Friday 19 October 2012

Why We Are Fighting In Afghanistan

Something i have heard creeping in recently from the Government while discussing the Afghanistan war is that our soldiers are over there fighting the Taliban to 'keep us safe'.
You could be forgiven for not remembering the origins of the war, it was 11 years ago but what it was about at any time was going over there to keep us safe.
Let's go back to September 11, 2001 and the planes flying into the World Trade Centre buildings. Al Queada took the credit and as Bin Laden was head of the terrorist group, it was his head that America decided to come down upon.
As Bin Laden was in Afghanistan under the wing of the Afghanistan Government, the Taliban, then it was to Afghanistan that America turned ordering the Taliban to hand him over for trial on threat of military action if they never. 
The offer was made by George W Bush and Tony Blair that the Taliban would be left in power if they handed him over to the United States and the Taliban offered to try him in Afghanistan or hand him over to the Pakistan authorities but America rejected the offer and stated that they would not negotiate their demands.
While this was going on, the US and Britain were trying to get United Nations backing to attack Afghanistan but because the UN can only sanction military action as an act of self-defence, the UN never backed it.
A 37-nation poll of world opinion carried out by Gallup in September 2001 found that large majorities in 34 of the countries did not favour military action, only in three countries, the United States, Israel, and India, was there a majority for a military strike. 
With no UN backing, it was declared a NATO operation and on October 7, NATO began bombing Afghanistan.
Three days into the bombing, US officials rejected a new offer from the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third country for trial if the Americans halted the bombing.
Eleven years later and the fighting continues but never was it ever about our boys fighting so we can sleep safely in our beds at night. The Afghanistan War was entirely all about punishing the Taliban for not handing over Bin Laden and anything other is an attempt to rewrite the origins of an unpopular and disastrous war.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

that is a very narrowly focused recap lucy.

what i recall is a few nations being terrorist factories (iraq, iran, afghanistan, libya, syria, etal). the US said to these various nations: help us shut down the terrorist factories in your nation and you are with us, refusal to help means you are against us.

the UK supported the US for many reasons.

q

lucy said...

It was very narrow q, afghanistan was completely about the afghan government handing over bin laden and being spared or not handing him over and being removed militarily. Anything else such as terrorism in libya or syria is trying to make the invasion about more than it was.

Anonymous said...

nope you are wrong. it is the Global War On Terror...

q

Lucy said...

..but they were prepared to leave the Taliban in power if they handed over Bin Laden so how do you square that with the war on terror? If they had gave him up then the Afghan war would not have happened.

Anonymous said...

simple, if the taliban had turned over laden then that means they were siding with us...

q

Lucy said...

So it was all about handing over bin laden then.