Unless you're a kook, the people responsible for 9/11 were a group whose interests include overthrowing the Saudi government. The erstwhile Afghan "government", the Taliban, harbored them.

Yes, fine, but: Saddam Hussein couldn't stand Al-Quaeda. So... what's up with that? I don't even care who did 9/11 and why, but I know how it was used. That alone is shameful enough -- with those kind of "friends" who the fuck needs enemies, right?

Iraq wasn't directly related to al-Qaeda, no. From a geopolitical standpoint, replacing one of the most hostile governments in the region with a more favorable one had some interesting long term potential. Eliminating the root causes of terrorism requires significant geopolitical and socioeconomic change in the Muslim world. Installing a new government right in the middle of the region could go a long way to helping with that over the next few decades.

Yes, but don't be forgetting that the Taliban are a rebranded mujahideen. This crowd were US allies (or were they pawns?). Armed and trained.

And Italy was one of the Allies during WW1 before allying itself with Germany in WW2. During the fight against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, other nations provided assistance to Italy. Individuals jumped into the fray too. Hemingway, for example, was a volunteer ambulance driver in Italy in WW1.

Beating the USA over the head post-911 with the club of having assisted anti-Soviet fighters in the 1970s and 1980s makes as much sense as castigating Italy's WW1-era allies and people like Hemingway in the late 1930s for having come to Italy's aid twenty years earlier.

The US leaders who started these wars had no issue making comparisons to WW2 and claiming Bush compared to Churchill. Words such as 'Crusade' were used. Good versus Evil. Crappy comparisons have been a hallmark of the campaigns. What I said was, to my knowledge, fact. I was attempting to point out that friends can become enemies, so a bit of tact and care is obviously a good idea. And of course, claiming you're on a crusade and fighting evil is just plain BS. The US deserves castigation for its role in these conflicts, it has acted appallingly, as have others. My own country, New Zealand, has troops in Afghanistan and have been involved in some controversy. The only reason I can think of for this deployment is to brown nose a few so-called allies. Making the world safer one botch job, torture and killing at a time.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Bush-s-use-of-word-cru...

http://www.3news.co.nz/Govt-cant-rule-out-SAS-link-in-Afghan...

The Taliban are native Afghanis, mostly Pashtun. The mujahideen were Muslims from around the world who went to Afghanistan to defend it from the godless communists. Bin Laden was one of them, but not necessarily one that we armed and supported back then. (While the irony would be delicious, I don't know of any evidence that he ever had US support.)

So is an invasion of russia imminent? (RE: Snowden)

Harbouring criminals is a reason to declare war?

You seem to be one of those people who make bad arguments, and as soon as those bad arguments are debunked, you immediately switch to a completely separate bad argument without ever acknowledging that you were mistaken in the first place. Most likely, you're unwilling to listen to other viewpoints and just want to hear yourself talk on the internet. Have fun with that. I'm not inclined to play along.

I think you are projecting here. And attempting a moral high ground. Where was I wrong exactly? Please point it out, then you can return to your high ground.

The argument remains the same, I drew a parallel with a current situation to highlight how ridiculous it was to blame the Taliban for 9/11 (as they had NOTHING to do with it). Just as Russia had nothing to do with Snowden (except that he's there).