The real reason for Operation Enduring Freedom emerges after our American prospectors have sacrificed squandered their blood for eight (8) years in this barren and remote land.
Tell me Reader(s), if we weren't there already, would we go to Afghanistan for its Clay?
How about its potentially lucrative glass sand & stone quarries?
These newly revealed riches make it more palatable and understandable as to why we have poured the blood of 6,700 American KIA's and WIA's into this rich soil of Afghanistanam? And $400,000,000,000? Is that it?
If we need lithium for our Blackberries, wouldn't be a little cheaper to obtain it the old-fashioned way? By buying it from the Talibanistan corporate government?
Because - bet your ass - that's what we'll be doing in twenty years, whether or not Obama has a second term. Because it's looking like it's like LBJ-deja vu all over again, as Yogi would say.
It was always a bad year to get out of Vietnam, as Daniel Ellsberg says.
So Afghanistan IS Pandora...
ReplyDeleteThe presence of all that wealth will make Bush's Unocal dog, Hamidn Karzai, even more recalcitrant.
ReplyDeleteOff Topic: Happy Birthday Vig!!
You are right Vigil, of course I figure if we do leave anytime in the next ten years the Chinese will rush in given how they have almost established a colonial empire in African to secure resources there. With this paradise so close to home they would be fools not to try.
ReplyDeleteDear God in Heaven, can anyone imagine us fighting the Chinese in Afghanistan a few decades down the road over freaking lithium so we can secure batteries for our laptops and electric cars? Sorry, been drinking but if we fight wars over oil...
Now for all you folks who have shouting that we were over there fighting for the liberation of the Afgan people,you now can go back into your caves and watch the flintstones!
ReplyDeleteYes I think your right.
ReplyDeleteI've written we went to war in Iraq for oil..
and as it turns out, Afghanistan for treasure.
Who do we think we are England...
I can't believe that Obama's reason for the surge was natural resources. To me, the far more logical reason was the fact that the neophyte had backed himself into a corner (aka, his idiotic campaign rhetoric pertaining to the "right war", etc.) and needed to do something. It was political expediency, in other words.
ReplyDeleteThe assembled group is missing the point.
ReplyDeleteToday -- surprise, surprise -- comes news that Afghanistan isn't a poor country whose primary strategic asset is its ability to grow opium poppies. Nope, turns out Afghanistan is just brimming with iron ore, lithium, cobalt, copper, and other strategic minerals. This report -- which comes from "a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists" begs the obvious question:
Isn't the timing of the release a mite suspicious?
This looks to me like an attempt to provide a convincing strategic rationale for an effort that isn't going well.
'Xactly, LTE! You grasp my point. It is not the substance of this mirage; it is its timing. They are - once again - trying to rescue the mission [impossible] by re-defining it.
ReplyDeleteThe Afghanis don't have the resources or the sense to mine these minerals. It will take us to show them and I don't see anything wrong with that. It would be better than shooting them and having them shooting us.
ReplyDeleteLTE, this last comment epitomizes exactly what we are talking about:
ReplyDelete'It will take the [USA] to show them [how] to mine these minerals and I don't see anything wrong with that.'
This Blue Dog Democrat MMA has bought the latest Pentagon propaganda gambit hook, line, and sinker: this desolate lunar turf known as Afghanistan, ruled over by medieval tribal war lords is really a treasure trove of riches for the 21st Century Blackberry's which consume lithium! That's why we're supposed to be there, doncha' see!
It's so pathetically transparent. It is at this historical juncture where the Pentagon is trying to upgrade Afghanistan from Mission Impossible to Mission Infinity. Which is how long it's going to take to mine those so-called minerals.
And MMA falls for it.
This discovery is a double-edged sword. The mineral reserves may pave the path to a better future, but they may also lead to even more endemic conflict.
ReplyDeleteEveryone is familiar with the "blood diamond" phenomenon – diamonds mined in African war zones that are then sold on to finance an insurgency or a warlord's grip on a region – is well known, but other examples of misused mineral wealth abound. Afghanistan may not have diamonds, but it does have an insurgency, the country is packed with warlords and many of the minerals present in Afghanistan are the cornerstones of conflicts in other parts of the world. You don't have to look far to find an example of how minerals can fuel conflict rather than end it.
It is far too early to tell which way the discovery of these vast mineral deposits will play out, but I doubt it will have much effect on current Nato operations. But historically most of Afghanistan's resources have not been exploited – in part due to the constant war. The rugged terrain, lack of infrastructure, primitive methods and out-fashioned technology further complicate the excavation of minerals.
In the end, the rediscovery of Afghanistan's mineral wealth is just another frustrating reminder that a far better future could exist if only this fractured state could pull itself together.
Of course you are right, Vigil.
ReplyDeleteFunny, but I've read histories that don't just suggest, but actually state, that our founders did not approve of colonization. That was then and this is now and how is that working out for us so far lately? Like all the frigging oil we're getting from Iraq? Minerals out of Afghanistan? Well, I don't buy that crap... I think it's all about the routing of crude oil...when you think of those kinds of strategies. We have known about the minerals for a dozen years... we have some war PR going on.
Yeah, Ms Barry, well said.
ReplyDeleteThem Pentagoners talk of 'investment' but in the context of an on-going COIN war, all I hear is 'imperialism'. They're touting Afghanistan as the Saudi Arabia of lithium? I have to ask why all our lithium is under some one else's rock. Just like our oil is always under someone else's sand. Will blue dogs swallow this occupation any better if it is dressed up in neo-colonial wardrobe?
Blue dogs will swallow anything.
We'll all probably be better off if those minerals simply stay in the ground. The last thing that this world needs is another wealthy unstable regime. And, besides, they've already cornered the market on drugs, for Christ......P.S. Hey Vig. I think that you're confusing blue dogs with neo liberals. The former doesn't necessarily always concur with an aggressive foreign policy. Their priorities seem to be far more on the wasteful domestic spending.
ReplyDeleteJuan Cole sums up my case:
ReplyDeleteIt is silly to say that $1 trillion in hard-to-mine minerals in a landlocked Afghanistan make it like Saudi Arabia. The latter has 267 billion barrels of petroleum that is fairly easy to get at and to export, which at today’s prices is worth over $18 trillion. Not to mention its natural gas.
The US will likely end up spending $1 trillion destroying things in Afghanistan.
So even if the whole benefit of the minerals went to the US, it would be in the hole.
Hype.
Well said Vigil: I see Mad Mike buys in hook line and sinker as usual. Nothing new there. They are grasping at straws, to not find the exit strategy. This is pure assed Pentagon propaganda. These reports have been known for a long time. For the Pentagon to use this now, just before they demand another 33 billion for their folly should not be surprising.
ReplyDeleteMike, they don't actually need us. Many nations will be competing for those resourses. So far only one actually has a mining contract, China.
ReplyDeleteVig, heard an interesting assessment of the Afghan army last week (I think it was on "Hardball"). According to this one guy, half of the Afghan forces go AWOL at the very first whiff of combat. The other half? The other half is frigging stoned.
ReplyDeleteBolivia supposed to have 50% of the world lithium. We'll just take Evo's and be on our way.
ReplyDeleteNice researching, One Fly! And good point! Do business closer to home! (I assume by "take" you mean 'buy' and not 'take'!)
ReplyDeleteThere's a chance now that we might buy it. Bush would have taken it of course. The ones with the guns here who love war don't like Evo and his country so it's still wide open I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI like to be on friendly term with our neighbors to the south but since we never get our way---well>