America’s response to 9/11 contributed to our national decline | Hacker News Reader

America’s response to 9/11 contributed to our national decline

brookings.edu

78 pointschmaynard48 comments

The US Military has become a jobs program first and a war fighting machine second. The Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is a shining example of this. He was on the board of Raytheon before his appointment. He did a terrible job training Syrian fighters https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/16/us-military-... waisting hundred of millions of dollars. He seems to have a great track record of writing checks.

The US builds trillion dollar fighter jets, but we haven't made a new air-to-air missile in decades, which is arguably more important than the platform that delivers the missile. However, government contractors can't make as much profit on missiles than new planes, so we just build new planes.

The military is the biggest social welfare program. For some reason most of my fellow conservatives aren't willing to admit this. The democrats do but then want to extend the program to everyone, even those not in the military.

In reality, none of this is necessary. America can use a smaller military and then use the draft and calling up the national guard when necessary.

Imagine if we had accepted the Taliban's surrender in 2002. Imagine if we had stayed out of Iraq and instead invested the money in reducing our dependence on Mideast oil by developing renewable energy and domestic production. Imagine if we had recognized that the Saudis had played a big role in the planning of 9/11 and broken off our alliance with one of the most oppressive theocracies on the planet.

Imagine if Gore won

I propose we kick Florida out of the union and give their spot to one of the unrepresented us territories.

Nothing but trouble comes from Florida.

https://www.electricsheepcomix.com/spiders/

Imagine if Gore had been more electable.

It wasn't the Green party's fault Gore stunk. It was his fault and his wishy washy attitude towards Clinton. Is he pariah or can I ride his coattails? He could not decide. So we got cocaine Busch.

Yup, but he was the candidate, having been VP for 8 years. There was no plausible way anyone else could have gotten the nomination.

But then, Ralph Nader could have looked at the polls in October 2000, and realized that he was the only progressive person in the world who had the power to elect Gore instead of Bush. And he said, "Nah."

I don't blame Nader. All the blame is at the feet of Gore. No one else has the blame. He ran a shit campaign. That's not Nader's fault. Gore could have said, "nah," eight years was enough, let someone else run. But he ran his crappy campaign, do I acknowledge I was in office with Clinton, or do I pretend I didn't know him? Oh, gosh, that's a hard one. Let me bury my head in the sand. That was not Nader, that was all mr Gore, sorry.

This is like being the guy behind the lottery winner and saying, dammit, if you hadn't been ahead of me in the line, I would have won the MegaMillions, it's your fault!

That's an incredible demand of Gore. Who was he going to drop out for? Bill Bradley?? Bradley couldn't beat Gore in a single state in the primaries. It's not like the Dems had a deep bench in 2000.

And what did Nader achieve by staying in? Did the Democrats move left? No, the lesson they took was to move right. Did the Greens get 5% nationally and get matching federal funds, which was their stated goal? No, thank God.

Nader threw the election to Bush for nothing. He is a narcissist who only paved the way for Jill Stein and her Russian connections to spoil the 2016 election.

Would have been a different and better world.

I read an alternative history book that suggests that 9/11 would be worse in that case.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16034689-43-when-gore...

During the trump administration we were energy independent. Being independent of foreign oil is a paper problem

You're right, the more general problem is that the value of oil to the global economy gives enormous power to dictatorships like Saudi Arabia who spent the money promoting jihadist Islam. Imagine if we had spent $2T on an Apollo Project to develop better renewables, along with a global regulatory structure for carbon that aimed to eliminate the use of fossil fuels worldwide.

How about we first commit to doing whatever it takes to not buy oil from the sauds even if it means more domestic production for several years.

This is a fallacy of two choices. We can both drill here and pursue renewables like we were doing last year.

I wish this could be retitled "The response from those with a vested interest in war to 9/11 contributed to a national decline affecting those who don't hold stock in those companies or whom don't benefit financially." Admittedly, it is less readable, but it seems entirely more accurate.

I see other comments in a similar vein, but as a (danish) defense contractor I can only contemplate how the military-industrial innovation engine has had little to feed on in the last 20 years due to fighting such an asymmetric threat. Whether we in the HN community like it or not, US defense R&D has boosted not only US prosperity but Western for decades prior. Compared to core investments in networking, computing, command and control, nuclear, space etc. - the venture-boosted “tech” industry has little to show as a viable alternative to hardcore defense invention. Even as a Dane I really hope the US will do one of its usual pivots and show how to pull out of a dry spot!

Is America really in some kind of long-term decline? In 1991 it found itself as the sole standing superpower, with USSR collapsing, China not there yet, and Japan never quite making it.

It’s hard to stay ahead when you don’t have any competition. It is only last few years that it is obvious that China is a matching power. Russia is still there with its nukes but probably mostly off the board.

US has some serious problems, but any country at any moment does too. And yes, momentum is definitely on China’s side.

But to sum that all up and say “yeah US is in decline” seems excessive to me.

Agreed. This is sensationalizing. As it is, there is no competition to the USA. China is doing well now but the spectre of demographic misery is haunting them. People won't work when they don't have children.

> China is doing well now

They certainly project that image. But we really can't trust anything they say.

In fact: it's probably largely a country of fake statistics..

I think a bigger and fundamental question is, does America want to be an Empire or just another country.

Non-empires do not establish bases far away from home. Non-empires do not seek to make governments in their image. Non-empires do not attempt to bring democracy to those who are not used to it.

Empires do all these things, and they are costly to maintain in blood and treasure but do provide some benefits in return.

Whatever the choice, it should be made with clear eyed rationalism without such emotional appeals as “exporting freedom” (which has been used by both the Athenian Empire and Rome (ironically when it conquered Greece from the Macedonians)).

The answer to the question drives everything.

Following Baudrillard, "The Afghan War Never Happened". 20 years of war didn't durably change the politics of Afghanistan and it had nothing to do with whether or not we suffered more terrorist attacks.

It's hard to compare with no control group.

If OBL/Al-Quaeda remained in force in Afghanistan, it is hard to imagine they would not have committed more attacks.

But where?

The article does not say Al Qaeda would have remained in force. The US could have still targeted Al Qaeda and searched for UBL while also negotiating a surrender of the Taliban. While we don’t have a control, it is pretty obvious that the heavy-handed invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were powerful recruitment tools for Al Qaeda, likely making them more dangerous than if we had focused on targeting them and not occupying two Muslim countries.

It’s a failure of the American people, not those who wanted empire in the Middle East and stoked it.

The public can be manipulated into absolutely anything. I wouldn’t mind if “Never Forget” were replaced with “let’s keep our heads here”.

When a country spends $800+B each year on defense, the weapons will pile up. Then it needs to start some wars to consume the weapons. Isn’t this a natural course of events?

No mention of Amerithrax. Just "For a while, Congress worked in rare harmony across party lines to pass essential measures."

Million dollar mission. Billion dollars of damage. Trillion dollar response.

It's true; if things were different, things would be different.

At the end of the 20th century, the United States bestrode the world like a colossus.

Unfortunately, that is not quite correct. In truth, the US did not "win" the Cold War. The Cold War destroyed the economies of BOTH the US and the Soviets. While the Soviets were visibly haemorrhaging money in their own Afghanistan War, the US invisibly went from being the World's greatest creditor nation to being the World's biggest debtor nation in the same period. In reality, the Cold war was a stalemate, a draw. Both sides were out of cash - broke.

Because the Soviets had no other source of income, they had to go 'bankrupt' then and there, so to speak. That had the effect of causing a necessary economic restructuring during and after the difficult Yeltsin years, but eventually bringing the Russian (by now) economy into the black again.

On the other hand, the US after the Cold War had the misfortune of being able to live life much as it had before by using the lucky circumstance of having the 'credit card' of owning the World's Reserve Currency. The US didn't appear to require economic restructuring because it was still able to pay for stuff, but all the while, that 'credit card' allowed the US's debts to continually increase.

A war against Iraq? "Put it on the card." A war against Afghanistan? "Put it on the card." Cheap 70-inch TVs in WalMart? "Put it on the card."

Today in 2021, that debt has reached 30 trillion, an absolutely impossible task to be able to restructure away. The US's only prospect now is bankruptcy and hardship.

Thirty years after the Cold War, Russia is doing well economically, with a lot of cash reserves. The US, not so much.

If we were to re-ask the question "Who won the Cold War" today in 2021, the answer must be 'The Soviets'.

What a load of tosh. Getting kicked out of Vietnam was far more harmful and humiliating than Afghanistan. It's not exactly a great moment in American history but in terms of actual power and influence in the world Afghanistan is irrelevant. Losing those conflicts has, and will, have no real long term consequences for the US. Geopolitically they were both distractions.

I feel bad about that in the case of Afghanistan, we sold those people out. Allowing the return of the Taliban is a disgraceful dereliction of duty that will have dire consequences for many Afghans, but it won't make any difference whatever to America. I suppose it might 'embolden their enemies' or something nebulous like that.

To be fair the 2021 Taliban are a hell of a lot better than the 2001 Taliban (who's leadership is pretty much all dead at this point). The latter is a lot less racist (which in this case translates to less marginalization of the local minorities) and not unwilling to embrace the technology that underpins a modern economy. I have a hard time seeing the Taliban as being worse than anything else that could fill that vacuum (ISIS did them a favor in that regard).

>Taliban (who's leadership is pretty much all dead at this point).

Abdul Ghani Baradar, co-founder of the Taliban, is out of prison, signed the agreement on behalf of the Taliban for the US withdrawal, and is the top political leader. Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of the founder of the Haqqani network (a pre and post 9/11 ally of the Taliban) is a top deputy. Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of founder Mohammad Omar, is a top deputy. Mullah Mohammad Omar died of natural causes. Jalaluddin Haqqani died of natural causes. That really doesn’t sound like an ideologically transformed Taliban to me.

This article makes a number of errors with very little advice on what we should have done.

For example, it agrees that we should have invaded Afghanistan, but then suggests we accepted Taliban surrender. The Taliban did not ever seriously offer surrender, nor does the article say who should have been left in charge.

As for capturing OBL in Tora Bora... that was a failure, not a bad decision.

This article is just garbage Captain Hindsight nonsense.

> but then suggests we accepted Taliban surrender.

Was that even offered? I'd suggest that using soft power instead of a full-scale military invasion would be wiser. Afghanistan was never really a single country and treating it as such is a huge mistake. The groups within it have been warring each other for centuries and it was very arrogant to think you can win a war against an enemy to whom you represent an existential threat and who knows the place and have been practicing defending it for centuries.

As for 9/11 itself, making Al Qaeda and OBL the enemy was a mistake. By giving it a name and a face, you acknowledge and empower it. The enemy was and continues to be extremism and it needs to be fought at home and abroad, but attacking it with force only makes it stronger.

> but attacking it with force only makes it stronger.

Nazism and Japanese militarism were both attacked with force and defeated.

Yes, but they were offensive national forces with long supply chains and highly structured military. Afghanistan is much more like Vietnam than WWII and the failure follows a similar pattern.

Afghanistan is like Vietnam in that they had a 3rd party foreign neighbor supporting them - Pakistan.

...whereas Japan and Germany had no support after the war to continue any sort of rebellion.

And that serves to illustrate that you don’t win a political war with guns alone.

I think the Mongol Empire illustrates that if you have overwhelming military advantage and are prepared to be absolutely ruthless in using that advantage, you can actually go pretty far with pretty minimal diplomacy (which is basically offering a chance to submit before you invade).

Well… American military are immune from prosecution for crimes against humanity, so that’s one possible route. Consider, however, opposition will be much more violent and relentless and that both Soviet and British strongly recommended suicide before allowing oneself to be captured by Afghans, so I imagine that wouldn’t end well either.

Again, diplomacy is cheaper, in both money and lives.

Imagine someone murdering your family and then not going after them because you don't want to glorify the fact that they killed your family.

...and then they killed someone else's family.

Yes. And their family comes after you, and the rest of your family goes after the rest of their family and their neighbours…

That usually doesn’t end well for anyone.

> “Taliban 'ready to discuss' Bin Laden handover if bombing halts. The Taliban would be ready to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted the bombing of Afghanistan, a senior Taliban official said today.” Oct 14, 2001 [0]

> “Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that the United States would not accept a negotiated surrender between Afghanistan's new interim government and besieged Taliban forces in Kandahar that granted amnesty to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar” December 7, 2001 [1]

The Taliban did seriously offer surrender. The US just never entertained it unless it was basically complete unconditional surrender. We can’t know if the Taliban would have followed through, but it was the US refusal to seriously negotiate, not the Taliban. Karzai and the interim government were set up at that point, so that is who would have been in charge, likely with local leaders, including former Taliban, working loosely with the national government. It would have been a more militant islamist government, but it would have been Afghan focused and relatively neutral to the US. I agree on the Tora Bora capture. Operation Anaconda was a tactical failure but the goal was to capture UBL.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/12/07/r...

No. They agreed to hand over OBL to a different country for trial IF they were given evidence against him. ...and then OBL confessed publicly on video, and the Taliban fell silent.

Also remember that OBL was paying the Taliban $20 million per year to protect him.

Neither of your sources says that the Taliban offered to surrender themselves.

>Neither of your sources says that the Taliban offered to surrender themselves.

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that the United States would not accept a negotiated surrender between Afghanistan's new interim government and besieged Taliban forces in Kandahar that granted amnesty to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar."

>We can’t know if the Taliban would have followed through, but it was the US refusal to seriously negotiate, not the Taliban.

Literally what I said.

The Taliban said that they would agree to have OBL tried under Islamic law. That sounded to me like an opening position at the start of negotiations. That sounded to Dick Cheney like an excuse to not negotiate and go to war. Going to war sounded to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld like an excuse to build up American capabilities in the region so that America could have another war to convert Iraq into a shining light of democracy pumping out oil under a constitution written by the USA.

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