I think that your response is contradictory, because the only reason the US attacks Afghanistan to begin with is because of a revenge mission. These fugitives have little to no power, and if you were so worried about civilian casualties then why would you fund Israel and Saudi Arabia in your efforts to stop them?
If you want to talk Pearl Harbour then just look at Yemen, Yemen suffers a Pearl harbour every week, and it's at the hands of US fighter jets that are piloted by Saudi military.
If you're so concerned about civilian casualties, then why are you using sanctions, a method of warfare that almost exclusively targets civilians?
It's not a war on Al Qaeda, because the US backed Al Qaeda in Libya, and thanks to the CIA's drug trade, they've only grown stronger from US foreign policy.
In fact, Al Qaeda is the only organisation that is benefitting from the sanctions. They have an international black market network that spans throughout most of the Mediterranian, and the US has now given them massive pools of recruits due to discontent, and not to mention a huge opportunity to sell basic goods at extortionate prices.
It's never been about the Al Qaeda. Tariq Ali interviewed one of his friends who worked with Pakistani intelligence and the US government, and his comment was "You don't kill the golden goose that lays the golden egg."
Al Qaeda has been one of the only reasons the US econonomy survived the 90s, and without them the military industrial complex would've collapsed. So I think you should wake up and smell the coffee. Your own citizens sleep on the streets, get bankrupted by debt, the biggest growing class in the US is the poor, and you think your government is out pursuing justice for these people?
Go to your nearest VA Club and find one of the guys there in the wheelchair who sleeps beneath an underpass and ask him about the noble goals of US foreign policy and their concern for the value of human life.
In fact, I am reminded of Operation Paperclip and the Gehlen Organisation, when the US government sheltered veteran SS Officers and Gestapo officers from justice, where men like Adolf Heusinger, a wanted war criminal who had participated in Operation Barborossa, a genocide that took some 26 million people.
Are you saying that because of this, the USSR had the right to exterminate ordinary Americans with weaponised famines and sanctions? I don't think so. In fact, that's the kind of thing that the Red Army fought against.
The problem with empires, whether it's the US, or the Romans or whatever else, is the appeal to naturalistic fallacies. There's no principles. Everything can be explained away no matter how outrageously criminal.
And that's why the USSR ended the cold war, because they understood the importance of principles. How either they backed down, or humanity would pay the ultimate price. It's thanks to them that you're not writing this stuff from a fallout shelter right now.
