According to you, has the death of OBL justified the the war in Iraq or Afghanistan in any way?

[ZombieHorde]

Poll question: According to you, has the death of OBL justified the the war in Iraq or Afghanistan in any way?

This poll is about your opinion. Answer for yourself, and not for your perception of other people.

[dkf]

1. It justifies not going to war IMO.

[uppityperson]

3. Mine also. nt

[ingac70]

2. The Taliban offer bin Laden to Bush in October of '01...

and the bitch turned them down. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bush-rejects-taliban-offer-to-surrender-bin-laden-631436.html

[stevenleser]

6. Only if Bush provided evidence. This assumes they would have accepted the evidence. n/t

[wickerwoman]

13. They didn't offer to hand him over to the US or the ICC.

They offered to hand him over to a "third country"... read Saudi Arabia.

[truth2power]

4. No. Because none of the wars had anything to do with Osama...

It's all about controlling resources.

[Ohio Joe]

5. No

Both invasions were simply stupid and unnecessary.

[leftstreet]

7. No

[Warren DeMontague]

8. The success of this operation makes large scale invasions and nation building seem a very silly way

to fight small terror networks.

(I know, duh. Right?)

However, if you're going to accept that logic, one probably ought to accept that some of the intel we got which provided Obama's location came from foreign CIA prisons and Gitmo, both of which I have been opposed to as well. And, you probably ought to accept the logic of targeted strikes, including drone strikes, which a lot of people here have been opposed to.

Also, I do wish people wouldn't try to lump Iraq and Afghanistan together. While the methodology of the Afghanistan invasion may have been poor, the logic connecting the country to 9-11 was not. Not so with Iraq. Two totally different situations.

[ZombieHorde]

20. I tried to separate the wars by using an and/or format, but I now agree I should have separated the

wars by using different poll answers. Sorry.

[Warren DeMontague]

22. No worries. I think the ongoing occupations are more similar now

but the initial going-in was not.

[Faryn Balyncd]

9. The last 10 years has convinced me that govt cannot be trusted to conduct even JUST wars.

[ZombieHorde]

19. I think the fact Conservatives think the government is too incompetent for education and health

care, but perfectly competent for war and nation building.

[Turborama]

10. Two separate polls or 2 separate answers for answer #1 would have come up with a more valid result

Conflating Afghanistan and Iraq into one answer to that question is a mistake, as is conflating the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

[ZombieHorde]

18. I set up the answers using an "and/or" format, but perhaps your right.

Maybe I should have separated the wars even more than I did.

[wickerwoman]

11. To be totally honest, I don't have enough information.

I opposed going into Afghanistan from the beginning preferring to negotiate with the Taliban to get bin Laden out or ordering a police action through the UN to apprehend him.

But in retrospect, I'm not sure that would have been enough.

The Taliban offered to give him up... to an Islamic court which would have give him life imprisonment in the palace of his choice with an unlimited calling plan and weekend minutes.

I don't know that they could have been persuaded to give him up any other way than regime change. And I can't say for sure whether or not we could have gotten bin Laden out by force without disrupting the whole country.

Iraq is absolutely not justified.

Afghanistan might be justified... *if* a stable alternative to the Taliban can be established and *if* it doesn't destabilize Pakistan any more than it already has. I suspect we haven't completely paid the piper when it comes to Afghanistan so it's hard to say if it was worth it.

I'm glad bin Laden has been neutralized as a threat. But if you gave me a choice between having a job, a social safety net, all the civil liberties we enjoyed on Sept. 10, 2001 and not having to worry about getting felt up every time I fly + bin Laden still being alive, I would choose that over the opposite.

[ZombieHorde]

17. I appreciate your arguments. nt

[Withywindle]

12. No, it underlines how badly Afghanistan was botched and why Iraq was completely irrelevant.

And how much of a travesty Tora Bora was.


Kerry was completely right in the '04 debates. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were ALWAYS a matter that would have been better dealt with by good intelligence and small-scale targeted missions than massive semi-random bombings and huge troop deployments. And they could have been dealt with in fall '01 or by spring '02 if we'd had a competent, honest administration.

I really do think that if 9/11 had happened on President Gore's watch, the whole last decade would have been very, very different. (He wouldn't have gone into Iraq at all, for one thing.)

[ZombieHorde]

14. Good points. nt

[spanone]

15. cough cough, he was found in pakistan

[Iggo]

16. It justifies coming the fuck home.

Oh and the 7 spots thing.

[ZombieHorde]

21. I hope it justifies coming the fuck home to the right people. nt

[Arugula Latte]

23. The opposite. I mean, everybody knows Iraq is about oil & corporate profit, but

it was started under the pretense of fighting terrorism. Okay, given that, the pre-Bush approach of surgical strikes on specific targets has been vindicated.

[bigwillq]

24. No (nt)