Invading Afghanistan to root out Al Qaeda made sense initially, but staying for two decades and trying to impose Western-style democracy was a different story. When we finally left, the whole effort fell apart, and the Taliban took over within a month. Afghanistan sucked up resources, while our involvement in Iraq damaged our reputation. It's a clear example of American hubris leading to chaos in global affairs.

Actually you can, because there was a path for the negotiated return of bin Laden, which was ignored because famously "we do not negotiate with terrorists".

You mean like Iran just suffered a terror attack at the hands of Israel and then America said they would defend Israel if Iran retaliated?

Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over | Afghanistan | The Guardian

Kinda funny that people forget about this.

Invading to root out Al Qaeda i understand.

Is staying there 2 decades and wasting trilions of dollars that people are bitter.

Any pretense of a reason to have invaded disintegrated because of how we left, we accomplished nothing with our invasion except a whole lot of deaths. We relit the flame for the next generation of attacks. Doing nothing at all would have been a 100x better, than killing the families of children creating the next generation of terrorists.

But you cannot blame them for invading Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11.

Except the Taliban offered to hand off Osama Bin Ladin to another nation and requested due process. Bush declined.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5

It's important to note that the Americans were seized by blood lust during the years following 9/11. They just wanted to kill something at that time.

Can you? I mean it was the Saudis behind 9/11. Seems a little hypocritical to say the country that let the Saudi nationals attack us train is where we’ll invade, but the actual people funding and supporting the attack we let slide:

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Why is it okay for the US to invade Afghanistan, but not okay for Israel to invade Gaza?

Why a double standard?

How about Iraq?

If any country harboured and enabled a group that did to any other country what Al-Qaeda did to the US, there would be a declaration of war in return

We should destroy the country that helped build, fund, and arm al-Qaeda during the Cold War, whoever that country of demons is!

(checks history books)

OK, maybe I jumped the gun there a little...

No, you are mistaken, we can and we do. Bin Laden wasn't even there. 20 years for NOTHING!

You can. The attackers were Saudi and it's been proven time and time again that invading a country to root out a hidden enemy doesn't work. Just ask the British, the French, the Americans, the Russians.... list goes on.

The sensible move would have been small-scale operations to chip away at Al-Qaeda, the Saudis and Pakistanis. Also they needed to decide what the objective was; getting OBL or destroying Al-Qaeda?

Because as someone who lived through all of it, it seemed like nothing more than a retribution job against the "easiest" target because America was angry and wanted blood.

Yes, you can. The Taliban offered to expel bin Laden if the USA offered evidence of his culpability.. Bush chose to bully and invade, leading to thousands of more deaths.

Plenty of people saw the looming Afghanistan war as a mistake, not the least of which were New Yorkers who did not want their grief to lead to more suffering.

Al-Qaeda isn't the Taliban. And the Taliban was willing the turn Al-Qaeda over to a neutral body to prevent an invasion. The US refused, and insisted on going to war in Afghanistan, not just to fight Al-Qaeda, but also to destroy the Taliban.

So it's absolutely US fault for invading Afghanistan. They didn't have to, they chose to. They could have also chose to leave after they destroy Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden, and turn the country back over to the Taliban. However they also choose to create their own puppet government to rule the country on their behalf, which failed.

the premise of the 2022 movie the Lair is that we dropped the MOAB on Afghanistan in order to destroy an old underground bunker-lab filled with alien-human hybrid "super soldier/monsters" created by the Russians after a UFO crashed there in the 80s. it's by the same writer/director as the descent and has some similar vibes. not a bad flick if you're into that sort of thing.

Yes, america absolutely squandered it's chance to make the 21st century a pax Americana for ultimately zero strategic gain

You call what america has done through the decades since WW2 around the world "liberal"?

Didnt Fareed Zakaria write a book about this? Were the rest of the world caught up to the US, the best the US can do is be a first among equals?

No one was asking america to do anything about Iraq in 2003 man. In fact before the invasion the entire western world was saying "America don't do this". It's why bush had to form the "coalition of the willing ", when even the willing were doing it quite reluctantly. 

 And the US absolutely squandered a ton of its preeminent position at the time by invading Iraq. It got bogged down in two wars that ultimately produced no strategic gain, no transformative change in the middle east (one of the neocons goals at the time), didnt even significantly affect American oil prices, and Abu ghraib and the black sites did massive damage to American soft power globally. The US pissed away its unipolar moment for basically nothing in return. 

 Also, I hate when Americans whine about how everyone gets upset at them for their role as world police. Like stfu that's what happens when you're the global hegemon, there are significant enough perks in return for the country, American citizens, and american corporations to counterbalance that, so don't whine about it.

The soviet union was invited by the newly formed socialist government to assist. The US invaded the Taliban held Afghanistan then later partnered with the northern alliance to form a government.

The soviet backed government also held out longer than the American backed one and after the USSR support ended transitioned to a liberal democratic government before collapsing.

Because Russia invading Afghanistan arguably led to the dissolution of the USSR. The US invading Afghanistan under the umbrella of the global war on terror has led to wide spread regional instability while sucking up US resources desperately needed to maintain the global order elsewhere.

Social Imperialism destroyed the Soviet Union. One of the major factors - Particularly Afghanistan.

Two things can be bad. Sometimes it's like talking to toddlers "But he did it too, mom!"

US was destabilizing Afghanistan before USSR aided the communist government

There really aren't that many people who give any of the nations you mentioned a "pass" in this sub. What I see far more often is people contextualizing the actions of those nations with their own respective goals and history rather than the brain-dead "they do this because they are evil" take that seems to be the only acceptable framing basically everywhere.

At the end of that day what your post really speaks to is a desire to have your cake, and to eat it too. What these nations actively do, contrary to popular belief, is act in their own best interests rather than out of some sort of inherent malice. That doesn't mean that they get anymore of a free pass for oppression and murder than, say, America would. 

What it really means is that we live in a world that's not just compromised of a decade or two of history. You're speaking to concessions, but what does that really mean? 

Take China as an example. China is a nation that has been on the shit end of the colonial stick for much of it's recent history. China didn't enter the 20th century fully industrialized, and it most certainly didn't have any inherent advantages given to it by centuries of Western colonialism. 

I'm a Canadian citizen. My nation has been opressing our own native population up until just a few decades ago. We were kidnapping children from Native American families during this lovely post war period. Both Canada and America have used violence and oppression to supress certain populations that were deemed dangerous or different over the past few centuries. 

Is any of that ok? Nope, it most certainly isn't. Do the actions of either of these nations give China free reign to do the same to various minorities and groups like the Uyghur? Nope, it most certainly doesn't. 

It does however illustrate that we now have the benefit of living in nations where political authority and legitimacy has long been consolidated. Both America and Canada had the explicit benefit of being developed on the back of colonialism at it's peak. The British, Spanish, Portuguese, and French empires all invested resources and people into developing this land. We then had the additional benefit of using our relative technological superiority and massive wealth to supress indigenous populations. We also don't have any remaining regional, or even global, enemies or threats of note.

Moreover, our populations all largely consist of individuals whose families had been living in modern industrialized conditions for generations (relative to their time periods and the rest of the world). 

What almost all people living in the developed world don't understand is that our current social and economic conditions aren't an on/off switch. We as Canadians don't have the moral high ground to criticize nations like China because someone sat down and flipped a "be civil and good" switch a century ago. Our current "civility" and perceived moral authority is the byproduct of centuries of history. It's not something that just materialized out of thin air.

If a good fraction of Canadians were living as impoverished peasants just half a century ago, we would not be as "civilized" as we are today. That's not how that works, and while it's absolutely possible to go from backwater nation to developed and functioning democracy, it takes far more than goodwill and wishes. 

The few nations that have seen that kind of change are quite literally referred to as economic and/or social miracles, and each have their own, very unique, situations. South Korea as an example was only able to change as it did on the back of massive American investment and aid aimed at combating Soviet influence in the region. It had a direct threat located on it's own border, and was able to act with relative impunity in getting it's shit together. Even then, people tend to forget, the nation was a dictatorship up until not that long ago and has massive problems with corruption and abuse of power to this day. South Korea saw its own fair share of political repression, state sponsored violence, social and economic repression, and more, in the lead up to where it is today.

Which brings me back to my question, what exactly do these concessions look like? What you, and many others, would like to see is that magical switch. You'd like for nations like China to function and act like we do, despite being nothing like us. 

That's why we haven't made any progress and have seen so much global friction. There is absolutely no possibility for meaningful change to come about from this kind of one sided relationship. Cooperation absolutely needs concessions on behalf of all parties, but the kind of concessions most people expect are heavily biased towards us. We don't actually want to make any concessions because real concessions to a nation like China or Russia are really fucking hard and requires us to come to terms with some uncomfortable truths. 

What about equality and wealth distribution instead of those two you selected to start with? We've been trying those two for the past 70 years, and it only led to meaningless wars being fought in their name.

As have China and Russia, yet they seem to get a free pass from a good contingent of this sub.

Do they get a free pass? The sub just sees more US news because it's an English and American website and community.

I'm pretty sure everyone still condemns Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China's oppression of its Uighurs and anytime there is a crackdown on Hong Kong I'm sure the people here won't agree. It's just that there just isn't much news of China right now and everyone's already said all there is to say about Ukraine/Russia.