Afghanistan sits in a region rich in natural gas, with two competing international pipelines and one of the two includes Iran, Pakistan and India. It's also in the region that provided Russia with its first source of uranium for its first nuclear bomb. Yet all discussion on our involvement in Afghanistan is centered on "terrorism". For pity's sake, even Seymour Hirsch sits yappin' about counter-terrorism on Maddow's show. Are we supposed to be utter fools? ARE we utter fools? How are we so clear on the plain and simple fact that Iraq is about oil, Iran is about oil - but Afghanistan is about terrorism? with a mere 100 Al Qaeda and a bunch of fundamentalist tribal leaders trying to send women back to the Stone Age (complete with stonings, whippings and beheadings)? If homegrown movements to overthrow a corrupt puppet government and oppress women is enough to launch our forces on land, in the air and the sea, we'd have a permanent mandatory military service - The Draft - for every American and immigrant, and a quarter million troops in almost every country.
So, let me just post link after link after link, since we keep playing the broken record we were given (or corrupted disk, if that suits for our oh-so-modern era).
http://whatreallyhappened.com/...
Most relevant statements from UNOCAL Corporation 1998 VP John Maresca:
First, the need for multiple pipeline routes for Central Asian oil and gas resources. Second, the need for U.S. support for international and regional efforts to achieve balanced and lasting political settlements to the conflicts in the region, including Afghanistan. Third, the need for structured assistance to encourage economic reforms and the development of appropriate investment climates in the region. In this regard, we specifically support repeal or removal of section 907 of the Freedom Support Act.
What's the Freedom Support Act? A 1992 bill passed to serve the energy and investment corporate masters, to provide "economic and humanitarian aid" to former Soviet satellite countries - except to Azerbaijan, which was losing a war with Armenia, that has half the population of Azerbaijan, but felt it got jacked in the transport of natural gas from Azerbaijan. Where'd I find that explanation? Why in azer.com, Azerbaijan International Magazine, which has as booster this little gem posted on the side:
"Undoubtedly, Azerbaijan's best Web site...Cultural issues dominate this lavishly illustrated site, but there is also an excellent directory of International and Azeri companies working in the country and reports on existing oil and gas concessions."
- quote from International Herald Tribune (June 5, 2000)
Does that over-a-decade-old post on whatreallyhappened.com, a website no one's heard of, sound like thin "evidence"? Then let's go to Canada, to a staid and even doubting article, from Canada's World on wordpress.com, titled "America, a gas pipeline called TAPI, and Afghanistan" from August of Aug. 14, 2009 http://bit.ly/...
With the U.S. surge underway and the British ambassador to Washington predicting a decades-long commitment, it’s reasonable to ask: Why are the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan? Could the motivation be power, a permanent military bridgehead, access to energy resources?
But the TAPI pipeline, as the name implies, is supposed to transport gas originating in Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – not to America or any other NATO country. Why should “the U.S. and NATO” be so excited about the project?
Although it’s less clear from Foster’s Star article than from a report he wrote for the Canadian Centre for Policy alternatives (PDF here), he clearly believes that the answer relates to a rival planned project called the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline. (These projects certainly do have imaginative names.) The US has an open interest in economically isolating Iran if possible, and a pipeline transporting Iranian gas to Pakistan and India would compromise that isolation. If the Americans can persuade Pakistan and India to buy their gas from Turkmenistan instead, Iran will be frozen out. Just a routine case, then, of a great power trying to inflict economic damage on an enemy.
The first paragraph in the blockquote is from "John Foster, and it turns out that John Foster is not some random conspiracy nut hiding out in his grandmother’s basement. Cambridge-educated, former lead economist of Petro-Canada, five decades’ and thirty countries’ worth of experience in energy policy and the oil industry – let’s just say it’s an impressive resume." (from the article)
So, let's quit parroting the corporate talking points, shall we? Let's be as utterly determined to stop this war in Afghanistan as we have been to stop the war in Iraq. After all, the only difference is one is for gas pipelines and a military stronghold, and the other is for oil and a military stronghold. Neither has the interests and well-being of the people in Iraq or Afghanistan at heart. Neither is about "protecting us from terrorism".
Both are about stopping China from getting resources without going through us and our captive-clients - who all happen to be oppressive dictatorships, btw. If we were so interested in saving people from oppression, dictatorship, and support for "terrorists", we'd be going after China, which is our major obstacle to isolating Iran, which funds Hezbollah. But we can't, because it's too costly in blood and treasure, it's unwinnable, and because our criminal bankers and investment houses have forced us to borrow from China against everything we own and might ever have produced. Ironically, we borrowed from China to fund wars to stop China from getting oil and gas cheaper without our corporate congressional-bribery Golden Goose profiting from it.
Sarah Palin saw Russia from her porch. I, on the other hand, can hear China's dictators laughing at us from the mini-balcony of my rental apartment.
So what about the uranium claim in the title. Well, here's a juicy little piece I dug up about Tajikistan. That country made me curious when I heard about Bill Clinton's little trip to nearby Kazakhstan to facilitate a uranium mine deal for a friend http://bit.ly/...
The first Soviet atomic bomb, tested in 1949, was made from Tajik uranium. http://bit.ly/...
Have a look at a map of the region, ok? The proximity of all these resource-rich little dictatorships to China (and Russia, another Iran trade supporter) should be enough to make you think twice about our motives for these wars. And it'll give you a whole new outlook on why Turkey has been so, so important, as it sits between these countries, and Iraq. Hoo-boy.