Ask the question, "After a dozen years, why are we still in Afghanistan?" and you will get answers pertaining to the Taliban or training up the Afghanistan army or the need to stabilize the region, etc. The correct answer is, " There's two trillion bucks or so worth of metals in the hills and mountains of Afghanistan. A list below the fold:
The title of this blog comes from the article in Scientific American starting on page 58 of the October, 2011, issue of that periodical.
What metals are there? Gold and silver...sure. Uranium...you bet. Iron ore...I suppose. Tens of billions of dollars of green copper ore: ore so pure that you could refine it in your back yard with a Weber and a bag of Kingsford. Look for the pictures of geologists in battle rattle down in injun territory. Platinum group metals... platinum, palladium, iridium, etc....Enough to build catalytic converters for every gallon of gasoline distilled from the two hundred billion barrels of oil under the sands of Iraq. With the possibility of twice that amount of crude there... understand that 400 billion barrels of oil equals Saudi Arabia. And who got the oil contracts?
But the real treats are the rare earth minerals. What are they and what are they good for you ask? Do you like your i toys? How about that that 60" flat panel hanging in the den? Do lasers have any utility? You name it and the twenty first century's trinkets incorporate these elements. Now guess where the current world's supply is; guess who controls 97% of the supply? If you guessed China you get a rare earth star. Remember a year or so age when President Obama barked at China accusing them of bogarting these indispensable elements? Just lost in the white noise.
Looking back at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan it becomes clearer that securing these resources for the twenty first century's and the future's hi-tech manufacturing economy played a silent but major role in these actions.