Originally Posted by
Interstella5555
We are in a war on terror (Although the target of this war has constantly changed from Bin Laden to Saddam to Al Qaeda to eventually Ahmadinejad) and surely the best way to stop terrorism to help those fighting democratically against dictator's?
History says otherwise. The existence of al-Qaeda is in large part due to a previous attempt to "help those fighting for democracy." See, in 1978, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Beginning around 1981, and continuing until the end of the war in 1989, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia provided considerable aid to the mujahideen fighting against the Soviet invasion. The United States also provided weapons and military training to the mujahideen or "freedom fighters." Then the war ended, and we left. Afghanistan suffered enormous casualties during the war (over 1/3 of the prewar population had been killed, disabled, or maimed, and an additional 1/3 of the population had fled the country), the irrigation systems that had once sustained agriculture through the region were destroyed by bombings, the infrastructure was in ruins, and the country was left without a stable government. Civil war broke out in 1989, and continued until 1992. After 14 years of war, the former "freedom fighters," many of whom were young boys when the war began, and knew no other way of life, where left without a battle, and without any alternative occupation. Many of these men, with CIA training and American weapons, joined what would later become al-Quaeda.
And Afghanistan isn't the only nation with reason to be bitter. Terrorists don't come from the countries we've left alone. They come from the countries with reason to hate us. And those are in no short supply. There was a significant US military presence throughout the Middle East well before 2001. And guess what? They didn't want us there! Terrorists come primarily from countries we've been occupying and bombing for years. When you start dropping bombs on people, they tend not to like you so much. We try to force our values on countries that really don't want it. Just because western society values democracy doesn't mean that the rest of the world is going to thank is for tearing their country apart for not having it. It doesn't work that way. Invasions tend to piss off the people that live there. Which is how we end up with people who'd really very much like to bomb us back.
Zimbabwe's no threat to us now. They have no significant connection to any of the "terrorists" the government wants us to believe we're fighting. Besides that the "war on terror" is predominantly right-wing propaganda anyway, Zimbabwe's not even involved in any of it. So how would invading a country that's not involved in the "war on terror" at all do anything to fight the alleged enemy? That's even more ridiculous than the rationale for invading Iraq! All it'll do is produce yet another country that hates us.
