Afghanistan was not ruled by a dictator but by a terrorist group. Sure, we made mistakes in the 80's regarding our treatment of the Mujahideen. But the people of Afghanistan allowed their country to slip into the hands of the Taliban, not us.
You think the people of Afghanistan had a chance fighting against an American funded and supplied militant group? Do I blame America for it? No, not at all. It was necessary to support insurgents in Afghanistan in order to stop the USSR from spreading it's influence in the the ME and siphoning off of its oil revenue. If they had gotten control of the ME, it would be us that would have folded under economic sanctions and not the USSR. So although the people in the ME suffered greatly by being stuck in proxy wars, it was necessary to save the world from nuclear conflict.
Further, the initial execution of OEF was flawless until Operation Anaconda when politics got involved. At that point, we should have left. When "jointness" (the idea that all branches of our Armed Services should have a stake in the war) became such a huge deal, larger groups of conventional forces began coming over, and politicians started arm chair quarterbacking the war, it was time to go.
I disagree completely. The initial execution of the war was flawless, however, by exonerating the entire government and its entire military and security force, we left the country open for sectarian violence. That's all the outside influencing forces from Iran, to Palestine, to Syria really needed to take a swing at the US by sending in militant groups to pin down the US in the ME. While also getting the US military caught up in a civil war. Taking out Saddam was easy, but the planners did not foresee the insurgency.
Iraq was ruled by Saddam Hussein who we had already smacked down in 1991. The way Bush Sr did it in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm was just IMO. He removed them from an ally's land and left it at that. He didn't pursue, try to nation build, etc.
And this was the biggest mistake he made. They should have marched all the way to Baghdad and taken out Saddam while they were chasing his military back into Iraq. Instead, we waited a decade for Saddam to recover and then went in again.
However, the idea that a country having WMD's (regardless the reliability of the intel) is a reason to invade is ridiculous.
I agree, but it is also rediculous to say that this was the only reason given to invade. Iraq had already invaded 2 neighbors, and had fired projectiles into other neighboring countries. It had been under sanctions for decades and still refused to come completely clean on the disposition of it's WMD program. And did so because it was trying to keep Iran from invading. There was a reason why Saddam would not ever come completely clean, the doubt he manifested by ALMOST saying all his weapons were destroyed kept Iran at bay. You can not tell me that at the time, any world leader would have taken Saddam's word for it that he had destroyed all his WMD's if he could not provide proof. It is easy to say such things in hindsight, but at the time, no one could say they absolutely knew Saddam did not have WMD's. All of this is of little importance when if you actually have a heart beating in your body. After 2 decades of harsh sanctions, how much longer are you going to punish the innocent people of Iraq because of the actions of it's leader? Something had to be done to get rid of him. That is why it was called the Liberation of Iraq. The only way sanctions would have ever been lifted is by overthrowing the government.
If that were the case, why didn't we invade when Saddam dropped nerve gas on his own people (Kurds)? Why haven't we invaded Pakistan? Why hasn't someone invaded us? It was an excuse to gain a foothold in the ME.
I don't think we had enough evidence at the time to make a strong enough case to invade based on the gassing of the Kurds. We really did not have the evidence we would have needed until after we invaded.
Why did we not invade Pakistan? Do you think we have the resources to invade both Afghanistan and Pakistan? We did not even have enough resources to invade Afghanistan. Which is why we kept sending aide to Pakistan to be our ally. Its called Geopolitics. We played that game during the Cold War as well. We supported some nasty leaders in order to keep the USSR at bay. Well, we are now supporting some nasty leaders to keep Pakistan from falling back into the hands of the Taliban or another group like the Taliban. Pakistan also has nuclear weapons...
What we should have done is hunt OBL and leave it at that. We did not not need any sort of airfield for that raid either. Pakistan is extrememly close to the Arabian Sea as well as Qatar. Afghanistan would not have been needed for that raid. The intel gained was gained from sources that had nothing to do with our operations in Afghanistan. The fact of the matter is that we are trying to help people that don't want our help. If the Afghani's wanted a democracy, they would make their own. You know, kind of like we did.
Osama was living in Afghanistan and only moved to the border regions in Pakistan after we invaded to remove the Taliban from power. The Taliban government knew exactly where OBL was and could hand him over to us, but they refused. They would only hand him over to a 3rd party muslim country to be tried in a muslim court where he probably would have gotten off completely. Could you imagine a US president allowing the friends of our enemies to handle justice for us?
Not to mention, there are about 100-200 thousand Osama Bin Ladens in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Taking out OBL would have done little to prevent another attack on US soil. We had to cripple the groups that held the same ideological beliefs.
By the way, democracy / liberty was originally a French idea. Without the French we would have never won our independence.
