Talk:War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

Article Problem

This article has a rather serious problem. I don't know how to raise it and see a change, so I am bringing it up here.

This article makes a serious legal mistake regarding the UN and the US legal authority to wage war. It states that the US cannot wage war without UN consent, because the US ratified the UN Charter.

First, the US ratified a treaty, not a charter. The "Charter" is, in fact, a Constitution, not a charter. Most importantly, however, the US Constitution CLEARLY STATES that no treaty overrides the authorities set in the Constitution. One of those authorities is the right of the US to wage war based on Congressional approval. Therefore, being a signatory to the UN treaty does NOT mean the US needs UN authority to wage war, as it is in direct opposition to the US Constitution.

This is no small matter.

Thanks.

Yunus Hasan 15:54, 2 December 2010 (UTC) After September 11 Congress authorized President Bush to retaliate against any “nations, organization, or persons” he determined to be involved in the atrocity. Therefore giving him Carte Blanche... it was legal according to the US Constitution, but war was not recommended or approved by the UN. So the article is correct in what it says, the wording should be changed to sound less anti-war. -Yunus Hasan

and more readable.. that paragraph is all over the place. The fact is .. the united states needs authorization from no outside entity under the constitution. What the UN thinks is far secondary. as a matter of fact, the US stops funding the the UN or takes removes our military donations from the UN and thier is no UN. as we are the majority funder and troop provider. The problem is.. this whole article reads like anti-war propoganda piece, and I don't expect that changing anytime soon unfortunatly. -Tracer9999 (talk) 17:19, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Very Nicely put. Welcome to the wonderful word of POV/Bias, thank you Wikipedia and the Guardian fr providing 99% of watch is on this page.....what a joke,. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.190.231.174 (talk) 19:18, 9 December 2010 (UTC) legs

This article has several serious problems. Most notably, a complete lack of regard for the verifible truth, and at least three Republican shill editors who like it that way. The legal question is pretty straightforward. Under U.S. law, Congress can do pretty much whatever it likes - including suspending the Constitution or any and all previously-ratified treaties. Unfortunately, they were were asked to do neither, but rather to give the Commander In Chief the authority to decide who to attack and when, in response to a particular instance of terrorism on U.S. soil with the express purpose of preventing further attacks. The Commander in Chief of the moment, George Walker Bush, did not begin the war by attacking Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the attack, in his stronghold in the remote Afghan mountains, he and his British counterpart Tony Blair instead authorized the aerial bombing of Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan, a sovereign state with a sitting government (however distasteful), where they explicitly knew OBL wasn't, less than 24 hours after GWB rejected an offer of the sitting government of Afghanistan to turn over OBL to UN authorities for trial in international court.

In so doing, GWB did not violate the constitution - but he did break U.S. law, by breaking the UN treaties previously ratified by Congress without expressly asking Congress for permission to do so. The only point you might argue here is that such permission was implied by the blanket Congressional authorization received - which is by no means clear.

The whole article shows obvious attempts by vested U.S. interests to re-write history in GWB's favour far more clearly than it shows any anti-war "propoganda" (clue: that's 'propaganda', a word deriving from the Catholic Church's program for Propagation of the Faith which gave rise to the Spanish Inquisition).

The war did not evolve "from a violent struggle by Coalition forces against Al-Qaeda and its Taliban supporters" into anything. It started with the aerial bombing of Kabul. Period. A fact not broached until paragraph number five. The previous four paragarphs being total BS from one side or another. There is no indication in actual history that the Taliban supported "Al-Qaeda" at all - largely because the name Al-Qaeda is a CIA invention in the first place. In fact, it can be effectively argued that OBL did not create Al-Qaeda, the CIA did. The Taliban, who had control of slightly less than 75% of Afghanistan, were aware that OBL was in the country, were doubtless also aware that he was religiously anti-non-Islamic-nationals-on-Islamic-soil, and that the U.S. accused him of masterminding various attacks. This is a far cry from "support". Support implies provisioning and active assistance. Harbouring is a far more accurate Anglophonic description of the situation, though the Taliban put it very clearly themselves when they said OBL was "a guest in our house." Now, if you don't know what this means to Islamic or Pashtun culture, then you shouldn't be anywhere near this page.

I really don't have time for this nonsense, unlike some of you who are probably being paid to revise history on your masters' behalf. Suffice it to say that your efforts will not stand. The world already knows the truth - and most of the world wasn't fooled by GWB's lies in the first place. I don't know how you live with yourselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.155.149 (talk) 07:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Casualties

Can someone who is computer savvy add the total number of hostile fatalities and non-hostile fatalities in the casualty section... This should be emphasized in the article... It is important to distinguish this. To this day there has been 1733 deaths of the coalition resulting from hostile action and 374 deaths resulting from non hostile action. This should be put in the casualty section of the article... http://icasualties.org/OEF/ByYear.aspx(129.21.148.248 (talk) 04:00, 5 November 2010 (UTC))

Kenfo 0 (talk) 20:32, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

V

Do you mean a total? I support the inclusion of a total. However, I find the Taliban and civilian statistic seem to be very low considering the length of the war. Maybe these sections need updating. I did a quick count of the allied forces (Afghan government, Northern Alliance, External governments) and their count for deaths is; 11,697 as of 3rd feb 2011 which is why I feel the civilian and taliban figures seem low / outdated.--Senor Freebie (talk) 04:17, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Problem with the number of French troops.

Hello!

France has decided to send renforcements to Afghanistan last summer. The number of troops in this operation (Airforce, Naval TaskForce, Army soldiers and Gendarmes) is reaching 4,000 now. I changed it on this page and on ISAF template, linking to a page of the French paper Le Figaro: http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2010/07/04/97001-20100704FILWWW00108-afghanistan-250-soldats-francais-de-plus.php

But my modifications were cancelled and former figures have been written back. What's wrong with the French datas? Who is refusing the change and why? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.85.95.111 (talk) 18:57, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

inaccurate/POV statement

While I agree the civilian casualty numbers are worthy of mention, the first paragraph states civilians have been the majority of casualties. The info box shows combatant troop numbers killed at "30000" and almost 2000 among ISAF. This is equal to, if not greater than the civilian casualties mentioned. To describe civilian casualties as the majority seems inaccurate generally and leaning toward bias, possibly. 166.137.11.114 (talk) 03:51, 20 November 2010 (UTC) Mmcknight4 I'll just delete it if no opposition exists.173.171.37.123 (talk) 11:14, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

This has apparently been corrected, if somewhat unsatisfactorily, so this comment should be removed from the discusssion. Objections to the current wording would be a new topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.157.128 (talk) 08:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Public opinion

I have a tiny reader's question about the Ipsos-Reid Poll:

Since when is 50% a majority?

Just mentioning. Big issues, little oddities ...

Heunir (talk) 00:22, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

PS: I know, only 43% approve of the war. But still ...

I fail to see the point behind including public opinion polls at all - the public did not decide to go to war, nor did they decide to continue it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.157.128 (talk) 08:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It can be relevant but you're right, it has little to do with the execution of the war. Perhaps it affects recruitment by the parties involved, maybe it results in withdrawals by individual parties but other then that it counts for naught.--Senor Freebie (talk) 04:19, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Total rewrite required by team of professional historians

This article deserves a TPOS tag; Total Piece of Shortcake.

The entire piece needs to be locked down and administered by a team of objective historians - or at least one objective rational human being with some regard for history. There are so few negative tags that don't apply here, from NPOV through Weasel Words to Factual Accuracy, that I really don't know where to begin. It's complete drivel, from start to finish, and needs to be split into rational separate articles - hopefully without rendering it entirely useless as a main article in the process. This would take three editors most of a year. Any takers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.157.128 (talk) 09:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

What is the Iraq section for?

I cleaned up an extremely poorly written sentence on the US withdrawel of troops from Iraq, but I'm really not sure why it's there to begin with. It has no explanation or context within the article. However with some work I think it could be developed into some relevance. Meh. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.231.151 (talk) 00:52, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it should just be deleted. The War in Afghanistan isn't the War on Terror. There's a separate article for that.174.5.11.131 (talk) 01:25, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Conflicting troop numbers

British Prime Minister David Cameron stated the UK had 10,500 troops in Afghanistan in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2IfkkhBaE0) however ISAF figures put the number as 9,500. As these are conflicting, which should be put in the article? --SuperDan89 (talk) 19:46, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

try to find a neutral source, eg AP or such. if you cant just put 10500-9500 as the numbers. 24.228.24.97 (talk) 19:50, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Article Problem 2

Hi. I wrote the "Article Problem" section. I know little of WP's processes. I posted the section in the hope someone who knew protocol could address altering this clearly flawed article. I ass-umed WP had folks who watched for edit-remarks and set something in motion. Like it or not, people believe what they read on WP. When there are glaring factual errors unbeknownst to the reader, the reader will likely repeat error as fact, and that is wildly dangerous in the long run.

I don't see any disagreement with what I wrote, short of the long, clearly biased rant of an anonymous poster. I wish to see this article be factual...not my "viewpoint" or anyone else's. I FULLY support a rewrite by a historian, but doubt any will be stopping in randomly. So how do we get this article changed to support objective facts? Should I write an article and submit it? Should I just edit pieces and see what happens? Please comment. I'll check back in a few days for observations. Thanks. Kenfo 0 (talk) 09:15, 3 March 2011 (UTC)