Quote:
As critical as I am of the Bush administration, I find it hard to argue with the conclusion that al Qaeda, who are believed to be responsible, and who have claimed responsibility, for two World Trade Center attacks, the attack on the USS Cole, and two attacks on US embassies, were the (irregular) army of the Taliban, rulers of the vast majority of Afghanistan in 2001. Generally speaking, when a country's army attacks you, multiple times, that's an implicit declaration of war.

Do you claim that al Qaeda were not responsible for those attacks, that al Qaeda was not the army of Afghanistan, or that multiple attacks on US property are not sufficient as a declaration of war?

I wasn't aware that Al Qaeda considered themselves the Afghan army (I thought they felt they acted on behalf of Arabs as a whole). But even if they did, I don't think that it counts if you unilaterally declare yourself to be a country's army, even if you share that country's goals (in this case America out of Arabia, justice in Israel/Palestine) but they don't share your methods (terrorism vs diplomacy). Here in the UK we have, or had[1], a terrorist group who went so far as to call themselves the "Irish Republican Army", but it wouldn't have occurred to anyone to count their attacks as a declaration of war by the Republic of Ireland, or (in modern times at least) that it might be valid or legal to invade the Republic of Ireland as a way of solving that terrorism problem, even though the Irish government shared the goal (Britain out of Ulster), because the Irish government had no truck with using terrorism to achieve that goal. (Quite apart from the fact that such an invasion wouldn't actually have worked.)

So yes, I do claim that Al Qaeda are not the army of Afghanistan, and that their attacks are not a declaration of war, least of all a declaration of war by Afghanistan.

Peter

[1] They still exist, but more as an organised crime ring than as political terrorists.