cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/post/590118
During a video address directed at the people of Lebanon, Netanyahu said: "You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.
We gave billions to the very country that supported the taliban and hid bin ladin for a decade.
And we destroyed the middle east, causing the refugee crisis that is hitting the world and causing trouble.
Not to mention we burned trillions.
We were epic moroms, manipulated by assholes like Pakistan and Israel when all we should have done was what Obama did, put a few rounds in bin ladin and thrown him off the ship.
Perhaps
But a) chances are it wouldn’t have been so easy to just chopper in and out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to nab him, and b) it’s questionable that just killing one figurehead in retaliation for a massive terror attack that killed thousands wouldn’t just embolden them
You’re reaching, hard.
There is no way in which the current outcome was better for the US than if we had simply eliminated OBL, all our responses after Afghanistan directly hurt us.
They actually hurt Israel too, even though theyre too stubborn and ignorant to appreciate it, we had a number of divided groups that would never move lest someone gain advantage, now we have Iran ascendant with no force to oppose them.
We gave Iraq to Iran, because Israel thought they could use us to mow down anyone they considered a problem, and because our president was a complete moron.
I’d say you are the one who’s reaching (of the hard kind) if you think I’m going to argue about whether the US response was well done
I’m just here to point out that your statement that Biden didn’t use it as an example to warn the Israelis was utterly incorrect
Also, I think it’s quite funny that you think they could have just sent in some specops squad to walk around Afghanistan with a picture of OBL and they’d have him by the end of the week or something
Firstly, you clearly misinterpreted my response, I was not against our aid in the Northern Alliance’s retaking of Afghanistan.
Secondly, we had him pinned in caves near the border of Pakistan, we let him escape because that was the exact moment the ramp for Iraq was starting. That was my main disagreement, finish your first war before starting your second, or you lose both, like we did.
Thirdly, if our president wasn’t a Texan and could, you know, reed gud, he would know the Pakistanis were screwing us for money, that’s literally their whole economy, we busted them on this back in the 80s, they basically started the Taliban because they wanted a “friendly” (read: hostile to India) neighbor they could use with deniability, much like China keeps Nork around even though they’re crazy idiots.
The ISI could have handed him over in a week, and we know that because they not only pulled him out of Afghanistan, they put him up in a lovely Bungalow down the street from their military academy.
Shame our president was such a complete idiot.
I agree on most points, except perhaps that the ISI isn’t exactly as tightly run that you don’t have strong internal factions. What happens in Pashtun doesn’t necessarily jive with what happens in Islamabad.
I agree, the ISI is somewhere between a rogue arm of Pakistan, and it’s shadow government.
But messing around in Iraq was stupid, and trusting Pakistanis for anything, moreso.
Do you believe it’s something in their genes?
No, I just think it’s cultural, their history is exploiting others, the indians as mughals, who they sold to the British empire, then they lived off the US during the cold War.
Why would they have to learn to do anything for themselves?