U.S. Drone Strike Said to Have Killed Ayman al-Zawahri, Top Qaeda Leader

[Professor Emeritus]

Osama timeline

We’ve been after him since the Persian gulf war where we set up a permanent military base in Saudi Arabia, also known as the reason bin laden declared war against us. A good decade before 9/11. Osama wasn’t killed until 2011, leaving two decades where Osama and/or the Taliban could have tried your peaceful protest bullshyt route.

Not gonna bother with the rest of your “ignorant” post so have a good one.

You got caught in a bucketfull of lies and ignorance, and in response just lied about one of your statements and ignored the rest?

We have NOT been after bin Laden since the Persian Gulf War, we never once tried to capture him or ask for him to be handed over until 1997. And bullshyt on trying to claim "decades before 2011" since we were explicitly discussing what had occurred before 2001, not before 2011. You made clear that you thought we'd already been after bin Laden for 15-20 years before 9/11 and that numerous Arab nations could have captured or tried him before then.

The reality is that we never tried to capture bin Laden until 1997 and numerous other Muslim nations wanted him just as bad as we did. He wasn't accessible to a single Arab nation at that point, the ONLY Muslim country that could have handed him over during that entire timeframe was Afghanistan.

[from CATO]

"And fourth, almost all countries in the world were eager to cooperate with the United States after the 9/11 shock, and this included two of the very few that had supported the Taliban previously: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the Saudis had tried for years to get bin Laden, a Saudi renegade, extradited. They appear to have been close in 1998, but the deal fell through after the Americans bombed Afghanistan in response to al‐Qaida attacks on two of its embassies in Africa. However, the Saudis kept up the effort, and two weeks before 9/11 the chief Saudi negotiator had been sacked by the Crown prince because he had failed thus far to get bin Laden.

Given these conditions, the insecure regime in Afghanistan might have been susceptible to international pressure, perhaps even to the point of turning Osama bin Laden and his top associates over to international justice, which is more than the invasion accomplished."

Imagine believing the Taliban were gonna turn over bin Laden just before 9/11.

Why didnt they turn him over during the 15 years prior while he was on the most wanted list for blowing up our embassies?

These same Arab/Muslim nations had 20+ years to take him through their courts.

You live in a straight up delusional world. fukk a monolith, pick ANY Muslim nation to go prosecute him. You act like America hadn't tried to capture him for fukking decades.

You claimed that we had been after bin Laden for decades before 2001 and suggested numerous Muslim nations had refused to hand him over or prosecute him. You even said explicitly that he was on the "most wanted" list for 15 years before 2001. Your ignorance on that point is incredible.

#1: The FBI's most wanted terrorist list wasn't even created until 2001, and Osama was put on it for 9/11, not for the embassy bombings
#2: The Saudis had already tried to get Osama extradited from Afghanistan since at least 97/98 so they could prosecute him themselves
#3: The USA didn't attempt to capture bin Laden or ask anyone else to do so until 1997
#4: Osama didn't declare war on the USA until August 23, 1996 and the ONLY nation he lived in from then on was Afghanistan
#5: Osama was first identified as a potential financier of terrorists and put on the TIPOFF watchlist (the sort of thing that would keep him from getting a US visa) in 1993


This straight from the 9/11 Commission's official report:

Until 1996, hardly anyone in the U.S. government understood that Usama Bin Ladin was an inspirer and organizer of the new terrorism. In 1993, the CIA noted that he had paid for the training of some Egyptian terrorists in Sudan. The State Department detected his money in aid to the Yemeni terrorists who set a bomb in an attempt to kill U.S. troops in Aden in 1992. State Department sources even saw suspicious links with Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh" in the New York area, commenting that Bin Ladin seemed "committed to financing 'Jihads' against 'anti Islamic' regimes worldwide." After the department designated Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993, it put Bin Ladin on its TIPOFF watchlist, a move that might have prevented his getting a visa had he tried to enter the United States. As late as 1997, however, even the CIA's Counterterrorist Center continued to describe him as an "extremist financier."

In 1996, the CIA set up a special unit of a dozen officers to analyze intelligence on and plan operations against Bin Ladin. David Cohen, the head of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, wanted to test the idea of having a "virtual station"-a station based at headquarters but collecting and operating against a subject much as stations in the field focus on a country. Taking his cue from National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, who expressed special interest in terrorist finance, Cohen formed his virtual station as a terrorist financial links unit. He had trouble getting any Directorate of Operations officer to run it; he finally recruited a former analyst who was then running the Islamic Extremist Branch of the Counterterrorist Center. This officer, who was especially knowledgeable about Afghanistan, had noticed a recent stream of reports about Bin Ladin and something called al Qaeda, and suggested to Cohen that the station focus on this one individual. Cohen agreed. Thus was born the Bin Ladin unit.

In May 1996, Bin Ladin left Sudan for Afghanistan. A few months later, as the Bin Ladin unit was gearing up, Jamal Ahmed al Fadl walked into a U.S. embassy in Africa, established his bona fides as a former senior employee of Bin Ladin, and provided a major breakthrough of intelligence on the creation, character, direction, and intentions of al Qaeda. Corroborating evidence came from another walk-in source at a different U.S. embassy. More confirmation was supplied later that year by intelligence and other sources, including material gathered by FBI agents and Kenyan police from an al Qaeda cell in Nairobi.

By 1997, officers in the Bin Ladin unit recognized that Bin Ladin was more than just a financier. They learned that al Qaeda had a military committee that was planning operations against U.S. interests worldwide and was actively trying to obtain nuclear material. Analysts assigned to the station looked at the information it had gathered and "found connections everywhere," including links to the attacks on U.S. troops in Aden and Somalia in 1992 and 1993 and to the Manila air plot in the Philippines in 1994-1995.

The Bin Ladin station was already working on plans for offensive operations against Bin Ladin. These plans were directed at both physical assets and sources of finance. In the end, plans to identify and attack Bin Ladin's money sources did not go forward.

In late 1995, when Bin Ladin was still in Sudan, the State Department and the CIA learned that Sudanese officials were discussing with the Saudi government the possibility of expelling Bin Ladin. U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney encouraged the Sudanese to pursue this course. The Saudis, however, did not want Bin Ladin, giving as their reason their revocation of his citizenship.

Sudan's minister of defense, Fatih Erwa, has claimed that Sudan offered to hand Bin Ladin over to the United States. The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so. Ambassador Carney had instructions only to push the Sudanese to expel Bin Ladin. Ambassador Carney had no legal basis to ask for more from the Sudanese since, at the time, there was no indictment out-standing.

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

govinfo.library.unt.edu

The Saudis hated him even before we did and had been trying to get him extradited and put on trial for years before 9/11 even happened. The Egyptians hated him long before 9/11 because he tried to assassinate Mubarak. The Sudanese didn't trust him and kicked him out in 1996 to make US and the Saudis happy. There was NO Muslim nation where he was safe other than with the Taliban, and even they had repeatedly asked him to stop directing acts of terrorism if he wanted to remain in safe haven in the country. The combination of the distaste of 9/11 (which they did not support), the fact that he had gone against their requests, and the fact that he was now an existential threat to their country were three clear reasons not to protect him anymore.

And the rest of the Muslim world did NOT want to protect him. Your ignorance on that point is insane. He was absolutely hated by the Saudi monarchy, he was despised by the Egyptian government for trying to assassinate their PM, he had few friends in the Muslim world which is why he was working out of Afghanistan in the first place.

If we had agreed to negotiate there is a very strong possibilty they would have turned him over. Instead we aimed for total war, and of course that hardened the Taliban and eventually other Muslim groups and nations against us. Why are you so clueless as to suggest we didn't have an obvious opportunity in October 2001, when they offered to turn him over, that we didn't have any longer a couple years later?


I hope everyone else can see this and see the combination of how incredibly confident you are in your assertions with how incredibly little you know of the situation. I swear you, Pressure, 88, and wire literally just make shyt up off the top of your head based off narratives and agendas you've heard and have never once attempted to educate yourselves in the slightest on these issues.

 

[ill]

You got caught in a bucketfull of lies and ignorance, and in response just lied about one of your statements and ignored the rest?

We have NOT been after bin Laden since the Persian Gulf War, we never once tried to capture him or ask for him to be handed over until 1997. And bullshyt on trying to claim "decades before 2011" since we were explicitly discussing what had occurred before 2001, not before 2011. You made clear that you thought we'd already been after bin Laden for 15-20 years before 9/11 and that numerous Arab nations could have captured or tried him before then.

The reality is that we never tried to capture bin Laden until 1997 and numerous other Muslim nations wanted him just as bad as we did. He wasn't accessible to a single Arab nation at that point, the ONLY Muslim country that could have handed him over during that entire timeframe was Afghanistan.







You claimed that we had been after bin Laden for decades before 2001 and suggested numerous Muslim nations had refused to hand him over or prosecute him. You even said explicitly that he was on the "most wanted" list for 15 years before 2001. Your ignorance on that point is incredible.

#1: The FBI's most wanted terrorist list wasn't even created until 2001, and Osama was put on it for 9/11, not for the embassy bombings
#2: The Saudis had already tried to get Osama extradited from Afghanistan since at least 97/98 so they could prosecute him themselves
#3: The USA didn't attempt to capture bin Laden or ask anyone else to do so until 1997
#4: Osama didn't declare war on the USA until August 23, 1996 and the ONLY nation he lived in from then on was Afghanistan
#5: Osama was first identified as a potential financier of terrorists and put on the TIPOFF watchlist (the sort of thing that would keep him from getting a US visa) in 1993


This straight from the 9/11 Commission's official report:

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

govinfo.library.unt.edu

The Saudis hated him even before we did and had been trying to get him extradited and put on trial for years before 9/11 even happened. The Egyptians hated him long before 9/11 because he tried to assassinate Mubarak. The Sudanese didn't trust him and kicked him out in 1996 to make US and the Saudis happy. There was NO Muslim nation where he was safe other than with the Taliban, and even they had repeatedly asked him to stop directing acts of terrorism if he wanted to remain in safe haven in the country. The combination of the distaste of 9/11 (which they did not support), the fact that he had gone against their requests, and the fact that he was now an existential threat to their country were three clear reasons not to protect him anymore.

And the rest of the Muslim world did NOT want to protect him. Your ignorance on that point is insane. He was absolutely hated by the Saudi monarchy, he was despised by the Egyptian government for trying to assassinate their PM, he had few friends in the Muslim world which is why he was working out of Afghanistan in the first place.

If we had agreed to negotiate there is a very strong possibilty they would have turned him over. Instead we aimed for total war, and of course that hardened the Taliban and eventually other Muslim groups and nations against us. Why are you so clueless as to suggest we didn't have an obvious opportunity in October 2001, when they offered to turn him over, that we didn't have any longer a couple years later?


I hope everyone else can see this and see the combination of how incredibly confident you are in your assertions with how incredibly little you know of the situation. I swear you, Pressure, 88, and wire literally just make shyt up off the top of your head based off narratives and agendas you've heard and have never once attempted to educate yourselves in the slightest on these issues.

If you say so breh. I don't have the energy for your Mother Theresa schtick.

Keep doing your best to justify not killing Osama. Keep doing your best to pretend he didnt get what was coming to him. Keep pretending there was a peaceful solution to Osama. At some point logic is going to force you to admit violence IS sometimes the answer.

First it was any Muslim nations can and should take him to court now its only Afghanistan had the access and means to do so. Imagine giving the Taliban, a labeled terrorist group, credibility in 2001.

Have a great day and enjoy copping out with "well at the very last second the Taliban, who's a straight up terror group with no backbone, SAID they would hand him over but instead they welcomed the invasion and total demolishment of their nation in order to not hand him over". Like that kind of shyt makes logical sense to you???

The best part is you thinking Osama in a jail cell would stop his goals of ridding the middle east of infidels like America and Israel. Hilariously enough, our Middle East excursion has resulted in previously hostile Arab/Muslim nations becoming friendly with Israel...thus creating PEACE.

P.S. Take that last paragraph and go look in a mirror.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

#2. The Muslim world trusts the West as little as you trust them. US officials have committed horrific atrocities against numerous other nations, have we EVER given up our own officials in order to stand trial in a Muslim country for war crimes? Yet you expect them to do the same for us without question. So as a compromise, they offered to give up the perp to stand trial in a Muslim court, formed entirely by nations who had already strongly condemned the attacks in no uncertain terms, which again is far better than we have done. And due to the existential threat hanging over their heads they might have even gone further, but we refused to talk and refused to negotiate.

Your entire premise of power suggests that the more powerful entity should blink first. Is that what I'm hearing?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

To be clear, @ill has now shown that he falsely thought:

* All Muslim nations are a monolith and none of them dislike Osama
* Many Muslim nations could have gone after Osama and failed to do so
* The USA had been trying to get Osama since the 1980s, rather than since 1997
* Nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt didn't also want to get Osama themselves
* We put Osama on a "most wanted terrorist list" in the mid-80s
* The embassy bombings had occurred in the mid-80s
* The USA had been going at Osama since the 1st Gulf War
* Osama declared war on the USA around the 1st Gulf War
* The Afghan Taliban sheltered Osama for two decades
* The Afghan Taliban didn't have any access to Osama in 2001, only the ISI did


Not only do most of those statements display incredible ignorance of geopolitics and history, several are mutually contrdictory. But this is what the Dunning-Kruger Effect does - it convinces people that no matter how little they know, no matter how ignorant they are, they are more right and know more than everyone else. People like this don't even think they have to learn or study anything, why would you need to get informed if you're always right already without being informed?

He's making definitively statements on what it's possible for the USA, the Taliban, and Osama to have done in 2001 while showing he doesn't have a fukking clue what any of the three were already doing in 2001.

If you say so breh.

That's all you can muster after being caught in numerous false statements that prove you didn't have the slightest fukking clue what was going on?

The combination of your stubbornness and arrogance is remarkable.

First it was any Muslim nations can and should take him to court now its only Afghanistan had the access and means to do so.

YOU were the one with that contradiction, not me. Did you even remember your own posts?

Imagine giving the Taliban, a labeled terrorist group, credibility in 2001.

Let's add another false statement to the mix. The USA has never labeled the Afghan Taliban as a terrorist group, not in 2001 and not now. And we haven't done that explicitly because we want to negotiate with them and have done so. Bush's refusal to negotiate in 2001 wasn't even in line with his own State Department's policy.

Foreign Terrorist Organizations - United States Department of State

Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) are foreign organizations that are designated by the Secretary of State in accordance with section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended. FTO designations play a critical role in our fight against terrorism and are an effective means...

www.state.gov

Have a great day and enjoy copping out with "well at the very last second the Taliban, who's a straight up terror group with no backbone, SAID they would hand him over but instead they welcomed the invasion and total demolishment of their nation in order to not hand him over". Like that kind of shyt makes logical sense to you???

How is it a "cop out" to point out that we had a different pathway to achieve the exact thing we were attempting to achieve and had failed miserably in doing so?

The most embarassing thing for you is that you're proven that you knew NOTHING of the geopolitical situation, the terrorism situation, the Osama situation, anything. You got literally all your facts wrong. Yet you still insist you are right, more right than people who know far more about the situation than you, without feeling you need to actually know anything about what was going on.

The best part is you thinking Osama in a jail cell would stop his goals

You were already called out for that logical fallacy and misrepresentation of my position once, going to double down again?

Hilariously enough, our Middle East excursion has resulted in previously hostile Arab/Muslim nations becoming friendly with Israel...thus creating PEACE.

Yeah, you're an idiot.



It's incredible that you try to portray me as ignorant of geopolitics and naive, yet you yourself don't think you need to do the slightest historical study or understand anything at all about the situation in order to confidently assert that you know all the answers. And when confronted with your misunderstandings and falsehoods, you do nothing but double down.

Can you at least assert that your attack on all 46 Muslim states, your claim that any of them could have gone after Osama and failed to do so, was completely ridiculous? That it showed you don't have the slightest understanding of those nations, of Islam, or of Osama?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I just found out Napolean has been outright lying on me in this thread too. I'd say he does it because he knows I'm not reading and thinks he can get away with it, but he was a liar before I blocked him too.


This is what he claimed I said about Ukraine, which he randomly brought up as an ad hominem even though no one was discussing it:



Napolean claimed: "They were against sending troops (obviously, guns/bombs, or even SANCTIONS.)"

Napolean claimed: "And dude is talking about after school programs and sanctions (which ironically he is at odds with when it comes to Ukraine)"


Complete lies. I have NEVER said I was against sanctions when it comes to Ukraine, you fukking liar. I have argued in favor of sanctions to the fullest possible measure, said it myself at least 8-10 times while dapping it up dozens of times. Here are just three examples:

They're proven their point to the Russian army and they've got the international sanctions on russia they need, let the impossible to maintain resources of occupation and constant grind of the sanctions wear the russians out and preserve your men for your future.

What's your solution since you feel I'm painting you in an unflattering light?

Total sanctions against Russia and, if it becomes necessary, potentially sanction those continuing to deal with Russia.

From the beginning I've been resolutely pro-Ukraine, early on was one of the more active posters, pushed for the strongest anti-Russian sanctions and condemnations possible, and was so aggressively countering pro-Russian disinformation that all of TLR thinks I'm nothing more than a biased Zelensky apologist.

Notice that I use direct quotes when making my accusations against him and proving my case, while he makes up his lies with no quotes. Same with Pressure and Ill. They think they can just say whatever, without evidence, and that maybe someone will believe it based off of their word even though they've been caught lying (both lying about me and lying about the global situation) over and over again. I assume it's because they know that anyone who cares about integrity has already abandoned them, they feed solely off of people who cosign their views and don't care if they look like disingenuous shytheads while they push them.



Also, Napoleon claimed I was failing to address Afghanistan in an answer when I was explicitly responding to someone's question about Isis, and then falsely said, "None of this addresses security concerns", which is either an outright lie or just plain shows he's a fukking idiot who doesn't know what security concerns are. Either way it looks bad.

Had to log out to see those and I'm sure there's more earlier in the thread, but I ain't gonna go on a useless back-and-forth. Anyone will be able to see that he can't quote me ever opposing the sanctions in regards to Ukraine. His response will most likely be a deflection and goalpost shift, likely with some ad hominem and potentially new lies thrown in. I've already read enough of his shyt myself. Those of you haven't blocked him, have fun reading trash.

 

[Pressure]

His overarching points hold:

OBL and AZ were both criminals for decades and were never brought to justice in Afghanistan, Pakistan nor Iran either because:

1.) they weren't interested
2.) lacked the resources
3.) were actively harboring them

Therefore it is rather naive to assume they would be brought to justice without US intervention.

 

[mastermind]

Therefore it is rather naive to assume they would be brought to justice without US intervention.

Again, what do you define as justice?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

His overarching points hold:

OBL and AZ were both criminals for decades and were never brought to justice in Afghanistan, Pakistan nor Iran either because:

1.) they weren't interested
2.) lacked the resources
3.) were actively harboring them

Therefore it is rather naive to assume they would be brought to justice without US intervention.

That statement is nonsense and just an attempt to muddy the waters by shoving together the most misleading claims in the least informative way possible.



1. The State Department's own declassified documents showed that they believed as early as 1998 that the Taliban was divided on harboring bin Laden, and that as early as 1999 they were offering to give him up to be tried in a Muslim court if they could recieve assurances he wouldn't be handed over directly to the USA. This division continued through 2001.


2. The State Department's own documents also show that when negotiating with the Taliban, "cultural and political miscommunication was rampant". Anyone who knows jack shyt about dealing interculturally knows that means you should go slower and take MORE time to CAREFULLY work out your positions and find the common ground in negotiations. Negotiating for the handing over of bin Laden, with a pause in bombing at the time, is an act worth spending months and even years on. After 9/11 the USA had gained sympathy and bin Laden had lost it, giving America its best negotiating position possible. We could have built understanding and worked out a compromise that would have brought bin Laden to justice faster and been better for all parties involved. shyt like that takes time. It is OBVIOUS that the path we chose fukked over all parties involved instead. Bush decided to refuse to negotiate at all, believing he could "shock and awe" - in other words, bomb and kill - the rest of the world to bend to his will. We now know that this was a horrendous miscalculation. Your refusal to acknowledge that the War on Terror was a failure is a denial of objective reality.


3. The Taliban, like virtually all Muslim bodies across the world, denounced 9/11 "and whoever is behind it" in no uncertain terms. At the time there was sympathy towards Americans and digust at the act even by many hardline Islamists, and no reason to believe those views were insincere. The State Department itself reports that the Taliban had on their own initiative for years before 9/11 been getting bin Laden's assurances that he would not sponsor terrorism and did not want him involved in such acts. Bin Laden publicly released a statement on September 16, 2001 claiming that he had no knowledge of or involvement in the 9/11 attacks, and Bush at that time was being vague and confidential with regards to the evidence he held regarding bin Laden's guilt. The Taliban asking for evidence of his involvement was no spurious demand, America ourselves would have asked for far more before giving up any American citizens to be tried in a Muslim court. We could have taken the time to work that out rather than simply trying to intimidate the Taliban into doing something against their own ethics and understanding of the situation. The period after 9/11 was the ideal time to do that, IF we merely did the work to prove to them that bin Laden was responsible and that having him tried was in their best interests.

Conflating the situation in 2001 with the situation before 9/11 occurred, when anger against him and sympathy for the USA was not nearly so great, or after the USA had occupied Afghanistan (and Iraq) and earned the ire of the entire Muslim world, is fukking ridiculous. The global horror at 9/11 completely changed Muslim positioning towards USA. Bush's choice to "go to war with Islam", occupying Muslim populations and killing hundreds of thousands of people who didn't have jack shyt to do with 9/11, completely changed the Muslim positioning towards the USA again. You and @ill's insistence on flattening out the entire period from the 1980s (when Osama was literally working on US-funded anti-Soviet projects) to the 2010s (when USA was attempting to violently overthrow their 4th Muslim government in 15 years) is either pure ignorance or disingenuous bullshyt.


4. The Pakistanis DID give up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ahmed Ghailani, two of the most wanted terrorists in the world, when they captured them in 2003 and 2004. So once again your attempt to flatten the situation fails.




The insistent that you and @ill hold that you can conclusively evaluate complex geopolitical situations without even knowing what the fukk is going on should be embarrasing, if you had any integrity.

 

[Pressure]

Again, what do you define as justice?

He received justice. He's not a civilian. Not sure why y'all are trying to make him one.

 

[mastermind]

He received justice. He's not a civilian. Not sure why y'all are trying to make him one.

What?

I didn't make anyone out to be a civilian. Why do you lie like this?

We got that dark place that Americans forget about called Guantanamo Bay where foreign terror suspects are held to await trial (altho America doesn't do that on the up and up either, and that's if they even get a trial).

You think extrajudicial killings that violate international law is justice? If this exact thing happened to an American at the hands of Russia or China, would you be fine with that?

 

[Pressure]

What?

I didn't make anyone out to be a civilian. Why do you lie like this?

You think extrajudicial killings that violate international law is justice? If this exact thing happened to an American at the hands of Russia or China, would you be fine with that?

Wait, is your assertion that the killings of OBL and AZ are a violation of international law?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Sorry man, you're attempting the make the situation more complex to justify inaction.

Full on lie, I haven't said jack shyt to support inaction.

Crazy to make the claim people don't know what the fukk is going on when your own claims here are categorically false or misleading on purpose.

Lie

Are you fukking serious with that? @ill said the Most Wanted Terrorists list, which was explicitly created in 2001, not the FBI's Most Wanted list. And he claimed it happened in 1986 and that we'd already been after Osama for "decades" when 9/11 happened, but your link says 1998, just 3 years beforehand

So did you know he was completely wrong and are purposely being deceptive, or is your reading comprehension just for shyt?

FBI Most Wanted Terrorists - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This is all an attempt to undermine the claim that it had been decades, but it's really doesn't undermine the claim that OBL was allowed to operate freely in Afghanistan without justice from for over a half a decade before the United States took Military action against the Taliban.
Your own argument shows that the Taliban had no interest in issuing justice.

Again, that is completely false and ignores everything that has already been provided regarding that even our own State Department said the Taliban position towards bin Laden was complex and that they didn't want him to operate freely, nor is there any evidence they were aware of what he was planning, and that they were already open to turning him over to a Muslim court as early as 1999 to be tried if the evidence was provided.

You look goofy as fukk. You're either woefully naïve, cripplingly afraid of conflict, or a Terrorist sympathizer at this point.

And you have proven, over and over, that you think you can make such claims without doing the slightest actual research into the events in question. I guess National Security experts at CATO (a centrist institution with beliefs not dissimilar to yours, and one of the most respected think tanks in America), are also naive terrorist sympathizers when they put forth the exact same claims as I do?

What if the US Didn’t Go to War in Afghanistan after 9/11?​

For President Bush, the only option was revenge, but an alternative path was available.

Rather than launching a war that proved to be disastrous, an alternative reaction to 9/11 might have been to expand police and intelligence operations and to work with sympathetic allies to pressure the Taliban, which had little or nothing to do with 9/11, to dismember al‐Qaida and to turn over its top members.

Several conditions were favorable to such an approach.

First, Taliban rule in Afghanistan was quite unpopular and far from secure. After its takeover in 1996, it had afforded peace and a degree of coherent government to Afghanistan after a horrific civil war. However, by 2001 its popularity had declined due to its chaotic and sometimes brutal rule — and perhaps due to its successful effort to crush the lucrative opium trade in the year previous. The depth of the unpopularity is suggested perhaps by the fact that its poorly trained forces, which a few years earlier had united the country by conquering or bribing the warlord bands that had been tearing the country apart, now mostly disintegrated. Some foreign fighters did resist the American invasion, but few Afghans joined them except under duress. The rather ironic parallels with the precipitous collapse in 2021 of the corrupt and incompetent U.S.-sponsored Afghan regime are striking.
Second, the relationship between the Taliban and al‐Qaida was often very uncomfortable. In 1996, Osama bin Laden, an exile from Saudi Arabia, showed up with his entourage. Although quite willing to extend hospitality to its well‐heeled visitor, the Taliban insisted on guarantees that he refrain from issuing incendiary messages or even from holding press conferences as well as from engaging in terrorist activities.

Bin Laden repeatedly agreed but frequently broke his pledge. At times, the Taliban had their troublesome “guest” under house arrest, and veteran correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave was stunned by the hostility expressed for bin Laden when he interviewed top Taliban leaders in mid‐2001. As analyst Vadim Brown puts it , relations were “deeply contentious, and threatened by mutual distrust and divergent ambitions.”

For President Bush, the only option was revenge, but an alternative path was available.

Third, the Taliban did not generate much support abroad due to its extreme Islamist fundamentalism. Specialist Fawaz Gerges points out that when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979, there were calls for jihad from almost everywhere in Arab and Muslim lands, and tens of thousands of Muslim men flooded to the country to fight in the resistance.

In stark contrast, when the Americans invaded in 2001 bent on toppling an Islamic regime, there was a “deafening silence” from these same corners and mosques, and only a trickle of jihadis went to fight. This was in part a counterproductive consequence of the 9/11 attack. The terrorists’ hope was that the dramatic confrontation with the United States would galvanize and unify, but instead other jihadists publicly blamed al‑Qaida for their post‑9/11 problems and held the attacks to be shortsighted and hugely miscalculated.

And fourth, almost all countries in the world were eager to cooperate with the United States after the 9/11 shock, and this included two of the very few that had supported the Taliban previously:

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the Saudis had tried for years to get bin Laden, a Saudi renegade, extradited. They appear to have been close in 1998, but the deal fell through after the Americans bombed Afghanistan in response to al‐Qaida attacks on two of its embassies in Africa. However, the Saudis kept up the effort, and two weeks before 9/11 the chief Saudi negotiator had been sacked by the Crown prince because he had failed thus far to get bin Laden.

Given these conditions, the insecure regime in Afghanistan might have been susceptible to international pressure, perhaps even to the point of turning Osama bin Laden and his top associates over to international justice, which is more than the invasion accomplished.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

at @Pressure claiming I'm a terrorist sympathizer because I think there was a better way to get bin Laden than by killing tens of thousands of Afghan kids, creating tens of thousands of new terrorists, sacrificing nearly 9,000 coalition forces and contractors to the grave along with another 40,000 injured, and watching global deaths from terrorism increase by a factor of 10 after our actions.

And this is what passes for "Higher Learning" nowadays.

 

[mastermind]

Wait, is your assertion that the killings of OBL and AZ are a violation of international law?

Answer the question, if Russia or China dropped drone strikes targeting an American they consider a criminal in America, how would you react? Would that be justice? Would those nations killing an American in America who they consider a terrorist be called justice Under your terms?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Answer the question, if Russia or China dropped drone strikes targeting an American they consider a criminal in America, how would you react? Would that be justice? Would those nations killing an American in America who they consider a terrorist be called justice Under your terms?

I mean, this guy is living to a ripe old age and advised Hillary fukking Clinton up through her presidential run.

Henry Kissinger's genocidal legacy: Vietnam, Cambodia and the birth of American militarism

Nixon introduced us to permanent, extrajudicial war in Southeast Asia, and it continues today in the Middle East

www.salon.com

Welcoming War Crimes: The Normalization of Henry Kissinger | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

When the IOP invites Henry Kissinger to the Harvard Kennedy School with no representation of opposition views, they are doing more than “hosting a conversation.” They are providing a platform for the insidious belief that the lives of others, particularly those of poor people of color in the...

www.thecrimson.com

The Trial of Henry Kissinger: Human Rights Watch

The Sins of Henry Kissinger​

"During his brief tenure at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy, Kissinger got a lot done. In his first two years in office, he helped Richard Nixon sabotage Vietnamese peace talks for his own political gain, expanded that war into Laos and Cambodia (the destabilizing effects of which would pave the way for the rise of the Khmer Rouge and the death of up to two million people), and advocated the bombing of, in his own words, “anything that moves.”

In 1971, Kissinger backed Pakistan in its war against Bangladesh despite evidence of massacre and rape. In ‘73, he orchestrated a military coup against the democratically elected Allende regime of Chile, installing in its stead the violently oppressive Pinochet dictatorship. And in ‘75, the then-Secretary of State lent his tacit support to President Suharto of Indonesia―himself a despot already responsible for the mass killings of hundreds of thousands―in the deadly conquest of East Timor. Kissinger himself, in proposing an intervention in Cyprus, summed up his philosophy best: “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

Appalling though this all may be, Kissinger’s most enduring legacy is subtler in its malignance. The foreign policy of Henry Kissinger is defined, above all, by an utter contempt for human life and absolute pursuit of “American interests.” For every one of Kissinger’s crimes that goes unpunished and for every bit of praise he receives, the belief that the United States can do whatever it wants with the rest of the world is further concretized. Behind every thoughtless, disastrous intervention since then―behind the mujahideen and the Contras, behind the Iraq war and the El Mozote Massacre―is the work of Henry Kissinger."