[gozur88]

>Starting the war for those aims is a war of aggression...

No it isn't. That's not at all true.

[flukus]

So you wouldn't classify Napoleons invasion and the creation of Westphalia as a war of aggression?

How about Ceasars invasion of Gaul? He had a casus belli.

[boomboomsubban]

Yeah, it is. There's millennia of precedent here and I'm not going any further to argue against "nuh-uh."

[gozur88]

Precedent? This isn't a court case. I begin to see the problem here: You're misapplying a historical template. This isn't 19th Century British Empire - the US had an iron-clad casus belli in Afghanistan, and to ignore that is to completely mischaracterize the situation.

[boomboomsubban]

"This isn't a court case, they had an iron-clad case for war." The only point of a cassus belli is to justify your war of aggression, if someone declares war on you the case for it is clear.

And no, the cassus belli was not iron-clad. There are only three legal ones under current law. Defense, defense of an ally, and a UN approval. First two don't work, Afghanistan hadn't declared any wars, and the third never happened.