A lot of Americans supported the equally illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, I still don’t think they deserve even how shitty their non-occupation civil government is.
Given how war works I’m almost certain there will be war crimes against the civil population here. Not as bad as what the Russians are doing in their occupied territories I sure as fuck hope and expect, but worse than anyone deserves. I can see Ukrainians getting to be a bit vindictive etc about this, they’ve earned it, but as armchair commentators online at a safe distance we should fucking show some empathy for people in a shitty situation they have very little control over.
I can’t control my government and I live in a democracy. I don’t blame Russians for most of what their state does either.
That’s some serious revisionist history to claim the invasion of Afghanistan was illegal. How do you define what’s an “illegal” invasion anyway?
UN law. Oh, look, turns out those don’t apply to Security Council members if they don’t want them to, weird.
The UN is a forum for diplomacy to happen. It’s not the fucking world police LOL.
International law is just a collection of treaties that countries may or may not have signed on to. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be considered an illegal invasion because it violated treaties.
There was no such treaty prohibiting the US from invading Afghanistan, in fact there were UN security council resolutions in support of it, here’s some light reading for you on the UN supporting combating terrorism in Afghanistan after 9/11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1386
While there isn’t actually a world police, NATO is the closest thing to it. 9/11 triggered Article 5 of NATO, so basically Al Qaeda punched the world police in the face and the Taliban tried to protect their Al Qaeda buddies.
Also remember the Taliban wasn’t recognized as the government by the UN. So in “UN law” terms, NATO was going into Afghanistan to support the UN recognized government (The Northern Alliance, previously called the Mujaheddin) against a terrorist group (al Qaeda) and their allies (Taliban). This was done with explicit endorsement by the UN security council.
Maybe you should read up on international law, it’s a little more complex than you’re assuming it to be. There are actually justifications for military action, like when a terrorist group attacks another country. Afghanistan also may be more complicated than you think with all the various factions within the country.
