Thanas wrote:Channel72 wrote:My point is:
(1) There are at least some limited circumstances, 9/11 being one of them, where it is acceptable to ignore diplomatic solutions in favor of violating national sovereignty (Afghanistan in 2001 being a prime example.)
Diplomatic solutions were not working, so war ensued. That is par the course. Nothing special. Also unrelated to droning.
But the Taliban itself did not directly attack the US - their "official" forces (mostly former Pakistani ISI soldiers) did not necessarily have any role in coordinating these attacks. A private citizen and his privately-funded militia did so. The Taliban refused to hand over this private citizen (they demanded evidence that he was involved - and later offered to hand him over to a neutral country). How is this really that different from any of the other scenarios involving the harboring of terrorists discussed in this thread, except for the fact that (A) the act of destruction had a high body count and destructive factor, and (B) the Taliban itself wasn't an internationally recognized government for the most part ?
Did they really have such a psychological effect on an international scale?
Yes. It created an international sense of shock and solidarity. I mean, recently even fucking Charlie Hebdo created a similar, smaller scale, phenomenon. I really don't think this is some kind of provincial American sentiment. I was working mostly in the Middle East during the years following 9/11 ... everyone had some kind of opinion about it, and the footage remains one of the most shocking and iconic historical incidents caught on film. But you are right that the good will rapidly evaporated following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
From what I observe it is mostly the US and its poodle, the UK, that are afraid about them that much. Looks more like after half a year after Afghanistan, it was over and nowadays most people don't understand why the USA made a mountain out of a molehill. It's like the USA considers its territory as something sacrosanct, which is naive and childish.
Yes,
now that is a common sentiment. I'm just talking about the national (and international) mood following 9/11, and the psychological impact it had. This is the only reason I consider Al Qaeda somewhat special. The other reason, as I said, is that I don't think a similar terrorist organization had ever existed that successfully operated over such large distances. What terrorist organization can claim to have hit major targets in NY (twice), DC, Madrid and London? Most terrorist organizations have much more of a limited spatio-temporal interest and sphere of influence. I mean seriously, before Al Qaeda, only Bond villians did that sort of thing.
I'm not saying any of this to justify the drone war. I'm saying this to establish that violating national sovereignty to extract terrorists isn't in and of itself the major problem here. The problem is that the US has established an extra-judicial system to regularly kill private citizens remotely (which is exacerbated by the fact that the method this system employs also causes mass innocent casualties). If the US used this same system within its own borders, it would
still be a major fucking problem. All this talk about national sovereignty and Westphalian concepts is pretty much a distraction from the real problem.