Why is NATO in Afghanistan?

I know nobody is asking about Afghanistan except for me. Cripes! Nobody ever asked about Iraq either.

But I have wondered for some time now, on what legal grounds, according to their charter and the NATO treaty, is NATO deploying an army in Afghanistan?

You can read NATO’s charter at: http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm

I did. And I am still left wondering by which provision of the NATO treaty they are maintaining an offensive/occupying fighting force in Afghanistan?

At first the answer seems simple because Bush/GOP invaded the country for what appeared at the time to be legitimate reasons. Since then, Bush’s legitimacy in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, has come, or should have come, under serious question.

As I recall, the specific reason that Bush/GOP invaded Afghanistan, unilaterally w/o NATO or the United Nations, was to capture and/or bring Osama Bin laden to justice.

Bush didn’t accuse the Taliban, the political leadership of Afghanistan, of any offensive attack or involvement in 9/11, and indeed, it is now clear that they were ignorant of any such crime.

But they were accused of harboring Bin laden when, it is further alleged, it was in their power to turn him over. I’m not so sure that it was in their power to order Osama to surrender, or to go get him. Like Afghanistan’s war-lords, whom we have known so well for several decades, and who remain a huge military force in the country, Bin laden and Alqaeda were/are quite a fierce independent entity unto themselves. Was the Taliban leadership expected to start another civil war in their own country to satisfy Bush’s, now we know, whimsical desire to get Bin laden? That’s asking a little much isn’t it?

I am suspicious whether the Afghanistan government was harboring Osama at all. If the Taliban government was aiding and abetting Bin laden why wouldn’t he have been in Kabul, the center of politics, communications, the military and government, where he would have their utmost protection plus a far greater logistical ability to carry on his war against the West?

If Alqaeda was a military arm of the Taliban, as has often been implied and assumed by Western media and government, and the Taliban-Alqaeda were making war on NATO member states, why wouldn’t Alqaeda be where the Taliban were, with all of their infrastructure, technology and warriors?

Why were they living like animals in caves in some of the remotest most inhospitable mountains on Earth?

Bush (and then NATO) evidently never entertained these questions which, if the accusations proved true, would have given credence to their legal case for the invasion to remove the Taliban government.

There was never any evidence, and is still no evidence, whatsoever that the Taliban leadership ever made any offensive move or threat to any NATO member state. They simply had a wanted fugitive hiding in the remote mountains of their country…..a Saudi Arabian who had more or less forced himself on the Taliban and Afghanistan some years before. And yet there is no proof he was even there at all by October 2001. In fact he’d be kinda stupid to stay there when he had ample warning the Americans were coming. Accused of many things, no one, including Bush, ever accused Osama of being stupid.

As I further recall, the Taliban leadership, who had a strange relationship with Osama to begin with, told Bush that if the USA delivered evidence of Bin laden’s alleged involvement in the 9/11 attack they would turn him over.

They were probably, though not certainly, lying. But we will never know for sure.

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