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In a philosophical way that might be true, but you are also here communicating that opinion and potentially convincing other individuals to come to the same conclusion.

If you did the opposite and tried to convince everyone else to vote then you could theoretically be correct, your vote or lack of vote would have little to no effect. The cumulative effect though of many voters feeling disenfranchised and not voting will have a massive effect, one which someone in your position could help avoid by helping to convince people who feel the same as you that they DO need to vote.

I can see how some people feel that their vote is meaningless and that there is no difference between their choices in the first place. Be glad that that is true for you - for many people in our country (and unfortunately, even more people in other countries) this is not the case.

Take Bush v Gore - many people did not see much of a difference between them but one resulted in 2 disastrous and expensive wars, many thousands dead (not counting the destabilization of the region whose impact we cannot easily measure) and 8 years of basically no progress against climate change. Could I have observed a difference in my own life if Gore had been elected? Maybe not, I didn't join the military (went to college) and there was no draft, I got a useful degree and a good job, and overall my day to day life is probably very much as it would be had Bush never been elected. Not everyone is so lucky, so please think of how your vote affects the most vulnerable people in the world when deciding whether or not to vote.




Suppose Gore did get elected, and he faced the same stuff.

Would he really have just accepted that Afghanistan provides refuge to those who had killed thousands on American soil? Do you think he could just write off the loss ("oh bummer, thousands died") and still get reelected?

You might remember that Saddam Hussein decided to slaughter Kurds in the north and Marsh Arabs in the south. The original George Bush was expected to do something about this genocide, and so one of the things he did was impose no-fly zones. Aside from war, how was that supposed to come to an end? Do you think Gore would have just kept that up for another 4 years (8 if he goes to war in Afghanistan) or do you think he might have just walked away from it and allowed the genocide?

I'm sure Gore would've wanted to have his presidency be about the environment. Remember that the second George Bush wanted to have his presidency be about education... and we all know how that worked out for him.


As I recall, when US demanded that Afghanistan (then ruled by Taliban) extradite Bin Laden, they didn't refuse outright. What they did was demand some evidence that he was responsible, which is a fairly routine and reasonable demand for any kind of extradition request (I mean, would you want US to extradite you to Afghanistan just because they asked, on their word alone that you're a criminal?). They also suggested extradition to a third country, where he could get an impartial trial - again, given the emotions at the time, not really unreasonable.

US response? "We know he's guilty", and we don't care to prove it to anyone else.

And yet, even after US started bombing them, Taliban was still offering extradition deals. All the way up until the ground invasion.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

We know that Bin Laden was guilty in retrospect, of course. But he didn't admit it back then, and otherwise, there was nothing particularly unusual or vexing that Taliban was asking for. Whether they would have actually given him up or not if their demands were met is also unclear, but IMO, given the prospect of a large region-destabilizing war (which many people back then were warning way in advance what would happen), it was definitely worth a try. You can always invade if things don't work out.




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