Talk:War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)/Archive 3

message: The section Human Rights Abuses is entirely one sided and presents only allegations of human rights abuses by US and coalition forces without a single report of human rights abuses by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, both of whom were notorious for brutal murders, massacres and oppression.  If this section is not balanced, it should be removed.  Otherwise, like many other articles in Wikipedia, it turns into a forum for US-bashing.Kevinp2 18:24, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I completely agree. The problem is that US human rights abuses get much more coverage in Western and non-Western media, what the false impression gives that the US only or mostly commits human rights abuses, while the Taleban hardly does any. One can easily say that the atrocities of the Taleban dwarf the cruel atrocities committed by the USA. Only, it's hard to find detailed examinations of these atrocities. Sijo Ripa 18:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I cleaned up most of the section, leaving in the more substantiated allegations.  I also added the NPOV tag because the section otherwise provides the impression that only the US commits atrocities, as 
Sijo Ripa points out.  After the section is fleshed out with a balanced account of Afghanistan's long history, the tag can be removed.Kevinp2 18:54, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: While the Taliban is guilty of human right abuses, listing them here would not seem appropriate for the article about the war (unless it was waged partly on that pretext).   The listed claims against the Americans don't even read like human rights abuses.  While abusive, a more appropriate title might be "Alleged war crimes".  And even then, I'm not sure how you could write a balanced section under that heading.  As Sijo Ripa mentioned, if a US soldier walked up to a market/school and killed a bunch of innocent civilians it would be properly regarded as a war crime.  When a Taliban fighter does the same thing, nobody writes a citable story referencing his war crimes, its just chalked up to insurgency.  Mmcknight4 21:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I have mixed feelings about the edits seeking to balance the section.  I think the section is more balanced but, perhaps, increasingly irrelevant.  The new info about the history of human rights in Afghanistan and the info about the abuses at the hands of warlords and the Taliban isn't really relevant to the article "War in Afghanistan" (unless the war was waged under that pretext).  It has been added to balance the claims against the Americans.  Again, the claims against the Americans, which are essentially claims of abuse and murder committed upon war prisoners, are not equivalent to widespread, systematic denial of rights unto a population   Im sure lots of definitions of "human rights abuses" can include what the US soldiers are accused of, but when I think of "human rights abuses" I think of Darfur, or starving North Koreans, or apartheid.  Errant soldiers (or abusive war-time policies), even if frequently documented, aren't correctly considered human rights abuses in the classical sense.  They are alleged/convicted war criminals, which is relevant information for the article.  Since they aren't the only guys doing bad in town in the name of war it isnt fair to just include that information.  What should be offered in balance is alleged cases of identical sorts against the other side.  What is equivalent to 'torturing a peasant'?  Anytime a fighter from the other side indiscriminately kills some individual or group of innocents in the name of the fight, it seems that offense should be included or the tally should reflect it.  Mmcknight4 02:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Mmcknight4, good points.  I agree that the section on torturing a peasant is less relevant since it doesn't constitute a systematic violation of human rights. However, since there  were 10 soldiers involved, perhaps it is worth a mention in the civilian casualties section.  I do think that systematic violations of human rights that have root causes in the war are worth documenting.  E.G. Both the Taliban and Warlords were the subjects of articles by Human Rights Watch.  I think the U.S. violation of the Geneva Convention is also worth mentioning. Look forward to hearing more feedback.Midwestmax 04:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The information included under the subsection "Detainee abuse by US forces" is a good example of what Im talking about as a source of potential imbalance.  US soldiers had people within their care and opted to abuse them rather than do what is legal and just.   The Taliban, fortunately, does not waterboard the people they detain.  Unfortunately, the Taliban is accustomed to beheading the people they capture. In fact, instances of the Taliban summarily killing people are far more numerous than the 330 documented cases offered in the bit against the US, but what isn't offered in the article is detailed accounts of those killings.  The Taliban subsection currently reads "opium production in Afghanistan increased by 50%, which provided a major source of funding for the Taliban. [23] The increase in Taliban power has led to increased human rights violations against women in Afghanistan."  I mean, c'mon.  We love to detail the abuses at the hands of America because they operate under the veneer of democratic probity.  But American action against people's rights has rendered a much lesser impact than the impact at the hands of the Taliban but it isnt equally covered.  If tomorrow a trio of American soldiers invades a farmers house and kills him and his wife and rapes the daughter that is front page news which people will readily document herein.  An insurgent fighter does the same thing and no one seems tempted to change the article to reflect it.  Our discussion about people harming people with regards to the War in Afghanistan seems skewed with regards to which uniform the soldier wears.  Mmcknight4 02:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good points.  There's no question the Taliban's human rights violations are almost too numerous to document.  However, unlike the United States the Taliban is not a Democratic nation that has signed the Geneva Convention with an excellent past human rights record. I think it is worth documenting the U.S. abuses precisely because they are anomalous for the United States.  That said, I do agree we could expand on human rights violations by the Taliban and that the sections on Abdul Wali and Jamal Naseer are not particularly relevant and could be removed. Midwestmax 17:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Im just trying to avoid an apples and oranges kind of deal where we say 'American troops did x,y, and z and the Taliban is brutal and oppressive.  Getting back to my first remark, including information about Taliban brutality at the end of the Afghan war article seems unnecessary and is otherwise unwarranted but for the need to balance the allegations of 'human rights abuses' against the US.  Im still not so convinced the section is properly titled.  Why, for instance, shouldn't the entire section be included under the Civilian casualties section?  Was there a point when instances of soldiers breaking the law became so frequent that it transcended simple violation of the convention and gained that title?  You call it 'systematic' with roots in war.  Do you contend that once the United States admitted they practiced 'torture', that their actions were then human rights abuses?  If admitting to an abusive practice which you otherwise denounce is the qualifier for human rights abuses then the 'Detainee abuse by US forces' section is misplaced.  The people in those cases aren't charged with practicing an accepted interrogation policy, they are charged with violating the law and are being/have been prosecuted.  Because the US owned up to a practice which is abusive doesn't mean that every other documented case of lousy soldier then qualifies as a part of that practice.  If the consensus is that 'human rights abuses' best describes the situation, this link references notable massacres worth including.   {http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive_Index/The_Talibans_Betrayal_of_the_Afghan_People.html] (my bad)Mmcknight4 00:54, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  Thanks, Kevinp2.  I did some more research on this and agree we can't say definitively whether the harsh interrogation techniques count as torture. I was interested to find a letter from 100 law professors stating water boarding is torture.  It seems that the key issue here is the controversy over whether or not water boarding is torture.  I expanded the section with this information. Let me know if you have more comments.  Midwestmax 01:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Human Rights Abuses entirely one sided 

message: Under Military operations Initial attack the article states,
"It is said that prior to October 7, 2001 U.S. and British Special Forces clandestinely infiltrated Afghanistan to make contact with the Northern Alliance to organize those forces to overthrow the Taliban. But CNN released exclusive footage of Kabul being bombed to all the American broadcasters at approximately 5:08pm September 11 2001[13]. Who was doing the air raids that targetted the city's airport among other things , has never been answered."
this has a very sketchy link to a chinese? online paper. im not saying it isnt true, but the citation source is bad and it seems like an attempt to imply that the US is in some sort of consipiracy, i would like to suggest either a new reputable source be found or the sentence be removed.
I remember this incident clearly.  Kabul came under missile attack on the day of September 11th.  At the time I thought that the US had already launched atttacks, but it turns out that those missile attacks were from the Northern Alliance, who were pissed about their leader having been assassinated like a day before. I actually didn't check to see if the sentence was removed, but if it hasn't been I will. Topkai22 08:44, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bombing Kabul hours after twin towers hit?

message: No mention of NATO, even though the whole thing is a NATO operation.  The article should really be titled NATO invasion of Afghanistan, but I won't relaunch that battle today.  10:00, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe this is incorrect.  I believe that the US forces are not under the NATO command hierarchy.  --  Geo Swan 11:43, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NATO?  

message: I removed the first paragraph under the heading "Renewed Taliban Insurgency". Stylistically, it was a major divergence from the voice used in the majority of the article. More importantly, though, it contained exceedingly bad grammar and sentence structure. Most importantly of all, it was superfluous information tainted with subjective commentary.
Molinero 20:42, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paragraph Removed 

message: The campaign was unquestionably an "invasion". Why insist on calling it an "attack on Afghanistan", as if it was meant to hurt the entire country? The US said it was only trying to remove the Taliban regime. When other forces have sought to destablize regimes, we don't generally call theses "attacks ON" the countries. --Ed Poor
:If there is fact general agreement to thusly change the name of the article, please delete this version and use "move this page" to rename it with the edit history intact. --Brion 11:34 Aug 12, 2002 (PDT)
::You said to see this page. What are you talking about? Is there some reason you reverted my move of the US military campaign article from "invasion of" back to "attack on"? I thought the Cunctator and I had already settled that an hour ago. --Ed Poor 13:17 Aug 12, 2002 (PDT)
:::If there is fact general agreement to thusly change the name of the article (which there now is), please delete this version and use "move this page" to rename it with the edit history intact. --Brion 13:18 Aug 12, 2002 (PDT)
::::Hmm, I was under the impression you were a sysop. I'll delete it myself so there's room for the rename, but in the future remember that "move this page" is available for renaming pages to new titles without breaking the edit history over multiple pages. --Brion
::::Today must be Monday. Or as my favorite nuclear power plant operator likes to say: "D'oh!" I was supposed to MOVE the page rather than REDIRECT it. Okay, I'll have to ask Mav or Lee or someone to give me admin privileges so I can do stuff like that. I'll write to the listserv, and thanks for explaining it so patiently to me, Brion. --Ed Poor 13:24 Aug 12, 2002 (PDT)
I appear to have been caught up in something bigger than Ben Hur here. Just how many times has ths page been changed over the past two days??? - Arno
:I've been wanting to change the TITLE of the article to "US invasion of Afghanistan", which sounds neutral to me. An invasion can be an nasty selfish act of aggression (as when the Nazis invaded Poland and France) or a noble, selfless act of defense (as when the Allies invaded France to repel the Nazis). The word "attack" carries a more aggressive connotation than "invasion", and I felt that the title should not express a Point of View. Points of View should be in the article bodies, properly attributed. Consider: did the Allies "attack" France in WWII? Surely, from someone's point of view the invasion amounted to an attack. Probably the Vichy government thought so. Maybe Hitler thought so. But the article for that military action should be called Normandy Invasion. IANAL, and I my pro-US bias might be blinding me; if so, please correct me. --Ed Poor
Ed: remember: everything expresses a point of view. That there can be a "noble, selfless act of defense" in war is a pretty bold point of view (held by most red-blooded patriots, true). A better question to ask yourself when naming an article is whether the title properly implies what the content will be. The initial attack was an attack, and was called so by everyone, the U.S. government, the U.S. media, the international media, the pro-Islamic entities, etc. Even now "invasion" is somewhat misleading, since most of the land-fighting was done by Afghan forces. But I do agree that it's less misleading than "attack" now. --The Cunctator
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I don't have the relevant information at hand, but would someone who does please mention the casualties due to the accidental airstrike by a US pilot on Canadian troops? - montréalais
Merci! - montréalais
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From an old version of the genocide article:
** The silent genocide of 2001/2002 in Afghanistan was committed by the United States in collaboration with the Pakistan government, by deliberately cutting off the overland food supplies (by trucks, etc.) to 7.5 million people who were known to be starving and close to death [5]. Before the United States terrorist attack against Afghanistan, the New York Times reported that 50% of these 7.5 million were expected to die of hunger if the US requested border closure and/or carried out the threatened terrorist attacks. The real number of victims is unknown, but maybe was "only" 1 million or so, thanks to many surviving by eating grass [6]. This genocide was referred to as "silent", because despite 60 years' improvements in communications technology and networking since the Holocaust, US [7] and UK [8] media chose to be silent on this issue, just as German media were silent during the Holocaust 60 years earler. This genocide is commonly referred to using the euphemism "humanitarian crisis" [9], although it does seem to satisfy the ICC definition of genocide above.
[5] World Food Program (United Nations organisation)
[6] Afghan village forced to eat grass, by Ravi Nessman, Associated Press
[7] Warning: Media Management Now In Effect, by Danny Schechter
[8] Media Alert: BBC Director-General given an easy ride by the Independent, by Cromwell-Edwards
[9] The Coming Apocalypse by Geov Parrish
Further Reading
*Problem from Hell America's Failure to Prevent Genocide, Samantha Power, Basic Books, 2002, hardcover, 640 pages, ISBN: 0465061508
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The above needs to be double-checked and/or neutralized (see NPOV). If it's good enough for one of the Afghanistan articles, we can back from genocide.
:First find some proof it happened, not links to worst case scenario articles saying it might happen. Rmhermen 09:06 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)
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This article seems excessively anti-US. Also, it confuses several ideas -- IMHO, deliberately so.
The article asserts that the US "attacked" Afghanistan itself, as punishment for the terrorist attack on 9-11. This point of view really should be attributed to its advocate, rather than stated as fact. The US said it targeted the Taliban -- a dominant group recognized at the time by only 1 or 2 governments in the world. It didn't say it was punishing Afghanistan. Anyone who thinks so is, of course, entitled to that opinion, and I'd be happy for the article to identify them and explore their reasoning: Source A said that the US was punishing the entire Afghan nation for the alleged acts of a few would do nicely.
The article blurs the distinction between an aggressive "invasion" (as when a country takes over another for its benefit) and a punitive invasion (to make it stop doing something). This difference should be amplified, and also if some political analysts believe there is no difference they should be named and their reasons given.
Considering the magnitude of the importance of the issues involved when the US chooses to commit its military toward any goal, we ought not give any aspect short shrift. --Ed Poor 22:21 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)
:Ed, please give specific examples of sentences you want changed.  DanKeshet
I believe it would violate NPOV to state that the US didn't attack Afghanistan. It most certainly DID attack Afghanistan and this was certainly inspired by the 9/11 attacks. Lir 23:59 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)
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I reverted two important sentences from your changes, Ed.
#  ....religion quote missing because wikipedia not responding... This is not the only reason they changed the name.  A lot of people were concerned because the name had religious overtones, period.  That it was becoming a new "crusade" of Christiandom against Islam.
# Do you have any evidence that the reporters from Time magazine or the BBC opposed the war?  The Time magazine article practically gushed about the ingeniousness of the commanders to have already planned the war before it was even necessary.
DanKeshet
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To reopen the naming debate, I'd prefer 2001 Afghanistan war. Yes, it was a US-led war, but there were others present, most notably the northern alliance. Martin
Ok, let's open it.
I don't like the terminology invasion of, except for a one-sided account of a particular incursion. For example, the famous Allied invasion at Normandy, which was, I'm sure we'd all agree, part of a larger war.
On the other hand, the US invasion of Grenada wasn't much of a "war", as (according to my friend who participated) it was more of a rout, being over in just a few days.
Maybe we need to shop around (google around?) a bit, and find out what HISTORIANS are calling these events:
* battle of...
* invasion of...
* ...war...
* bombing of...
The problem with the word "invasion" is that it cannot describe the totality of a two-sided conflict. In particular, in casts one party in the role of the aggressive evil attacker and the other role as the responding good defender -- especially in situations where there is A LOT OF CONTROVERSY over the "good" and "bad" roles.
By the way, the term military campaign is entirely neutral! Its the generic term for the class which includes such things as "Operation Iraqi Freedom".
The names for military campaigns are almost NEVER neutral, but are deliberately chosen to reflect the POV of the country carrying out the campaign. (That's why there was a big flap over Operation Infinite Justice, i.e., "this is payback for 9-11, you Taliban scum!") 
I think we should describe:
* the official names of military campaigns, and what those names are intended to convey
* the generally accepted, historian-approved names of those campaigns (if and when they differ)
* the generally accepted, historian-approved names of wars, ESPECIALLY when those "war names" differ from either of the above.
And above all, let us strive to maintain impartiality and neutrality on this, the most sensitive of political topics. Note that I do not say "fair" or "correct" or "right" -- I really mean neutral, in the Larry Sanger, Jimbo Wales sense. --Uncle Ed
:Actually, Ed, you're only partly right about military campaign names. See the semiotics of militarism; until 1989, U.S. military campaign codenames were essentially random; "Since 1989, major U.S. military operations have been dubbed with an eye toward shaping domestic and international perceptions about the activities they describe." The Bush administration has taken this to an extreme. --The Cunctator
:: A shame really. Learning about WW2 would have been more interesting if Operation Overlord had been named Operation Die Nazi Scum ...
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I am going to request that this article be renamed "US-led military operations in Afghanistan, 2002" The current title is grossly POV. Adam 05:36, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: This was debated extensively here last year (see above). An invasion is a military attack on a country with a view to conquering or occupying it, as in "The German invasion of Poland". This was neither the intent nor the effect of the 2002 operations. Personally I would call it US-led liberation of Afghanistan, but that would be equally POV. The NPOV phrasing is "military operations". Adam 06:06, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title: Attack or Invasion?