Did 9/11 Justify the War in Afghanistan?

[Adele Edisen]

Did 9/11 Justify the War in Afghanistan?

By David Ray Griffin

This question has thus far been considered off-limits, not to be raised in polite
company, and certainly not in the mainstream media.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e35016.htm [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=i9cvpanab.0....m%3Demail]

Did 9/11 Justify the War in Afghanistan?

Using the McChrystal Moment to Raise a Forbidden Question

By David Ray Griffin

May 20, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"GR" - There are many questions to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is whether it will turn out to be "Obama's Vietnam."1 This question implies another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years.

Although there are many similarities between these two wars, there is also a big difference: This time, there is no draft. If there were a draft, so that college students and their friends back home were being sent to Afghanistan, there would be huge demonstrations against this war on campuses all across this country. If the sons and daughters of wealthy and middle-class parents were coming home in boxes, or with permanent injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this war would have surely been stopped long ago. People have often asked: Did we learn any of the "lessons of Vietnam"? The US government learned one: If you're going to fight unpopular wars, don't have a draft hire mercenaries!

There are many other questions that have been, and should be, asked about this war, but in this essay, I focus on only one: Did the 9/11 attacks justify the war in Afghanistan?

This question has thus far been considered off-limits, not to be raised in polite company, and certainly not in the mainstream media. It has been permissible, to be sure, to ask whether the war during the past several years has been justified by those attacks so many years ago. But one has not been allowed to ask whether the original invasion was justified by the 9/11 attacks.

However, what can be designated the "McChrystal Moment" the probably brief period during which the media are again focused on the war in Afghanistan in the wake of the Rolling Stone story about General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, which led to his resignation provides the best opportunity for some time to raise fundamental questions about this war. Various commentators have already been asking some pretty basic questions: about the effectiveness and affordability of the present "counterinsurgency strategy" and even whether American fighting forces should remain in Afghanistan at all. But I am interested in an even more fundamental question: Whether this war was ever really justified by the publicly given reason: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

This question has two parts: First, did these attacks provide a legal justification for the invasion of Afghanistan? Second, if not, did they at least provide a moral justification?

Note: This is a very long article and well worth reading. I just provided the introduction section.- AE

Adele

[Magda Hassan]

No and no. And in any case the war in Afghanistan had nothing to do with 911. Just a cover story for colonial plunder and looting.

[David Guyatt]

The planned Trans-Afghanistan gas Pipeline was the underlying motivating factor for the post 911 Afghanistan War imo. There is an excellent essay by the Geopolitical Monitor that outlines this. There exists somewhere on this forum - dated several years ago - a map of coalition military camps that exactly parallels the planned gas pipeline route. Hardly accidental.

[Danny Jarman]

The planned Trans-Afghanistan gas Pipeline was the underlying motivating factor for the post 911 Afghanistan War imo. There is an excellent essay by the Geopolitical Monitor that outlines this. There exists somewhere on this forum - dated several years ago - a map of coalition military camps that exactly parallels the planned gas pipeline route. Hardly accidental.

Globalistan and Pipelineistan in action.

[David Guyatt]

The planned Trans-Afghanistan gas Pipeline was the underlying motivating factor for the post 911 Afghanistan War imo. There is an excellent essay by the Geopolitical Monitor that outlines this. There exists somewhere on this forum - dated several years ago - a map of coalition military camps that exactly parallels the planned gas pipeline route. Hardly accidental.

Globalistan and Pipelineistan in action.

Actually Danny, I was about to edit my post because Sibel Edmonds states reasons for this war that makes far more sense than my feeble efforts. She notes a small number of reasons that, to my mind, coelesce to have made the Bush Family Afghan War virtually inevitable - one of which was the gas pipeline. See HERE for here reasons.

[Adele Edisen]

What so often comes to mind when reading posts on DPF is what was said by (I think it was) James Carville, adviser to Bill Clinton during his first run for the US presidency: "It's the Economy, Stupid." Even though the comment was made in regard to different matters in a politial campaign of the time, it seems to be a brief phrase that well suits a topic which should be brought to our attention when war is discussed.

Yes, the economy is important in its many forms and variations, and the people who profit from it and manipulate it for their own private ends, either as individuals or as members of cartels and other such groups. Every war can be said to have an economic driving force behind its historic moment, rarely recognized by most people who have been deceived by propaganda and other childish fairy tales.

What may be keeping us now in Afghanistan has expanded to certain rare minerals, such as lithium, necessary for the production of electronic gear. Yet, few mention these items - it's Top Secret stuff, I suppose, and should be kept from the people of the world and those taxpayers who will financially fund such operations, without any benefit that they would gain. It is the purpose of the poor to support the rich with their hard-earned money and their lives on the battlefields of the world....

Adele

[Magda Hassan]

While the US has been waging war against the people of Afghanistan the Chinese have been buying up most of the Afghan rare earth metals and minerals. They have enough to keep the Chinese auto industry in production for the next 100 years. It would have been more advantageous (not to mention cheaper) of the US to give every Afghani over 20 years old $100,000 and build schools and hospitals istead of dropping all those bombs and sending all those drones. Now who do you think the Afghanis are going to want to deal with in future? It wont be the US. If the US want these minerals they are going to have to take them from the Chinese now. Quite another ball game.

[Adele Edisen]

While the US has been waging war against the people of Afghanistan the Chinese have been buying up most of the Afghan rare earth metals and minerals. They have enough to keep the Chinese auto industry in production for the next 100 years. It would have been more advantageous (not to mention cheaper) of the US to give every Afghani over 20 years old $100,000 and build schools and hospitals istead of dropping all those bombs and sending all those drones. Now who do you think the Afghanis are going to want to deal with in future? It wont be the US. If the US want these minerals they are going to have to take them from the Chinese now. Quite another ball game.

Maybe that's why the CIA has been running with their money bags to Karzai all this time. Whenever have we heard that the US decided to supply countries with money for schools and hospitals for their people? Or doing anything sensible like that? We wanted their people to be soldiers for us without any educational or medical benefits. We want cheap wars. It is some kind of Nineteenth Century Capitalistic thinking, isn't it?

I don't know these figures, but doesn't the US get its computers, other electronics, and remote drone control electroincs from China? Don't we own a number of such plants in China? Let's let China do the manufacturing of such with their cheap labor while we do the buying and killing.

Are we staying there to protect the pipleline? Certainly not to fight Al Qaeda...Terrorism? But Why? There has to be some kind of reason,
maybe not the bestr kind of reason.

Adele

[Magda Hassan]

Along with Saudi Arabia the US did help build school in the area and Pakistan. Unfortunately they were Madrasses which just teach fundamentalist Islam. Not a real education at all.

One of the big reasons for being there is the opium. :mexican:

[Jeffrey Orling]

Griffin is self promoter quote miner.

But no 9/11 did not justify a war response. Hijacking is a criminal offense as far as I am concerned.. it was a non state sponsored act according to the feds... why attack another country which was not the perps... even according the the feds?