The Afghanistan war has gone on so long that people born after 9/11 can enlist - Sensationalist Headlines

because not not asking in a double negative is difficult.

There wasn't stability because there literally wasn't stability, they were in the middle of a civil war I'd say that's the furthest from stability you can really get. Afghanistan's instability was caused by many many factors and there's no real single state actor you can point at to blame, not that it particularly matters when it comes to whether the Afghanistan war was justified or not. The US asked the Taliban to hand Al Qaeda over to them, the Taliban refused. Thus the US decided to militarily back their opponents in the civil war. The Canada analogy isn't real analogous to the Afghanistan situation and is absurd, it would never actually happen like that. The Taliban actively cooperated with Al Qaeda, it wasn't just corrupt Taliban, it was an official stance of the Taliban.

Again, instability fueled in large part by western policies. "Many many factors" doesn't preclude the US from blame considering it's one of the most influential global powers, especially in an interventionist context. It was Pakistan that blocked handing over bin Laden, the Taliban were ready to try him in much the same kind of kangaroo court as the USA's non-negotiable demands were. The Canada analogy fits, just saying it's absurd or it would never happen doesn't change anything because it's a hypothetical. In today's world, if it turned out that Canada had been secretly using US Government Officials, corrupt or not, to fund a Neo Nazi terrorist group, would that be justification for the country affected by those attacks to invade the US and kill several thousand civilians. The US was always stronger in soft power projection than hard power. Diplomacy would probably have achieved their wargoals a lot faster and with less civilian deaths. The invasion was immoral, no two ways about it.

The instability wasn't just fuelled by the west, there were a lot of factors that contributed to it's instability, including the soviet invasion. I dunno where you got the information that the Taliban were going to hand him over, they wanted to give him an "islamic trial" which pretty much meant they'd just let him off. The Taliban were allied with Al Qaeda they weren't going to throw away a group that was in the process of helping their civil war. The fact that you believe that the Taliban would have given him a fairer trial than the US is utterly laughable. If the US was involved in some big terror plot against another nation like that then yes it'd be justified. Like what answer were you expecting exactly? That I'd say no? Of course any military action against the US wouldn't get very far, but from a moral level you could quite easily justify them conducting military action on that basis. Diplomacy was attempted and it failed because the Taliban stubbornly refused. There's only so much you can do when the opposing side refuses to play along. And I think citing civilian deaths is irrelevant, they were in a state of civil war, civilian deaths were going to happen whether the US intervened or not. Are the civilians somehow more dead when it's the result of the US than someone else? Do you also think the US should have let the Japanese get away with Pearl Harbor on the same basis? Do you think that Europe should have capitulated to Hitler instead of fighting back just to prevent civilian deaths? I feel as though citing civilians deaths is one of the laziest arguments against a war since you could go down the road of suggesting that Europe should have capitulated to fascism using that kind of logic.

It's killed more of our own people than 9/11 did, and it hasn't even done any good.

i don't even know how many wars the US is in right now

At what point does a war become an occupation?

And just think: We've still got another several decades worth of brown people to vaporize. Thanks GOP

All because a couple of Commies wanted to secure their sphere of influence. Damnit Dubya, even your father knew not to screw around down there! Say what you want about Hussein, but one thing is true: People didn't screw around too much down there because, if they did, they'd be punished terribly.