Trump administration installs advocate for quick Afghanistan withdrawal at Pentagon
- Thread starter gorfias
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Yes and no.
There was talk of a trans-Afghan oil pipeline (and an LNG pipeline) which has since come to fruition as both lines are now being built, but in truth the utility of the lines is limited and the risk-to-reward ratio is fundamentally out of whack due to the vulnerability of overland pipelines and the instability of basically the entire region. The short version of the story is it had been simply cheaper and less risky to ferry oil across the Caspian to Azerbaijan, then through existing pipelines out to the Black Sea...at least until western-Russian relations soured, and now the pipeline is a "necessity" to break Russian control of central Asian fossil fuels transport. Which is why work on the pipelines didn't materialize until 2018.
So, no, it wouldn't have been a cause to invade Afghanistan with the war on terror as a pretense, nor a persuasive reason to stay in Afghanistan for the next fourteen years.
My take on the matter is, considering the ridiculous amount of mineral deposits in Afghanistan weren't identified and proven until 2007-2010 (the reason to stay), it was absolutely initially a narco war with terror as a pretense. The part you don't hear is that prior to the invasion, three-quarters of the world's illicit heroin was produced in Afghanistan and the Taliban cooperated with the UN to reduce Afghan opium poppy production by 99% between 2000-2002...the other side of that story being the Taliban used the opportunity to seize opium poppy stores, and continued producing heroin to make a metric fuckload of money due to the short-term market run. The US invasion put illicit Afghan opiates back on the global market, except it would be the US calling the shots which is how and why you end up with pictures like that I posted -- of US soldiers patrolling and protecting illicit Afghan poppy fields.
Meanwhile, guess which Golden Crescent country with a massive comparative advantage in opium poppy production was excluded from international treaties for licit production, in order to protect French, Australian, Indian, Spanish, and Turkish export markets. And still is for that matter, despite that including that country in those treaties and a modicum of investment to create modern refining facilities would solve many of that country's deep economic woes practically overnight.
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I meant pointless military invasions/occupations, not the way the war is framed. Though that's a double edged knife nowadays, with insurgent attacks being filmed and broadcasted as jihadi propaganda. The campaign in Afghanistan also lasted so long now I don't have an impression many people are still interested. Or even know there is still a war there in the first place. The U.S. is still trying to rush a deal with the Taliban to atleast no longer harbor terrorists but ofcourse this is as much a pipe dream as the Vietcong promising to respect free elections in north Vietnam. But atleast this would allow the U.S. to leave with the tail between the legs and frame it as a political 'win'.
Appears it wasn't just my faulty memory. Not that I want one but that I recall a conspiracy theory that the real reason we were there was to create such a pipeline. Supposedly sidelined as an idea due to the instability in the region.
Afghanistan Oil Pipeline - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
oopps, should have read your post 1st before my reply above. Thank you for your considered response. Again, some conspiracy theories were saying we were there for that pipeline which I neither bought or dismissed. As for the other top heroin exporter you write of... Myanmar? Iran?
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That's not mutually exclusive. Terrorism is also sponsored by the Afghan heroin trade. Atleast there were connections between 9/11, then Taliban leader mullah Omar, Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and the Afghan jihad. Not that this warranted any protracted occupation.
Myself, I tend to think that the invasion of US was done in good faith, in that the stated reason (9/11) was mostly the real one. It was just handled really badly, and the drugs (and invading Iraq for no good reason at much the same time) was just a symptom of that.
Personally, I can't even really blame the Bush administration for a massive retaliation for the biggest attack on the US since Pearl Harbour. Sure, other ways of handling it than a war, but there's hardly outlandish. They just got everything wrong.
Personally, I can't even really blame the Bush administration for a massive retaliation for the biggest attack on the US since Pearl Harbour. Sure, other ways of handling it than a war, but there's hardly outlandish. They just got everything wrong.
If you're interested in the history I really recommend Ghost Wars by Steve Coll. It's an excellent, insightful read on the matter.
Ghost Wars - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
No, I'm still talking about Afghanistan. It was the world's leading heroin producer and exporter for a reason, that being it has a massive comparative advantage in opium poppy production, and it was excluded from opium poppy treaties to protect the export markets of Western countries and regionally-critical Western allies (remember that Afghanistan was neutral in WWII and continued trading with the Axis). And, it's economically kneecapped the country for decades, which is why and how the country is a hotbed of political and religious extremism.
Allowing Afghanistan to produce and export licit opiates would be a massive, not to mention sustainable, boon to the Afghan economy...at the cost of depriving Australia, France, Spain, Turkey, and India a major cash crop the price of which is sustained largely only through manufactured scarcity.
Not least of all when the Bush administration followed PNAC's advice practically to the letter, unsurprising considering nearly half of Bush admin officials were members or contributors to PNAC. Which, lest we forget, was not about waging a singular military engagement to eliminate an isolated threat to the country, but rather building the foundation for US unipolarity through military force in the 21st Century. Which is precisely why...
...we took on a soft, easy target initially, rather than gun for any country that actually played a significant role materially supporting 9/11. Like, for example, Saudi Arabia, any of the other Gulf states, or Pakistan which had far greater ties to al-Qaeda than the Taliban ever could or would have, and had done more to shelter and provide material support to al-Qaeda than the Taliban ever did. In fact, lest we forget the Taliban and al-Qaeda were at ideological and religious loggerheads because the Taliban were interested in nation-building and greater cooperation with the West, and al-Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan at the time was due to an alliance of convenience in order to fight the Northern Alliance.
Just as with Iraq, not only did we attack the wrong people, we attacked people who were regionally-stabilizing forces, which would have been allies against al-Qaeda.
- May 6, 2020
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How many trillions of dollars have we wasted this point on Afghanistan? And how many lives? And what do we have to show for it?
Anyone who wants us to stay there has to develop an actual realistic plan for "winning."
Anyone who wants us to stay there has to develop an actual realistic plan for "winning."
I've heard this is taking over, (from China?) sort of like how crack started outselling cocaine... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl
Some mix it with heroin so, maybe there will always be a market for heroin. Damn. More people should just focus on video games.
Mm.
Heroin (if injected) is particularly powerful as a drug of abuse because it gets to the brain very quickly so can give an intense high compared to most other opioids like morphine. Fentanyl is going to be relatively popular because, like heroin, it also gets into the brain quickly. This also makes them dangerous.
But frankly, the main reason the USA's got a particular problem with either heroin or fentanyl are oxycodone and hydrocodone, pushed by your own pharmaceutical companies and prescribed like candy by your own healthcare service. If you get huge numbers of people addicted to medical opioids and then take those meds away without a program to help them deal with the addiction, they'll try to get opioids from somewhere else.
It makes you wonder if the War on Drugs was actually just a monopolizing power play by Big Pharma
Mission Accomplished
How has this idea got bipartisan support and we've had 12 years of not pulling out