That news may not be as old as you think.
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The Afghan and Iraq Wars are Unjust, Unreasonable, and are Entirely Fraudulent.
- Thread starter dust1n
- Start date
That news may not be as old as you think.
"Unjust, Unreasonable, and Entirely Fraudulent"
This would probably describe most of the wars in our history. The Mexican War might be a good historical example to draw upon, although as unjust and morally questionable that war may have been, at least there was a greater sense of coherency and clarity to US policy that doesn't really exist nowadays. Our policy was motivated by the concept of Manifest Destiny, which was a quasi-nationalistic ideal emphasizing expansionism and establishing American primacy over the continent and region.
At some point, the ideal of Manifest Destiny was whitewashed and rehabilitated into what it became by the WW1 era: "Making the world safe for democracy," which also seems to carry the same level of "higher purpose" involved in what we do. Indeed, such an ideal seems far more noble and just than the genocidal racist expansionism associated with Manifest Destiny. Still, we found that we had common interests with other expansionist/imperialist powers, which also happened to be on the side of "democracy" which we were trying to make the world safe for.
It's from this point that the seeds of our current foreign policy and self-image of America as "defender of freedom" were planted and sprouted, although it would still take a couple more decades and a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor before most Americans would really go along with the idea. Of course, World War 2 has often been called "the good war" and is considered by many as "our finest hour."
This, along with the ensuing Cold War, has been the primary influence on American security perceptions and most Americans' views on the outside world. Unfortunately, this has had the effect of making US public opinion more manipulable and easily directed against any nation or government deemed to be "just like Hitler." Similarly, those who speak out against interventionism are accused of "appeasement," "isolationism," or even sympathizing with the enemy.
Ultimately, I believe it's this underlying mentality and widely-held set of notions and assumptions which routinely leads us to wars which are unjust, unreasonable, and fraudulent. If one believes that it's a legitimate and noble pursuit for a country to "make the world safe for democracy," then that idea can conceivably be twisted as to make any war seem "just" and "reasonable" if presented in the right way.
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
I think one that sets this apart is that there is very little to gain from it by the American people. For most other wars fought for profit and land have substantially benefited the people of this country. These wars currently are to the determent of the people and to the benefit of a few. I am still shocked as to how many people simply are unaware of the situations behind these wars and still support them.
Wirey
Fartist
Lousy hippies. With all you pot smoking Birkenstock wearing dolphin saving salad eating tree huggers in power we'd never get a decent war rolling. We had to invade someone! Did you see the Towers? Do you want Al Qaida to win? Now, vote for Bush again and get ready to give all your money to a Wall Street banker.
Which bush?
Aquitaine
Well-Known Member
If you're basing your decisions to go to war on how evil other governments/regimes are, then the United States would have to get bogged down in multiple simultaneous conflicts all over the world.
It feels kind of like a sense of entitlement coming from the hawks - that they think they have the right to just invade any country they find unpleasant.
Wirey
Fartist
It doesn't matter! They're interchangeable!
With me, it's more about having empathy and believing that all human beings deserve human rights. Sure, that's not really what it was about when the US invaded Afghanistan and certainly not what it was about when it invaded Iraq. Nonetheless, it was still morally good that the Taliban government was brought down.
Aquitaine
Well-Known Member
They haven't been brought down though, to my knowledge they're still very much alive and kicking. They outlasted the Soviet Union, and they outlasted the Coalition too.
Yeah, the job isn't done. They've just scattered.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
But probably only temporarily.
dust1n
Zindīq
"Al Qaeda is a global terrorist movement with the United States (including the American homeland) as a prominent, if not the primary, target. The Taliban is a Pashtun political movement with a focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan’s largely Pashtun border-region. Its principal adversaries are rival ethnic groups, especially the Uzbek and Tajik forces that made up the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and became crucial supporters of President Hamid Karzai’s government.
Had Mullah Omar’s regime in Kabul not granted Al Qaeda a hospitable sanctuary during the late 1990s, and then refused to turn over AQ leaders to the United States following the 9/11 attacks (citing the obligation of a host not to betray guests), there would have been little reason for Washington to launch a military crusade against the Taliban. True, Taliban rule was a horrific example of brutal religious zealotry; but the world is filled with obnoxious, repressive regimes—including the stifling theocracy in Saudi Arabia. Yet Washington has never been tempted to conduct a military crusade against Riyadh. To the contrary, U.S. leaders have considered the odious Saudi monarchy a valuable ally for the past seven decades.
Conflating the agendas of the Taliban and Al Qaeda is a major blunder that has mired the United States in Afghanistan’s internal political rivalries—at a tremendous cost in blood and treasure. We portray a party with a limited, localized agenda as a global terrorist adversary that has the United States in its crosshairs, when it was never anything of the sort."
Al Qaeda and the Taliban: Not the Same Thing | The National Interest
It would be a convincing argument that fighting evil is worth doing, if the aims of so many in Afghanistan were more about actually helping people, and not turning it into a giant mine and strategic military base placement campaign.
But it's really hard to take the argument seriously considering how much evil is perpetuated by American foreign policy as a whole...
dust1n
Zindīq
I was trying to put it diplomatically so no one could point to some sort of overreaction.
dust1n
Zindīq
Indeed, it is scary. As much as they may or may not believe they are doing good, it's not without reason these people are so rich.
"The Bush Administration’s entanglement with ENRON is beginning to unravel as it finally admits that Enron executives entered the White House six times last year to secretly plan the Administration’s energy policy with Vice-President Cheney before the collapse of the Texas-based energy giant. Meanwhile, even more trouble for our former-Texas-oil-man-turned-President is brewing with reports that unveil UNOCAL, another big energy company, for being in bed with the Taliban, along with the U.S. government in a major, continuing effort to construct pipelines through Afghanistan from the petroleum-rich Caspian Basin in Central Asia. Beneath their burkas, UNOCAL is being exposed for giving the five star treatment to Taliban Mullahs in the Lone Star State in 1997. The “evil-ones” were also invited to meet with U.S. government officials in Washington, D.C.
According to a December 17, 1997 article in the British paper, The Telegraph, headlined, “Oil barons court Taliban in Texas,” the Taliban was about to sign a “?2 billion contract with an American oil company to build a pipeline across the war-torn country. … The Islamic warriors appear to have been persuaded to close the deal, not through delicate negotiation but by old-fashioned Texan hospitality. … Dressed in traditional salwar khameez,Afghan waistcoats and loose, black turbans, the high-ranking delegation was given VIP treatment during the four-day stay.”
At the same time, U.S. government documents reveal that the Taliban were harboring Osama bin Laden as their “guest” since June 1996. By then, bin Laden had: been expelled by Sudan in early 1996 in response to US insistence and the threat of UN sanctions; publicly declared war against the U.S. on or about August 23, 1996; pronounced the bombings in Riyadh and at Khobar in Saudi Arabia killing 19 US servicemen as ‘praiseworthy terrorism’, promising that other attacks would follow in November 1996 and further admitted carrying out attacks on U.S. military personnel in Somalia in 1993 and Yemen in 1992, declaring that “we used to hunt them down in Mogadishu”; stated in an interview broadcast in February 1997 that “if someone can kill an American soldier, it is better than wasting time on other matters.” Evidence was also developing which linked bin Laden to: the 1995 bombing of a U.S. military barracks in Riyadh which killed five; Ramzi Yuosef, who led the 1993 World Trade Center attacks; and a 1994 assassination plot against President Clinton in the Philippines.
Back in Houston, the Taliban was learning how the “other half lives,” and according to The Telegraph, “stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus.” The Taliban representatives “…were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marveled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms.” Mr. Miller, said he hoped that UNOCAL had clinched the deal.
Dick Cheney was then CEO of Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed Cheney in 1998, “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It’s almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is.” Would Cheney bargain with the harborers of U.S. troop killers if that’s where the business was?
The Telegraph reported that Unocal had promised to start building the pipeline and paying the Taliban immediately, with the added inducements and a donation of ?500,000 to the University of Nebraska for courses in Afghanistan to train 400 teachers, electricians, carpenters and pipefitters.
The Telegraph also reported, “The US government, which in the past has branded the Taliban’s policies against women and children “despicable”, appears anxious to please the fundamentalists to clinch the lucrative pipeline contract.” In a paper prepared by Neamatollah Nojumi, at the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Nojumi wrote in August 1997 that Madeline Albright sat in a “full-dress CIA briefing” on the Caspian region. CIA agents then accompanied “some well-trained petroleum engineers” to the region. Albright concluded that shaping the region’s policies was “one of the most exciting things that we can do.”
It’s also exciting to the Bush Administration. According to the authors of Bin Laden, the Hidden Truth, one of the FBI’s leading counter terrorism agents, John O’Neill, resigned last year in protest over the Bush Administration’s alleged obstruction of his investigation into bin Laden. (A similar complaint has been filed on behalf of another unidentified FBI Agent by the conservative Judicial Watch public interest group.) Supposedly the Bush Administration had been meeting since January 2001 with the Taliban, and was also reluctant to offend Saudi Arabians who O’Neill had linked to bin Laden. Mr. O’Neill, after leaving the FBI, assumed the position of security director at the World Trade Center, where he was killed in the 911 attacks.
As America’s New War now begins focusing on other “rogue nations,” UNOCAL’s stars have magically aligned. About two months after the Houston parties, UNOCAL executive John Maresca addressed the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific and urged support for establishment of an investor-friendly climate in Afghanistan, “… we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company.” Meaning that UNOCAL’s ability to construct the Afghan pipeline was a cause worthy of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Maresca’s prayers have been answered with the Taliban’s replacement. As reported in Le Monde, the new Afghan government’s head, Hamid Karzai, formerly served as a UNOCAL consultant. Only nine days after Karzai’s ascension, President Bush nominated another UNOCAL consultant and former Taliban defender, Zalmay Khalilzad, as his special envoy to Afghanistan."
Bush, Enron, UNOCAL and the Taliban » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
Although, I can't seem to confirm that Karzai served as a UNOCAL consultant. Karzai's history with America is shady and haven't had a chance to shift through all I can find.
Their wealth is independent of the wars, which are about exercising & gaining power (to politicians).
The real fossil fuel money is actually right here in Americastan.
dust1n
Zindīq
The United States never recognized the Taliban government in Afghanistan. However, Ahmed Rashid states that the U.S. indirectly supported the Taliban through its ally in Pakistan between 1994 and 1996 because Washington viewed the Taliban as anti-Iranian, anti-Shia and pro-Western.[294] Washington furthermore hoped that the Taliban would support development planned by the U.S.-based oil company Unocal.[295] For example, it made no comment when the Taliban captured Herat in 1995, and expelled thousands of girls from schools.[296] In late 1997, American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright began to distance the U.S. from the Taliban, and the American-based oil company Unocal withdrew from negotiations on pipeline construction from Central Asia.[297]
One day before the August 1998 capture of Mazar, bin Laden affiliates bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa, killing 224 and wounding 4,500, mostly Africans. The U.S. responded by launching cruise missiles on suspected terrorist camps in Afghanistan, killing over 20 though failing to kill bin Laden or even many Al-Qaeda. Mullah Omar condemned the missile attack and American President Bill Clinton.[298] Saudi Arabia expelled the Taliban envoy in protest over the refusal to turn over bin Laden, and after Mullah Omar allegedly insulted the Saudi royal family.[299] In mid-October the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to ban commercial aircraft flights to and from Afghanistan, and freeze its bank accounts worldwide.[300]
Adjusting its counterinsurgency strategy, in October 2009, the U.S announced plans to pay Taliban fighters to switch sides.[301]
On November 26, 2009, in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, President Hamid Karzai said there is an "urgent need" for negotiations with the Taliban, and made it clear that the Obama administration had opposed such talks. There was no formal American response.[302][303]
In December 2009, Asian Times Online reported that the Taliban had offered to give the US "legal guarantees" that they would not allow Afghanistan to be used for attacks on other countries, and that there had been no formal American response.[160]
On December 6, U.S officials indicated that they have not ruled out talks with the Taliban.[304] Several days later it was reported that Gates saw potential for reconciliation with the Taliban, but not with Al-Qaeda. Furthermore, he said that reconciliation would politically end the insurgency and the war. But he said reconciliation must be on the Afghan government's terms, and that the Taliban must be subject to the sovereignty of the government.[305]
In 2010, General McChrystal said his troop surge could lead to a negotiated peace with the Taliban.[306]
Taliban - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Of course, more recently:
The Taliban comeback - Al Jazeera English
dust1n
Zindīq
Not entirely:
Halliburton's businesses. Conversely, the company is still incorporated in the U.S., generating approximately 49% of its revenue from this country in 2010.[3] This keeps it extremely sensitive to downturns in the U.S. economy as well as changes to U.S. environmental legislation.
Stock:Halliburton Company (HAL)
"Vice President Dick Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over $8 million in 2005, an increase of more than 3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to rake in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit government contracts.
An analysis released by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) reveals that as Halliburton’s fortunes rise, so do the Vice President’s. Halliburton has already taken more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney administration for work in Iraq. They were also awarded many of the unaccountable post-Katrina government contracts, as off-shore subsidiaries of Halliburton quietly worked around U.S. sanctions to conduct very questionable business with Iran (See Story #2). “It is unseemly,” notes Lautenberg, “for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his administration funnels billions of dollars to it.”
According to the Vice President’s Federal Financial Disclosure forms, he holds the following Halliburton stock options:
100,000 shares at $54.5000 (vested), expire December 3, 2007
33,333 shares at $28.1250 (vested), expire December 2, 2008
300,000 shares at $39.5000 (vested), expire December 2, 2009
The Vice President has attempted to fend off criticism by signing an agreement to donate the after-tax profits from these stock options to charities of his choice, and his lawyer has said he will not take any tax deduction for the donations. However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) concluded in September 2003 that holding stock options while in elective office does constitute a “financial interest” regardless of whether the holder of the options will donate proceeds to charities. Valued at over $9 million, the Vice President could exercise his stock options for a substantial windfall, not only benefiting his designated charities, but also providing Halliburton with a tax deduction.
CRS also found that receiving deferred compensation is a financial interest. The Vice President continues to receive deferred salary from Halliburton. While in office, he has received the following salary payments from Halliburton:
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in 2001: $205,298
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in 2002: $162,392
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in 2003: $178,437
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in 2004: $194,852
(The CRS report can be downloaded at: http://lautenberg.senate.gov/Report.pdf)
These CRS findings contradict Vice President Cheney’s puzzling view that he does not have a financial interest in Halliburton. On the September 14, 2003 edition of Meet the Press in response to questions regarding his relationship with Halliburton, where from 1995 to 2000 he was employed as CEO, Vice President Cheney said, “Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush’s vice president, I’ve severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had, now, for over three years.”
UPDATE BY JOHN BYRNE
The media has routinely downplayed Cheney’s involvement and financial investment in Halliburton, one of the largest U.S. defense contractors that received supersized no-bid contracts in Iraq. Ultimately, the importance of the story is that the Vice President of the U.S. is able to use his position of power to reap rewards for his former company in which he has a financial investment. Halliburton may also benefit from a chilling effect in which the Pentagon is more likely to favor Cheney’s firm to seek favor with the White House.
Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options, and receives a deferred salary of about $200,000 a year. According to Cheney’s most recent tax returns, he held $2.5 million in retirement accounts, much of which likely came from his former defense firm.
Cheney recently filed disclosure reports that show he is valued at $94 million.
Senator Lautenberg’s disclosure, brought forward by Raw Story, received no mainstream coverage. While the press has often noted that Cheney was formerly Halliburton’s CEO, they routinely fail to mention how much money he accrued from the firm during his service there. They also fail to mention that he continues to receive a pension."
24. Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year – Top 25 of 2007
More so Canada. But yeah, war zones tend to drive up the cost of doing business. It's not just fossil fuels, by the way. It's everything: Economy of Afghanistan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think American anticipated betting able to capture more of these contracts with Afghanistan's government than they did. In order to help make the invasions legitimate, the inflow of capital is to be a global project. China does a great job at annoying Western economic globalists with their ability to make labor cheaper and out compete them.
Aquitaine
Well-Known Member
After a brief period of being scattered, they'll quickly regroup and things will be back to the way they were before the 2001 invasion. Except now with more live explosive munitions lying around and dead civilians.
Ultimately, was it worth it?
Aquitaine
Well-Known Member
Shouldn't have supported him and his Ba'ath Party throughout the 60's.
Shouldn't have armed Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.
Shouldn't have provided chemical elements to him which enabled him to gas the Kurds.