US Policy

[ootlg]

Sure, it's an ongoing thing, always has been, but some warlords and politicos, male and female, have been protected by allied presence. That'll end.

As a matter of interest I was interviewed on BBC after 9/11 and the interviewer asked me what I thought about US and British forces going into Afghanistan and I replied they'd never win - doesn't anyone learn from history? He was surprised. "Really?" he said, "you think the Afghans are a match for US forces?"

[perrykneeham]

"Win" is a difficult concept in that sort of operation, to be fair.

Beware mission creep.

[ootlg]

Cutting down on the verbage. I actually said they would never beat the Afghans on home territory.

[perrykneeham]

"Afghanistan: 'We have won the war, America has lost', say Taliban"

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-56747158

What have you won, exactly? The right to carry on living in medieval squalor, brutality and ignorance? The liberty to be despised and ignored? The opportunity to remove hope for your children?

This lion of Afghanistan looks like a fat, lazy brigand to me.

[ootlg]

Which 'lion of Afghanistan'? Massoud's dead.

Nothing changes. It'll revert to the way it always was tribes v tribes. With the US they had a common enemy; with the US gone they'll start again, first against the Afghan army, then among themselves, then more attacks against Pakistan forces: if the Taliban gain total control, which I doubt, they'll try to take control in Pakistan. That's the long-term danger.

[flatandy]

Even pre-2001 the Taliban didn’t have total control.

And it feels like the US has won. The US’s goal was preventing large scale terrorist attacks on Americans, organised and trained in Afghanistan. That appears to have happened.

If the US was working towards a humanitarian goal, then they weren’t hugely successful. But they weren’t ever working towards a permanent imperial presence in Afghanistan - that was the last thing they wanted. Afghanistan doesn’t even have raw materials that the US might want.

[ootlg]

The US’s proclaimed goal, to prevent large scale terrorist attacks on Americans, organised and trained in Afghanistan, was lip service to the public conscience.

One of the top profiteers from the Iraq War was oil field services corporation, Halliburton. Halliburton gained $39.5 billion in "federal contracts related to the Iraq war". Many individuals have asserted that there were profit motives for the Bush-Cheney administration to invade Iraq in 2003. Dick Cheney served as Halliburton's CEO from 1995 until 2000. Cheney claimed he had cut ties with the corporation although, according to a CNN report, "Cheney was still receiving about $150,000 a year in deferred payments." Cheney vowed to not engage in a conflict of interest. However, the Congressional Research Office discovered Cheney held 433,000 Halliburton stock options while serving as Vice President of the United States.

2016 Presidential Candidate, Rand Paul referenced Cheney's interview with the American Enterprise Institute in which Cheney said invading Iraq "would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it would be civil war, we'd have no exit strategy...it would be a bad idea". Rand continues by concluding "that's why the first Bush didn't go into Baghdad.

Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars- their CEO. Next thing you know, he's back in government, it's a good idea to go into Iraq."

Another prominent critic is Huffington Post co-founder, Arianna Huffington. Huffington said, "We have the poster child of Bush-Cheney crony capitalism, Halliburton, involved in this. They, after all, were responsible for cementing the well."

FWIW...

U.S. agencies estimate Afghanistan’s mineral deposits to be worth upwards of $1 trillion. In fact, a classified Pentagon memo called Afghanistan the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.”  link

[flatandy]

So, almost all of that is about Iraq not Afganistan.

Meanwhile, you think it was a war for lithium? And the US has retreated from it's lithium bonanza because it was crushed by the Taleban?

[ootlg]

Almost. The two went hand-in-hand. Have you forgotten already the nonsense about Bin Laden conducting Al Qaeda operations from a cave in Afghanistan?

You said: Afghanistan doesn’t even have raw materials that the US might want.

So I responded.

[mids]

I thought the CIA went to war to seize the Afghan opium crops so they could funnel cheap heroin to black people?

[flatandy]

The afghan reserves of lithium are basically trivial compared to the reserves elsewhere. That is a silly argument. Your link points to rare earth metals which are a bigger deal in the long run because of the near-monopoly China has, but I have struggled to find any links showing decent rare earth reserves in Afghanistan. And they weren't a known problem in 2001.

[voice]

Reminds me on the theory from the time that this was about oil pipelines, something about avoiding going through Iran or the Taliban something something something. Now its lithium.

While the Iraq invasion reasons were far murkier, the US rolling into Afghanistan after AQ launched the 11/9 attacks from there was obvious. I always love how some feel the need to inject nefarious intention into everything.

[ootlg]

Apr 15, 2021 14:49:25 GMT flatandy said:

 That is a silly argument.

It's not an argument. I was simply pointing out that your superb knowledge was wrong.

[ootlg]

Apr 15, 2021 14:55:46 GMT voice said:

Reminds me on the theory from the time that this was about oil pipelines, something about avoiding going through Iran or the Taliban something something something. Now its lithium.

While the Iraq invasion reasons were far murkier, the US rolling into Afghanistan after AQ launched the 11/9 attacks from there was obvious. I always love how some feel the need to inject nefarious intention into everything.

Yeah. And you were one of them at the time, accusing the US of going to war under false pretences. As Voice of Reason. Remember?

[flatandy]

As I said, the US has won. 20 years without a major Islamic attack on US soil, and nobody trained in Afghanistan, and no major terrorist networks running things from Afghanistan.

The idea that the Taleban has won is nonsense.

[ootlg]

It's a stupid statement anyway.

[voice]

I thought while justified given what just happened in NY, goining into Afghanistan and trying to change anything long term was folly, the Taliban being deposed and AQ being destroyed was a good thing, though it's very relative. I was very opposed to the Iraq war, it was all based on lies and there was no justification. People often conflate the two, but the reasons for them were radically different

[wetkingcanute]

The first fcuk up was the Anglo-Afghan War also known by the British as the Disaster in Afghanistan. It was fought between the British Empire and the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1839 to 1842.

Incidentally Sherlock Holmes meets Doctor Watson when he's just returned from this war.

The second fcuk up was the Russian invasion on 24th December 1979 - they staggered on till the got out in Feb 1989.

and then all the recent fcuk ups. Where in the new TV series of the 'modern' Sherlock Holmes ~ he meets Watson on his recent return from Afghanistan.

[ootlg]

“I am involved in the land of brave people where every foot of the ground is like a wall of steel, confronting my soldiers. You have brought one son into the world, but everyone in this land can be called an Alexander.”

Alexander the Great to his mum.

[mids]

Sean Connery and Michael Caine managed it.