can't find the guy."
"So... let's kill Saddam Hussein."
"Why, what's he gotta do with the shit?"
"Nothing, but at least we know where he is".
And we destabilized the region by removing pretty much the only thing that kept the whole IS crap under the lid. Don't get me wrong, Saddam was an asshole. But not only was he our asshole for the longest time (after all he was our guy to spank about that Ayatollah next door when the towelhead kicked our figurehead out and kept all those spiffy and back then cutting edge F-14 jets), he was also about as anti-islamist as you can get away with in the general region there.
Now, with Saddam removed, the IS had room to move in.
And I guess I don't have to mention just how splendid we handled the whole deal with Afghanistan, that one isn't even something you need to know recent history for, just watching the news should do.
Yeah. It sure was a tragic 20 years.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @12:15PM (1 child)
Plans to remove Saddam were being discussed before 9/11, and accelerated on the day of 9/11. It wasn't an accident that we went there.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Saturday September 11 2021, @12:29PM
No, it was no accident, it was a mistake.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @12:52PM (5 children)
>> And I guess I don't have to mention just how splendid we handled the whole deal with Afghanistan
You can thank Runaway Joe for leaving before we got the job done.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:08PM (3 children)
There was no job to be done. It took Russia only 10 years to finally realize that, the US took as usual the special kid length to figure it out.
You cannot "win" Afghanistan. There isn't anything you can do about this. Afghanistan is a hodgepodge conglomerate of warlords and chieftains who bicker with each other unless you give them an external force to bicker with. That's it. And even if you can somehow get some warlord to side with you, it basically means that the rest of the bunch immediately starts to hate on you because you threaten their power base.
How the hell do you want to "get this done"?
You can waste as much or as little military budget as you like on it, it ain't my money, enjoy and have fun, but really "getting anything done" there isn't exactly an option. It's a great distraction from internal troubles, that's what it did reasonably well for both, Russia and the US, but in the end, there's cheaper ways to distract from internal problems.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @04:10PM
The Taliban had managed to slash opium production, so yeah there was a job to be done.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @04:48PM (1 child)
You certainly can't "win" Afghanistan if your goal is to turn it into a 21st Century Woke paradise. The Biden administration's biggest stated concern with the Taliban after our withdrawal was that their government didn't have enough women in it. Jesus! EVERYBODY is in for some REAL pain... Not the "First World problems" of the faculty lounge...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Saturday September 11 2021, @06:22PM
You can't "win" Afghanistan without accepting that a different culture has different values. You think you go to a country and they'll welcome you with open arms because your way of life is the best thing since sliced bread. It may be for you. Ok. But other people have other ideas of what's good for them.
Yes, that may even be wrong. But that doesn't mean that you can go there, replace their culture with yours because "yours is better" (and I don't even want to discuss whether it is) and expect them to like it.
In my country, universal healthcare is a thing. And we treasure it. It's one of those "from my cold, dead hands" things quite similar to the US' 2nd amendment. Anyone even pondering to think about taking it away can pretty much kiss his political career good-bye. Yes, we think it's the best thing since sliced bread. And we honestly think that you're stupid that you don't want it.
But that doesn't meant that it could or should be forced upon you. You don't want it. Ok. We don't get it, we really don't, because to us, it's pretty much a given that it IS the superior way to do it, but hey, it's your country. It's your decision.
And that's pretty much what is the case with Afghanistan. And, bluntly, a lot of other places that you try to meddle in. You can't win by trying to force your way of life onto these people. Before you can do something like that, you might want to try to understand the mentality of a people. Else you'll just be seen as some kind of invader who tries to push a doctrine that the people you try to "bless" with your superior ideology don't even understand, or understand why it is supposedly better than what they consider good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:49PM
And the first job was to figure out what the job was. Never did finish that job. Twenty years, of wasted lives and rich contractors.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:23PM (11 children)
That's how dictators operate. Destabilize everything until their presence is the only thing keeping it together. It didn't quite work out for Assad.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday September 11 2021, @01:26PM (10 children)
He didn't have to destabilize anything, we were pretty effective at that already.
The history of the Middle East is one of blunders. Ours, theirs, and most of all one of post-colonialism. If you draw lines arbitrarily in the sand without giving half a shit about where peoples live, you create future conflicts.
That's not exactly a surprise, is it?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 11 2021, @05:26PM (7 children)
To the contrary, he probably did in order to stay in power. The factions of Iraq would need to be balanced against each so that no faction grows organized enough to take out Saddam. Common outcome is that when the strongman goes away, the factions turn on each other.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday September 11 2021, @06:14PM (6 children)
Well, the solution to Yugoslavia was to have a civil war, then break apart and form a bunch of increasingly successful successor states.
Then again, they were lucky. They had no oil. And an EU next door that is quite interested in stable neighbors.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 11 2021, @07:30PM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:28PM (4 children)
Well, compared to Iraq...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:41PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 11 2021, @11:35PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 12 2021, @01:56AM (1 child)
Uh, only because we started bombing them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 12 2021, @11:05AM
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday September 11 2021, @06:18PM
Sadly even when you do give a shit about where people live they will still attack their neighbors for some reason, ranging from religion, resources, imagined slights that happened 100s of years ago, etc.. Just look at India and Pakistan. That border was drawn with full thought to where the different groups lived and the border is still a cluster fuck.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 11 2021, @11:33PM
I agree with Pinky on this one. You can't draw a line that will fix what's wrong with the Middle East or anywhere else where conflicts are neighbor to neighbor rather than well defined regions.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @06:18PM (1 child)
Your naivete is ridiculous. As if this was not all planned for reasons you can't seem to comprehend even though the rat turds are everywhere.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday September 11 2021, @10:56PM
C'mon, spill it, what nefarious evil shadow government is it this time?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 11 2021, @09:30PM
Thank you for that observation.
No matter how much we hated Saddam, he and his political machine were a stabilizing force in an unstable region. But, heads assplode when you explain that to people.