this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Okay, like two/thirds of this post are just fucking brain-dead. (Not an American btw.)
Afghanistan and Gulf War were the most straightforward of all conflicts US has been involved in in the 21st century.
Afghanistan - that's where the Taliban were, and the Taliban did 9/11 (kinda, Al Qaeda did, but they had ties, and bin Laden was there for a time). The only problem was that the US didn't consider the regional politics and allied with Pakistan, which was funding the Taliban, since stable Afghanistan was bad for Pakistan.
Gulf War - he, y'know, INVADED KUWAIT! What the fuck is so difficult to understand about "Invading sovereign states is bad actually"!?
Iraq War was bad though 100%
Yeah, I definitely feel like the Afghanistan war gets a way worse rep than it deserves since Iraq happened right after.
Sure, we left the country and the Taliban regained power, but Al-Queda is basically a non-threat these days. Osama is dead, most of their leadership is dead, their training and infrastructure is mostly gone, etc. etc.
If they're a non threat, how the fuck did they steamroll the damn country before we even finished leaving?
So al Qaeda specifically as an organization is a non-threat, kinda in the same way that the Mujahadeen is a non-threat, the leadership is non existent, disrupted by the relevant forces (Soviets in the 80s vs the American funded Mujahadeen and the US in the 2000s against al Qaeda) leaving the area a broken mess, never making the locals lives better in any way letting them fester in anger, and opening up a new power vacuum for a new charismatic leader to rally people together and strike back at the giant empires that broke their country, drawing them into another protracted war, repeating the cycle.
Maybe I'm wrong! I haven't been following super close, so I'm definitely open to being corrected.
I thought that was just the Taliban that took back Afghanistan, and not Al-Queda.