r/Documentaries • u/srsly_its_so_ez • Dec 15 '19
War Bombshell Documents Expose The Secret Lie That Started The Afghan War (2018) --- Great mini-doc from a year ago that explains the origins of the war in Afghanistan [25:58]
https://youtu.be/Moz8hs2lJik-19
u/srsly_its_so_ez Dec 15 '19
Now that people are talking a bit more about the war in Afghanistan, I figure that this is a good time to post this. The subject of this video is actually a bit more hard-hitting than what the news outlets are talking about, and I'm a bit proud to say that I knew about it long before the news started covering it. I don't agree with him on everything, but James Corbett has put out a remarkable amount of great content over the years.
Also if anyone's interested, I have a subreddit where I post all kinds of interesting information and research material. It's called r/MobilizedMinds and I would be honored if you'd join me there :)
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u/NoBSforGma Dec 15 '19
Those of us who were adults living through this knew that it was a scam. We were just waiting for the whole story to come out and now it has.
I have to wonder just what bullshit is going on today that will someday be revealed in all its tawdry trappings. I can only imagine.
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u/Hotgluegun777 Dec 15 '19
Yeah gotta give it up to the adults that could've stopped this but instead lead us into decades long war.
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u/NoBSforGma Dec 15 '19
Well, you're right.
I am old enough to have been involved in Vietnam War protests and I kept wondering when something like that would get started about the war in Afghanistan. The seventies, though, were a time of "Peace and Love" and those hippies kind of started the whole thing.
Perhaps the difference is that the great masses of people believed what they were told and just focused on their daily lives instead of standing up for something that would be unpopular by most standards.
At the time of the Vietnam War protests, I had a couple of kids and a Top Secret Clearance. I took my kids to the baby sitter and told her they would probably be there overnight and please would she just see that they went to school, etc. I was wearing comfortable clothes and a hat and after driving into downtown Washington, DC and finding a place to park, I put my driver's license and some cash for bail money in my pocket and left everything else in my car.
The group I was with was hassled by the police and threatened by a line of police in riot gear but I was not arrested.
I had a WHOLE LOT to lose but it was important to me to stand up for what I thought was right. I don't see that happening these days and didn't see that during the Afghanistan build-up. I'm not sure exactly why or what the difference was.
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Dec 15 '19 edited Dec 15 '19
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u/NoBSforGma Dec 15 '19
This was the first major terrorist attack the US had experienced. (And really had no similarities to the Pearl Harbor attack.)
Rather than realize this was a terrorist attack by some extremists, the US instead chose to punish a whole country of people. And, in fact, picked the wrong country to punish.
Reading your reply is very painful to me. So indicative of all the many many people who were brainwashed and propagandized into a war that accomplished nothing but spending a whole lot of money and lives and decimated a poor country.
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Dec 15 '19
Looks alot different from a school window. We were in the library when the art teacher came in and said the trade center was on fire. Naturally e all rushed to the window to see and it wasnt more than a few minutes later, another plane hit.
Its something else when youre a kid and you see it with your eyes. The girls were crying, the boys were tying to figure it out. Then i saw this one kid i shared crayons with to draw wrestlers. It hit 10 year old me. Tommy(fake name) had told me his dad worked in the trade center not more than a day or two before. I can still remember him, he was drawing diamond dallas page and I was drawing sean michaels. Just two kids in the first week of school trying to make friends.
I came to the realization that we were watching people die. When we saw that plane as clear as the morning it was crash into one of the towers. It fell soon after that, they were rounding the kids up to put in the auditorium.
They didnt put tommy with us in the auditorium. I didnt see em for the rest of the year. And I knew why. I tried to fool myself, but i knew why
Anyway. Theres my account from the morning of september 11th, 2001.
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Dec 15 '19
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Dec 15 '19
Too bad it was done by the Saudis and the government knew that when they invaded Iraq. 9/11 was just used to start the war.
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u/NoBSforGma Dec 15 '19
The people of Afghanistan had nothing to do with that. If you wanted to "punish" someone, then the US attacked the wrong country.
Nice Islamophobia, though, you got going there.
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Dec 15 '19
The first thing Bush told everyone was that shopping was the best way to fight back. Between that level of under selling the war and the decades of wage stagnation (can't protest if you can't pay to get to D.C.) I'm not surprised in the least.
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u/mrhardliner007 Dec 15 '19
9/11 was an attack against the economy as much as anything. Travel industry got hit hard. Bush wasn't wrong in saying that if he did.
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u/dr_reverend Dec 15 '19
Honestly, from my point of view, people learned that protesting doesn’t do shit. The Vietnam war still happened. The 0.1% are still taking everything for themselves. China is still gonna take over HK and thousands will be reneducated. The people who are doing these things are not doing it because the are confused and need to be enlightened. They know exactly what they are doing, they know the are “wrong” and they are not going to stop cause they don’t care about “you” or your opinion.
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Dec 15 '19
Your Vietnam protests were organized by the KGB :) :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_influence_on_the_peace_movement
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u/sacrefist Dec 15 '19
I kept wondering when something like that would get started about the war in Afghanistan
It's a whole different ball game w/o the draft.
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u/NoEgo Dec 15 '19
Difference is people stood up in the 70s and it failed. So why bother? If people want to be warmongers and other people will sit by as you die trying to stop it, why bother? Let them destroy each other and hopefully you won't get caught up in the fallout.
Not my perspective, but that's the problem as I see it.
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u/HoMaster Dec 15 '19
It’s called utter and shameless greed and self-interest. It’s been this way since the dawn of time.
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u/theartificialkid Dec 15 '19
Many of us opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As individuals we don’t get to decide all the paths our countries and “leaders” will take us down. Blaming whole generations is another of the many forms of prejudice that our “leaders” encourage to distract us from the one contest that matters, the powerful vs the powerless.
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u/srsly_its_so_ez Dec 15 '19
Yup, I was young at the time but my family and I were out in the streets protesting the war in Iraq before they sent in the troops. We had a local group together and we did weekly demonstrations saying "we don't want this war", I remember a few people had signs saying "not in our name". There were a bunch of local groups, and also some big marches with many thousands of people if I remember correctly, I think there was one in San Francisco.
Also, there was one politician who was warning us against these wars.
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u/lividimp Dec 16 '19
Take note of that "I" next to "Vermont". Bernie was (and truly is) an independent. He's just smart enough to know he has to run within the two party system in order to get elected president.
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u/lividimp Dec 16 '19
Iraq was complete bullshit, but Afghanistan had merit. Relations were strained with the Taliban going all the way back into the Clinton years. The Taliban had been supporting terrorists for years before 9/11 even happened. We turned a blind eye for the most part because we had supported them during the USSR invasion and because Afghanistan is a backwater with little effect on global trade. But after 9/11 Afghanistan was harboring Bin Laden so we weren't willing to just ignore it anymore.
We're still there not for arms sales (or whatever the conspiracy of the day is), but because we fucked up the job (largely because we didn't understand the culture/politics) and if we left the Taliban would just resume power.
In other words, the same old boring shit that has always happened. But that lacks the pzazz of a conspiracy theory. People don't want to admit that things are boring and difficult. They want a super villain in a hollowed out volcano to point to.
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u/theartificialkid Dec 16 '19
I’m not the one who downvoted you, be though we disagree. If there had to be a conflict in Afghanistan it should have been a UN action to enforce international criminal law, not a war to destroy a state for harbouring a criminal.
Edit - especially given America’s attitude to its own war criminals.
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u/rookerer Dec 15 '19
Lol what?
The Afghanistan war was overwhelmingly supported by the American public.
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u/NoBSforGma Dec 15 '19
Well, you're right. But there were still lots of people - me for one - who understood that it was all a scam.
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Dec 15 '19 edited Dec 15 '19
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u/rookerer Dec 15 '19
What country are you from?
Some degenerate, Orwellian, hell hole that hasn't mattered in 80 years? Or a disease ridden shit hole that has never mattered, and never will?
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u/Ulysses89 Dec 15 '19
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u/aboyeur514 Dec 15 '19
Not to forget an excellent doc. by the late Peter Wintonick - esteemed Montrealer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuwmWnphqII
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u/AgeofAshe Dec 15 '19
I was young, but in the conservative bubble at the time. The propaganda at the time was universal.
Fox News was all in. Religious leaders gave spiels for the cause and supporting the troops. Country music touted “patriotic” propaganda nonstop for years. Talk radio ran passionate pro-war monologues
People who weren’t fully in support of the war were villianized. The Dixie Chicks had their careers ended and safety threatened over a comment.
Half of our country was washed in propaganda day in and day out, just like today.
Even in the early days, the democrats were mostly all in, it took them a long time to build up any opposing feelings.
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u/newtoon Dec 15 '19
The French disapproved this "war", whatever the allegued narrative (revenge) or else (money, power).
Yet, some French troops were sent there for only political reasons (support of America further to their 9/11 wound).
Of course, some French soldiers eventually died in this location during an ambush, and the French government, because of the heavy criticism, had to withdraw those troops.
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Dec 15 '19
French foreign legion was in afghanistan. They're pretty much the "well we don't want to waste french lives so send them"
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u/newtoon Dec 15 '19 edited Dec 15 '19
Ah ! Ah ! It would be a perfect racist stance if one did not know that they are ones of the toughest soldiers on the planet. I still remember that during the first Irak war, Marines troops were sooo shocked to hear that Legion Etrangère boys were sleeping in tents without air conditioning...
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u/AerThreepwood Dec 15 '19
And something like 20% of the FFL are French nationals that just adopted another nationality when they joined.
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Dec 15 '19
Racist stance? What the fuck are you on about? Yeah ffl is badass. French people are not badass. Is that what you want to hear?
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u/achieverz Dec 16 '19
"Marines troops were sooo shocked to hear that Legion Etrangère boys were sleeping in tents without air conditioning..."
And this comment shows why Western forces can't win the long war in ME. They can destroy them.
Not sleeping in air-conditioned tents...that's a sign of machoism!!!
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u/justins_dad Dec 15 '19
And congress renamed French fries “freedom fries”
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u/thinkingdoing Dec 15 '19
The freedom fries bullshit was over the French and Germans trying to stop the US and UK from invading Iraq on another false premise - the lie that Saddam was developing “weapons of mass destruction”.
The Bush administration then bribed Eastern European countries into joining the invasion, and praised them as “New Europe” over shitty “Old Europe”.
And ISIS was created by that Iraq invasion clusterfuck.
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u/TheBigBadDuke Dec 15 '19
The French were on board with Libya.
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u/Kakanian Dec 15 '19
They were pushing for more EU involvement in the Mediterranean in general, yes.
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Dec 15 '19
There are still foreign troops being sent to Afghanistan and Iraq. I was stationed in Australia a couple years back and was there when a company of AUS grunts were sent to Iraq to train security forces there. A platoon of NZ guys went too. They were all cool as hell.
I played basketball with them everyday after work and it was just so odd.
Our wars really fucked everyone.
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Dec 15 '19
There were many protests against the war in the US. The problem is, there are many more people with handheld American flags and shit for brains.
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u/MFAWG Dec 15 '19
I’ve been saying for a while that at this point it’s just a way for career types to get their tickets punched as they move on up the ladder.
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u/TheFeshy Dec 15 '19
I about lost it at Trump's speech on Afganistan, where he says "The consequences of a rapid withdrawl are both predictable and unacceptable." I bet Syria has some things to say about that.
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u/TheRealBlueBuff Dec 16 '19
So... you want a rapid withdrawal? Im confused.
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u/TheFeshy Dec 16 '19
What I'm saying is that those two situations - Afghanistan and Syria - both had predictable, nearly identical consequences. Yet Trump pulled out of Syria faster than Stormy, and we're still in Afghanistan. Meaning Trump's stated motivations and goals must be bullshit.
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u/Jeush_ Dec 16 '19
You might argue that there are multiple other highly organized (even if we dislike Russia, I would argue they have an interest in keeping Syria from turning into ISIS 2.0) factions in Syria. Where as if we withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is nothing to keep it from happening there .. so they are definitely not the same thing.
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Dec 15 '19
Opium and Oil
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u/Bbrhuft Dec 15 '19 edited Dec 15 '19
There's no oil on Afghanistan. It has rich mineral resources but they cannot be exploited due to security problems.
Also, the Taliban banned opium growing before the invasion, cutting opium production by 99%.
After the invasion, opium production returned to original levels. Later on the Taliban changed its position on opium, allowed its production and started to profit from it. So the invasion gave them the opium.
Farrell, G. and Thorne, J., 2005. Where have all the flowers gone?: evaluation of the Taliban crackdown against opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. International Journal of Drug Policy, 16(2), pp.81-91.
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Dec 15 '19
Uh, that’s where the opium is my guy. The oil is kind of blanket for the Middle Eastern wars.
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u/hel112570 Dec 15 '19
Heres a trivia question: Which Bush started a war in the Middle East based on information that was later proven to be false?
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Dec 15 '19
Def W, prob both.
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Dec 15 '19
Eh kind of hard to fake Saddam invading Kuwait. He wasn't an angel but he was better than his son.
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Dec 15 '19
It’s just interesting how that opened an entire array of options. Like what kind of puppeteering happens on a global level for all these events to fall into place and stem almost thirty years of endless wars? No doubt it’s about resources on both sides.
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u/cholondo Dec 15 '19
Trivia question: which president had eight years in office and promised to end both wars but never did?
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u/juloxx Dec 15 '19 edited Dec 15 '19
Its so funny seeing how literally everyone knows Afghanistan (the whole war) was started off, perpetuated, and expanded ALL based off lies, but suggest that elements of the government knew about 9/11 and planned to profit from it, everyone loses their fucking shit
Think about the level of cognitive dissonance to KNOW they lie about everything when it comes to war, but good ol Bush and Cheyne were completely telling the truth when it comes to 9/11. Just nothing afterwards. Yup, thats so plausible
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u/ChickenCannon Dec 15 '19
It's just too much for people to accept I think. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force. Some people you just can't get to realize the truth, but it's still worthwhile to inform those who aren't too far gone.
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u/elfonzi37 Dec 15 '19
And it wasn't expected yet Tom Clancy wrote a book simming almost exactly this and expressed concern on lack of prep a decade prior.
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u/EasyEchoBravo Dec 15 '19
I guess its hard to come to terms with them greenlighting the deaths of thousands in NYC. I just can not believe that.
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Dec 15 '19
You're right, it does begar belief.
It also fails Occam's Razor, which means it's probably untrue.
The least implausible scenario here is that the government knew Al Qaeda was up to SOMETHING, but the scope and audacity of the 9/11 attacks caught them by surprise.
After that, the foreign policy objective becomes ludicrously obvious -- prevent Osama or any other Islamic terrorist from being able to do this again.
With OBL in particular that meant restricting his ability to operate and forcing him to go down a series of rabbit holes, and THAT meant that his freedom to move around Afghanistan had to be restricted.
And as they say, one thing led to another. The Taliban wouldn't cooperate, not that we expected them to, and so the war was launched.
The real mistake in Afghanistan was not having any kind of plan for what would replace the Taliban, and instead expecting the Afghans to replace their government with a true republican bureaucratic machine, when they just aren't wired that way culturally.
MHO what we should have done in both Iraq and Afghanistan is create a bicameral legislature, one, like the US house, directly elected, and one, like the US Senate, representing the various tribal factions. That way everyone who thinks they should have a voice gets one.
Forcing a parliamentary system down their throats where the needs of the populace clash directly with the needs of the tribes in the same legislative body is always a mistake in these kinds of nations, especially Iraq and Afghanistan where tribal identity is huge and national identity really isn't.
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u/TheRealBlueBuff Dec 16 '19
You really underestimate the ability of our government to just ignore credible intelligence warnings.
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Dec 15 '19
Yeah, this isn't news. We all know the US went to war in Afghanistan for profit. They had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the guys who bombed the WTC.
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u/Hotgluegun777 Dec 15 '19
Don't forget about all those pesky Al-Qaeda that go around raping whoever they please.
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Dec 15 '19
Sounds awfully like Trump, Epstein, Clinton, and Prince Andrew to me.
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u/kerouacrimbaud Dec 15 '19
Fun fact: Trump and Epstein used to be good friends and both have an affinity for young girls. Trump is above the law so don’t expect him to ever be held accountable.
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u/Superjuden Dec 15 '19 edited Dec 15 '19
No. This was simply shock doctrine at work.
Basically, a whole slew of countries in the middle-east were US hostile in many ways while also sitting on large natural resources that were desired by US business interests. Meanwhile they were also very militarily weak compared to the US and there was also no longer any real threat that a USSR-like force would support them in a proxy war in a manner in which the US had backed the Afghans during the USSR invasion. Basically, the assumption was that these regimes would fall quickly and that peace and stability would be a reality in a short amount of time. However there was no true justification for regime change for these countries.
Then 9/11 happened and it became possible link or just straight up fabricate links between these regimes and the attacks and terrorism in general. Afghanistan might have housed terror cells yes but were the people responsible for 9/11 or other terror attacks in the country? The US didn't really provide evidence for it before the invasion and instead struck swiftly. With Iraq, they straight up invented evidence and twisted it around in ways that would create the sense that Saddam was funding terrorism and developing WMDs. Even at the time the US media was quite divided on what the hell the US government was doing with Iraq. However a huge amount of people still supported regime change in the country because Saddam was an evil dictator and this was a good war.
After a certain point however, these wars went to badly and the justifications for going into Iraq were exposed to be outright lies. Nobody knew where Bin Laden was either. So people just stopped just going along with what the US did and the US put the plans of further regime change on ice but were really just waiting for something else to happen that would allow them to topple more regimes.
This happen later with the Arab Spring where several countries saw large demonstrations against the governments. However this time the US wouldn't go all-in with its forces like it had with Iraq and Afghanistan but would instead fund and arm rebel forces that the US would also back with air support. In the wake their coup attempts, the US could move in with troops to support the new regimes. Some countries like for example Egypt however were already US approved and leaders in the US would publicly state that they didn't want regime change even as thousands upon thousands of citizens flooded the streets and demanded it. This is because they knew that as soon as that regime changed, it would instead be replaced with a US hostile regime through the Muslim brotherhood. However in places like Syria and Libya, they hoped to install US approved regimes.
The only problem with this entire plan was of course that while the US could easily topple a regime, the desired peace and stability that would ensure that the countries would be open for business never materialized. Even without a force like the USSR, there was simply too little support for the new regimes as well as an avalanche of internal conflicts that had been brewing for decades and could now finally explode into civil wars which are still going on.
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u/drmcsinister Dec 15 '19
The Taliban supported and harbored Al Qaeda. We gave them an opportunity to turn the Al Qaeda leadership over, but they refused. Good riddance. Say what you want about Iraq, but Afghanistan was 100% justified.
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u/drmcsinister Dec 15 '19
He wasn't in Pakistan on 9/11, so why does that matter? And we don't negotiate with terrorists. The Taliban had every chance to hand Al Qaeda's leadership over. If they had done that, it would have changed everything.
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Dec 15 '19
The Taliban weren't terrorists. They were the government of Afghanistan. Even now their actions fall much more in line with a government in exile than with religious extremist terrorism.
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u/Echo_ Dec 15 '19
Exactly. People seem to confuse the two to a point that I wonder if its just a meme for some people. The entrance to Afghanistan was 100% justified for the reason you say. However, it is the policies that were put into place afterwards that draw the rightful criticism.
The Afghan Papers released by WaPo just this past week go into a lot of detail regarding such failed policies: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/
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u/drmcsinister Dec 15 '19
It's more than just a meme. These people don't think war is ever justified, which is a bizarre absolute. They are basically the modern incarnation of the appeasement policies that led to WWII. I understand that we can't be the World Police, but we also can't bury our heads in the sand in the face of threats.
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Dec 15 '19
Bullshit. If that was true we'd have invaded Pakistan too. Instead we suddenly figured out there were ways to achieve counter terrorism without breaking whole countries.
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u/drmcsinister Dec 15 '19
Pakistan wasn't harboring Bin Laden and we're giving us support in our efforts. Do you really not see the glaring difference?
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u/cholondo Dec 15 '19
It’s Reddit so anything that supports the masses here will be upvoted. I was in Afghanistan and it was 100% justified. Iraq not so much but reddit is mostly an echo chamber.
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u/mrhardliner007 Dec 15 '19
No, they did. The Taliban sheltered al Queda and let them operate there.
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Dec 15 '19
And? We didn't invade Pakistan. Obviously full scale invasion and regime change was not the only option.
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u/mrhardliner007 Dec 15 '19
The regime at the time in Afghanistan was the Taliban. You know, the guys that throw acid in the face of young girls caught reading something other than the Koran. They were actively supporting Bin Laden.
Not sure I'm following you about Pakistan.
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u/helpfuldan Dec 15 '19
Uh, there is no profit. We borrowed and lost, trillions and trillions. We haven't made a profit on anything. Even if you agree this was the reason, what a horrible mistake. It turned into a money pit, has dragged us down and might end up bankrupting us. lol. The amount of "profit" you could get from Afganistan, is extremely minimal. Not even worth the trouble. It certainly wasn't easy money, it certainly didn't work out, so it's probably a more complex answer.
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u/twistedlimb Dec 15 '19
i dont think you understand how war profiteering works. imagine you own a small clothing factory in georgia. you can't compete because clothes are made for really cheap all over the world. but since you're a USA business, you make uniforms for the military. they dont care about the cost, because they have to buy from a usa manufacturer. pre 9/11 you had a nice little business. post 9/11, the government bought several million more sets of uniforms. you're happy, who cares about some poor people with ptsd? when people profit from wars, they dont mean the country, they mean specific industries or companies own by specific people.
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u/scijior Dec 15 '19
Wow, that is neither a bombshell nor compelling.
Everyone knows (or should know) that the Neo-Cons were employing the Project for the New American Century’s policy points as they unlawfully gained the White House off the back of losing the popular vote and had the Supreme Court decide the issue (despite that Scalia & Thomas should have been recused for obvious conflicts of interest). That they were planning a war was plainly obvious (soldiers at the end of their term of service were told that wasn’t happening in summer 2001). But there was a shit ton of evidence linking Al’Qaeda to 9/11. The Bush Administration was gearing up for it and had the inside evidence to know it was going to happen..
So this fucking guy sounds a 9/11 Truther. And this video is bullshit.
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Dec 15 '19
He's exaggerating things we already know. There were reports that some kind of attack was going to happen. Literally nobody knew it was going to be that huge and Bush didn't believe the reports at all. Even bin laden was surprised at the effectiveness of the attack. Bush did deliberately move funding and personnel away from counter terrorism in his first 100 days, and he did deliberately ignore chatter about an attack. That's what we know.
We do not know if he believed those reports or, as he was telling people at the time, he thought the FBI counter terrorist unit was just making things up for funding.
We also know there was a white paper on invading Iraq as early as 1998. That's why he wanted a half ass war in Afghanistan. He was already planning to invade Iraq. There's a ton of criminal shit we already know about and people insist on making up this stupid ass false flag stuff.
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u/thisismybirthday Dec 15 '19
So this fucking guy sounds a 9/11 Truther
if you think that discredits him then you must be a massive tool
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u/Fanny_Hammock Dec 15 '19
Pretty sure it was Pakistan harbouring Osama and the Saudis bank rolling it.
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u/c8d3n Dec 16 '19
Most, no actually all supporters of Bin laden, and wahabi terrorism as you call it hate Saud family and consider them to be enemies. With other words there is nothing obvious about that, and what you have typed in that regard makes no sense. Interesting how you stressed it's the 'sunny' terrorism.
With other points I agree.
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u/Hazzman Dec 16 '19 edited Dec 16 '19
Obviously the defense industry is always interested in a small scale war like Iraq or Afghanistan
I'd say half a million dead - with some estimates claiming a million or more, and likely far, far, far more by the time all of these conflicts in the middle east are over - they can't be discussed in isolation nor can they be described as "small". And it isn't just profiteering - these kinds of conflicts are fundamental to US foreign policy. When the soviet union dissolved the US needed a new enemy to fight, and we had all of the pieces in place to create new enemies to fight. Noam Chomsky describes this process
Our country DEPENDS on war. And we went from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan... and more. Oh and it wasn't just Saudi Arabia that supported and facilitated Wahhabism. We can lay claim to a large portion of responsibility for Al-Qaeda and Wahhabism in a fighting capacity with our funding and support during the Soviet-Afghan war... not to mention the debaathification process which left the door open, our continued opposition with Iran leading to mutual interest with these groups, our support and funding for these organizations in Libya and Syria. Of course THAT part is always a mistake "Oh we didn't intend for that to happen" even though it was a repeated warning from advisers that this would happen, and we seem to be willing to take that risk over and over and over and over again and it just so happens to perpetuate a conflict we benefit from.
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u/Moses_The_Wise Dec 15 '19
The Corbett Report is a highly, highly untrustworthy news source. Take everything with a grain of salt.
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u/censorinus Dec 15 '19
No, that's the Sorbet Report you're thinking of, big difference.
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u/Bray_Is_Cray Dec 15 '19
Yeah it looks like one of those loony conspiracy channels. They have like 3 playlists on 911 truther shit. I'm not so sure that this would be a reliable source on information on the war in Afghanistan lol.
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u/variable4p Dec 15 '19 edited Dec 15 '19
I’m about 1/2 way through this. I was skeptical as there were a lot of assumptions as hand-waving...and then “...America’s war of terror...”, not “on terror” (I rewound several times and turned on subtitles to be sure) crossed my speakers and realized, while this guy may have done some research, he went into it with an opinion that he researched to prove vs. researched to get the facts.
He and Michael Moore must have shared notes.
Of note, not that it makes my opinions any more/less valid, but I enlisted before 9/11 and am still currently serving (although my time in the sand gives me a bit of perspective).
Edit: I turned it off. It was so bad. He’s desperately trying to prove a point with carefully selected unclassified sentences from a huge report.
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u/broksonic Dec 15 '19
It's a conspiracy channel. I think that is their niche. But if he explains the Afghanistan documents who for most part is true. What's wrong with it?
Everyone needs to watch media and question everything and focus on the information and more importantly what they leave out. Because sometimes the New York times or any high trust News agency can be more conspiracy or propaganda than even conspiracy channels like Alex Jones.
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u/flex674 Dec 16 '19
Gotcha but Enron at the time also wanted to build a natural gas pipe line through Afghanistan. A lot of interest in securing that area. Also, was osama in Afghanistan? No he was in Pakistan. Another subject is the war on terror should have been against a group, not a country.
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u/quvi Dec 16 '19
I wish that schools taught everyone how to properly choose media outlets so that we can stamp out all these horrible misinformants
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Dec 16 '19
Says the guy who trusts Mainstream outlets. Corbett does nothing but research and 0 speculation without stating so.Go back to your CNN.
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u/tlmcdonal Dec 15 '19
So we're so far into it that we'll never get out of it. It's something widely known but not acknowledged - what do we do?
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u/Tried2flytwice Dec 15 '19
The level of bullshitery in this comment section is mind blowing. You lot do realise that multiple attacks on western states had come via camps in Afghanistan right? The west and other countries unanimously decided to go into Afghanistan to get rid of al qaeda as the attacks on nations were mounting up.
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u/fergusoniv Dec 15 '19
So, a single cable is held up as evidence that a lie was used? As though only one cable would be sent? We knew where UBL was before 9/11. We knew he and his crew were planning something. We didn't think they were as operational as they proved to be. But this? C'mon, man. If the complete record were shown, you'd see dozens to hundreds of cables about the intelligence, talking points, etc, starting on the day it towers were hit. Seriously, keep this crap on Facebook where it belongs.
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Dec 15 '19
Ah 9/11 truthers are abound in this thread. What awful disgusting pieces of shit you all are. Get fucked by something uncomfortable.
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u/WellYoureWrongThere Dec 15 '19
And how does spouting insulting, hateful comments really help anyone exactly?
Instead of being horrible, why don't you highlight how they're wrong with some facts maybe? Or, failing that, if you can't contribute or say something nice then maybe don't comment at all.
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u/36yooper95 Dec 15 '19
The American military industrial complex is responsible for the 9/11 attacks and every atrocity that has subsequently followed
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u/cresstynuts Dec 15 '19
I was 15 and didn't think I'd ever see us going to war with another country in my lifetime. Now kids that dont know how it began are fighting in it. That day was a paradigm shift towards authoritarian ideals for the world.
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u/paulconroy415 Dec 15 '19
The war was absolutely a sham, but I remember when I was a kid in the wake of 9/11 how ready Americans were to go to war. There was very little anti war feeling, even in liberal California where I grew up. Wasn’t until Iraq that people started to get mad.
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Dec 15 '19
The Taliban regime was patiently given the chance to hand over Bin Laden and refused, saying he was a guest and they couldn't do that. We remember very well.
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u/Hazzman Dec 16 '19
They didn't refuse after we applied pressure - as was expected
They were prepared to negotiate and were promptly told "Nope"... and any politician even remotely willing to take time to prepare for this kind of situation would have known the Taliban weren't going to hand over Bin Laden without pressure - because of their deeply held customs and beliefs. They didn't fucking owe us that, and we applied pressure and got what we wanted - we simply refused and commenced bombing. Now you can say "Fuck em" but look where we are today - hows that working out for us. You can say "They are terrorists, we don't negotiate with terrorists" but that's absolute 100% bullshit because the Taliban were our friends before 9/11 to discuss new pipelines being built Of course it was only after the occupation began that suddenly we had a problem with all of their human rights abuses.
So when they tell you "We don't negotiate with terrorists" what they mean is "We don't negotiate when it's a convenient opportunity to establish an enemy to fight for the next 30 years"
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u/asajosh Dec 15 '19
Let me summarize with Bill Hicks' take on the first Gulf War.
"For months and months we heard about Iraq's 'Elite Republican Guard'. 12 foot tall desert warriors who shit bullets. Then we got out there and it went from the 'Elite Republican Guard' to the 'Republican Guard' to 'the Republicans made shit up about there being fucking guards out here."
All war is about resources. Plain and simple. We dress it up with other reasons cause it's hard to really an army behind "hey let's all risk our lives for that stuff over there."
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u/Kered13 Dec 15 '19
What the fuck does the quality of Iraq's army have to do with justifying the Gulf War? If the Republican Guard really had been elite, would that have made the war justified? Then how does them not being elite make the war unjustified?
You want to know why the Gulf War was justified? Because Iraq invaded Kuwait without any provocation. That's it. That's the entire reason and that's the only reason that was needed.
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u/StevenCredible Dec 15 '19
We know the attack was propagated by the CIA, MOSSAD and Saudi Royal family.
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u/StevenCredible Dec 15 '19
They needed a war that couldn't be won and that they could sell on fear. Mission Accomplished.
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Dec 15 '19
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Dec 15 '19
Very interesting. What career path did you have to end up working on this kind of stuff ?
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u/VR_Bummser Dec 15 '19 edited Dec 15 '19
I am german, not american, but you sound like straight out of a russian conspiracy troll factory.
NGOs being the cover up for amercian government activities? That is what russia says when it wants to shut down human rights NGOs.
And the way you write: "I dont wanna say this is true, but here is the truth - psst i worked for the government... It's all so complex, but I figured it out... well i don't care, you just think about it."
:/
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u/shatabee4 Dec 15 '19
Let's send some people to prison for lying us into wars.
And also, members of Congress who fail to end wars should be in prison.
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u/ronin1968 Dec 15 '19
The Taliban would be nothing without the support of the USA’s close ‘ally’ Pakistan Not sure when the world will realise that if enough pressure is placed on Pakistan it would cut its support to these thugs Surely the Trump administration can see this ?
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u/Abe_Vigoda Dec 15 '19
Lol, Bush threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if they didn't let the US go after the Taliban. Bush was a dick about it.
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u/11-22-1963 Dec 15 '19
The objective of Afghanistan wasn't to "get bin Laden". bin Laden was a Western intelligence asset, and long dead, probably since December 2001.
Firstly, Afghanistan's proximity to China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan opens up the door to several destabilization campaigns, were US ground troops to obtain a foothold there. The US doesn't like strong central governments that can resist US designs on the region to enhance profits for its corporate investors. Those countries need to be surrounded and pressured (preferably by a ring of forward deployed bases in neighbouring US client states) to send a message, and to remind those countries that they are a target.
Stationing ground troops in key resource-rich regions (large reserves of fresh water, mineral deposits, oil) also obviously influences the direction and future of that occupied country. The US is currently illegally occupying oil-rich northern Syria for the same reason. If you can occupy a strategic region, you can pressure the central government and peoples living there to negotiate to your benefit. You can leverage the "facts on the ground".
The 2011 raid on bin Laden's alleged compound was simply theatre, tying up a loose end in US foreign policy to prepare for a major strategic shift (the "lead from behind" policy for the so-called "Arab spring" colour revolutions of 2011-12).
I think this theory is plausible. After all, the head of the Taliban was revealed in 2015 to have probably died two years earlier.
And if Afghan/Pakistani intelligence knew, the US intel certainly knew, or had very strong confidence in his death. The doubts about the Taliban leader's continued living mirror some US officials and health experts' doubts about bin Laden's continued living in the 2001 - 2006 period.
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Dec 15 '19
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u/picklesallday Dec 15 '19
This x1000000 overreaction is our specialty. We had Japan cut off in WW2. We could have sat tight and won it out right that way. Nah, let’s turn them to glass. 🇺🇸🇺🇸
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u/dimorphist Dec 15 '19
A bullshit war, but also a bullshit documentary. As much as I dislike the Bush administration, there's a thousand different reasons why the Bush administration would have been looking into doing strikes against the Taliban seeing that they were harbouring Bin Laden and Bin Laden had already executed several successful terrorist attacks on the US.
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u/Abe_Vigoda Dec 15 '19
there's a thousand different reasons why the Bush administration would have been looking into doing strikes
Yeah, I can give you 18 trillion reasons. Since 911, that's how much the US has spent fighting this fake ass bullshit.
Bin Laden was just an excuse for the military industrialists to get paid.
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u/ErickFTG Dec 15 '19
Not surprising at all, the only novelty is that there is solid proof that everything was a lie, and the US just basically wanted a colony in the middle of Asia.
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Dec 15 '19
Ten bucks says this was upvoted because people were either mistaking the war in Afghanistan with the one in Iraq, or they don't know the difference at all between the two and conflate the criticism of what happened in Iraq with what happened in Afghanistan.
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u/Jacobs4525 Dec 16 '19
I fucking hate that people in America think the whole Middle East is one big country. In my English class senior year we watched a documentary called Restrepo about American soldiers in one of the most unstable areas of Afghanistan (it’s a good doc, that’s besides the point). My teacher got on this soapbox when the movie ended that this “same war” had been going on since she was in high school. A kid at my table asked her what year she graduated, and she said 1992. I can’t fucking believe how ignorant some people are.
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u/9xInfinity Dec 16 '19
The Afghan war was started on pretty absurd premises too, though. The fact that Osama was killed in Pakistan many years later should attest to how pointless the whole thing is and was.
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u/bloonail Dec 15 '19 edited Dec 15 '19
When it all started, and you're watching it on tv, if you were not aware that the Afghan war was based on lies your life is one. The news is not some supra-complicated riddle. Lies surface like blue whales.
Edit: it isn't learning to be more critical, circumspect or suspicious. It might be from learning to trust. Find avenues to trust information. Then when you can't find the avenues in things you've been told there's no need to doubt. Waiting to find better info works.
Bertrand Russel hints at this, “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
Yet that is not exactly the key. Doubt is not necessary. Withholding affirmation works fine. The argument might be entirely solid, .. but if it doesn't follow guidelines we understand- maybe that's okay - we can be wrong. Say.. "okay- I don't get it"
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u/thx1138jr Dec 15 '19
The Washington Post published the documents but it's a paywall. Here is a good summation-https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-releases-documents-showing-high-level-doubts-about-war-in-afghanistan-11575927287
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u/chatterbugdi Dec 15 '19
Sadly the Afghan war was about natural resources specifically lithium to power the batteries in our cars since that is the direction our country is going.
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u/FO_Steven Dec 15 '19
Opium and resources, and also a certain nation wants total control over the middle East. There i saved you 26 minutes
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u/TheRealBlueBuff Dec 16 '19
Lol why would the US want this shitty place? We are self sufficient in oil production right now.
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u/MrUnoDosTres Dec 16 '19
I wouldn't really call Afghanistan the Middle East. Afganistan is located in Central Asia. While the Middle East in South West Asia.
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u/DarthLysergis Dec 16 '19
The Afghan war:. The afghans were fighting the Russians back during the cold war times. The US hated the Russians so we decided to covertly give a fuck ton of weapons and supplies to the afghans to help them fight the Russians. We kept giving them more and more, and training them how to use the equipment so they could effectively combat the Russians. Then when Russian pulled back (realizing it was costing them way too much money to fight the afghans, something the US has yet to figure out) we said "peace, were outy". We didn't give them any assistance in rebuilding. There were hundreds of thousands of young people in Afghanistan (because many of the adults were killed in battle) and we didn't even try to help them. (Like building schools or assisting in rebuilding government). So as you would expect, and our government was definitely aware, it left a power vacuum and radicals took power. Except now they had all kinds of cool weapons and gear, and training to boot. And there you have it. It's mostly our (the US's) fucking fault.
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u/SketchyStufff Dec 16 '19
Can we at least kind of agree it's not like the US knew or were planning on the radicals and rebels then taking power and everything back firing on them?
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u/Readitory Dec 16 '19 edited Dec 16 '19
He is someone that explain this illegal war clearly: https://youtu.be/HGDz_C13GIw also, the 911 attack was planned by Saudi Arabia and the United States in order to wage war on Afghanistan and Iraq.
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u/Readitory Dec 16 '19 edited Dec 16 '19
The attack was actually plan by the Saudi‘s and United States to justify an attack on Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, check this report as well: https://youtu.be/HGDz_C13GIw
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u/Just4TodayIthink Dec 16 '19
Where’s the documentary on Obama ordering aid strikes on pregnant women and children in Syria?
Whoops sorry forgot I was posting on Reddit and this wasn’t allowed
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u/sillybrowseraccount Dec 16 '19
I'm confused. I thought the Afghan war was started when Darius I and his Persian army invaded around 500 BC? Or was it when Alexander the Great invaded in 330BC? Or was it the Kushans in 150BC...
Ah the heck with it, let's blame America.
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u/josejimeniz3 Dec 16 '19
Raise your hand if you think:
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the Taliban is a terrorist organization
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the Taliban was involved in 9/11
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Afghanistan attacked anyone
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Afghanistan was harboring bin laden
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u/kushhcommander Dec 16 '19
Secret lie? Nothing is secret about that conflict anymore. Its all declassified information that came out some time after 9/11.
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u/YorockPaperScissors Dec 16 '19
Um, the US invaded Afghanistan because it was ruled by the Taliban, who allowed Al Qaida to operate from that.coutry, and the US was pissed about Al Qaida pulling off the 9/11 attacks.
If you want to learn about lies to justify a war, the US war in Iraq is the real scandal.
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u/pomod Dec 16 '19
Afghanistan, like every US military (mis)adventure; was about profit - for an array or defence contractors and for Wall Street traders.
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u/ajvar_ljuti Dec 15 '19
god bless murica and thank you for your service