Did oil influence America's decision to invade Afghanistan? »
Posted By dissent 6 months ago in News
America has wanted a new government in Afghanistan since at least 1998, three years before the attacks on 11 September 2001. The official report from a meeting of the U.S. Government's foreign policy committee on 12 February 1998, available on the U.S. Government website, confirms that the need for a West-friendly government was recognised long before the War on Terror that followed September 11th:
"The U.S. Government's position is that we support multiple pipelines... The Unocal pipeline is among those pipelines that would receive our support under that policy. I would caution that while we do support the project, the U.S. Government has not at this point recognized any governing regime of the transit country, one of the transit countries Afghanistan, through which that pipeline would be routed. But we do support the project."
[ U.S. House of Reps., "U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998 ]
"The only other possible route [for the desired oil pipeline] is across Afghanistan which has of course its own unique challenges."
[ "U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998 ]
"CentGas can not begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place."
[ "U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998 ]
The Afghanistan oil pipeline project was finally able to proceed in May 2002. This could not have happened if America had not taken military action to replace the government in Afghanistan.
Read Full Story at thedebate.org »
1781 Views Share Story 73 Comments Report
Submitted By:
dissent
we live in a culture of war.
let's make it a culture of peace.
"my country is the world. and my religion is to ...
RSS Join the Discussion
+ Add CommentComments So Far: 73 (view all)
-
-
100%
hyperbola6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
It is more complicated than just oil. It has to do with "imperial dominance" in Central Asia. Obama is just playing the same game as bushie.
Reply
The secrets of Obama's surge
Is United States President Barack Obama telling it like it is as far as his new strategy for the Afghanistan and Pakistan war theater - AfPak, in Pentagonspeak - is concerned? There are reasons to believe otherwise. ...
The Afghanistan-Pakistan war has got to be 2009's prime theater of the absurd. It took the New York Times and the usual "American officials" something like 13 years to "discover" that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - a Central Intelligence Agency twin - helps the Taliban. And this while the CIA, alongside their ISI pals, is compiling a mega hit list in the Pashtun tribal areas inside Pakistan. Maybe this is what US Central Command supremo General David "I'm always positioning myself for 2012" Petraeus means by a "trilateral" love affair, as he told CNN's State of the Union. ...
Obama is selling the surge basically as nation building, based on trust. A hard sell if there ever was one - as Washington cannot trust the ISI or the Pakistani government, while the Pakistani masses don't trust Washington.....
...So this amounts to the State Department admitting that the Pentagon/Petraeus "humint" (human intelligence) component of counter-insurgency in AfPak, hailed as a gift from the Messiah all across US corporate media, is essentially useless. This also means there's no way of winning local hearts and minds....
So the question Americans must ask themselves is this: Would you buy a used car - sorry - war from people like Mullen, Petraeus, McKiernan? Well, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who's seen them all since John F Kennedy, wouldn't. For him, "they resemble all too closely the gutless general officers who never looked down at what was really happening in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the time have been called, not without reason, 'a sewer of deceit'." ...
.... So is AfPak the Pentagon's AIG - we gotta bail them out, can't let them fail? Is it a Predator drone war disguised as nation building? Will it become Obama’s Vietnam? Whatever it is, it's not about "terrorists". Not really. Follow the money. Follow the energy. Follow the map.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/05/the-secr...
-
-
-
100%
AnteUp6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
To be completely honest - I did not finish the book
Reply
referenced below, but even if you only read half of it,
you WILL question the 9/11 logic for war. The history of the visits of Taliban leaders to the U.S. - prior to 9/11 - as
our honored guests made me sick. So much for abusing their
women and girls - and our CONCERN! We wanted that pipeline,
BIG TIME. We didn't give a rat's patoutie about the people
of Afghanistan. We were very willing to deal with the Devil -
kind of reminded me of our relationship with Saddam.
Principles - don't ya love them?
Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Failed Search for bin Laden (Paperback)
by Wayne and Jean-Charles Brisard, Guillaume Dasquie Madsen-
100%
Jaydee406 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I have not read the book but will look for it next time in book store. The thing that gets me is it all was out there without a book so why is it no one seems to be reacting? Are people so indifferent about what their military and government does to others they don't care? Remember what they do to others they will do to you to keep the status Quo.
Reply
-
-
44%
slate6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I think it was about Jet Fuel. Thousands of gallons of it that burned 3000 people to death, by folks associated with OBLs Taliban, which was in Afghanistan.
Reply
I know I know, after we were attacked on 9/11, we should have immediately set upon Switzerland with all the might we could muster, but on second thought, it made more sense to go for Afghanistan since they have oil.-
83%
wtagg6 months ago
-
100%
djn3nunez36 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
we should have immediately set upon Switzerland with all the might we could muster
Reply
Nah,the plan was to use the next al Queda attack as the catalyst to expand US military influence in the region. Saddam's Iraq was an easy mark. Both Powell and Rice confirmed early in 2001 that it did not WMD and it had not been able to rebuild it's military after the first war. So Iraq was the logical strike. It was a strategic victory for the Taliban and al Queda as they had a chance to reconsitute their forces based in part on the propaganda generated by BW's invasion and occuaption of Iraq. It was a strategic blunder on the Presidents part the cost of which will be payed out over the next generation.
But they were expecting truck bombs not passenger jets.
Switzerland would be too hard to conquer. -
100%
dissent6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"If Americans were asked what they think their country is doing in Afghanistan, their answers would likely be one variation or another of "fighting terrorism", with some kind of connection to 9-11.
Reply
But what does that mean?
Of the tens of thousands of Afghans killed by American/NATO bombs over the course of seven years, how many can it be said had any kind of linkage to any kind of anti-American terrorist act, other than in Afghanistan itself during this period? Not one, as far as we know. The so-called "terrorist training camps" in Afghanistan were set up largely by the Taliban to provide fighters for their civil conflict with the Northern Alliance (minimally less religious fanatics and misogynists than the Taliban, but represented in the present Afghan government).
As everyone knows, none of the alleged 9-11 hijackers was an Afghan; 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia; and most of the planning for the attacks appears to have been carried out in Germany and the United States.
So, of course, bomb Afghanistan.
And keep bombing Afghanistan.
And bomb Pakistan.
Especially wedding parties (at least six so far)."
http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer65.html -
100%
hyperbola6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Obama and Terror as a Tool of Empire
Reply
Let's say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country's security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let's say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy – the machtpolitik – that you believe in...
...Well, here's one purely hypothetical approach you might try. You goad and provoke violent extremist groups into retaliating against your attacks, your civilian-slaughtering invasions and incursions into their territory. Being unable to confront directly your war machine – the largest, most advanced military force in the history of the world, sustained by a tsunami of public money that each year surpasses the military spending of the rest of the world – they naturally respond with "asymmetrical" operations. At first, these are directed at nearby targets: your supply lines, the forces of your local proxies and allies, and other chaos-inducing depredations in the groups' own regions, designed to foul the lines of your control and drive you out. Just as naturally, you use these attacks to justify an even greater military presence in their regions. The cycle inevitably, inexorably ratchets upwards and outwards, until at last the extremists strike at your homeland – either with your connivance, or your covert acquiescence, or, in any event, with your foreknowledge that such an attack was sure to come. This is the moment you have waited for; this is exactly what you wanted. Now you can whip the herd back into a martial frenzy, keep the Long War going, and push aside the rabble's petty, small-minded desires for a peaceful, prosperous life at home, minding their own business....
...We can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the "Af-Pak" front to launch terrorist attacks. ...
... When the Obama Administration speaks of "continuity" in American foreign policy, this is an integral part of what they are talking about. So look to see much more on TTP and the demon de jure, Baitullah Mehsud, as the bipartisan Long War grinds on and on, with its ever-present need for "catalyzing" – and terrorizing – the American people into support for the militarist project.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/01/obama-an...
-
-
45%
Endoscopy6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
These types of things could be said for any war we ever fought starting with the Revolutionary war. There are already other problems that were building the causes that brought on the war.
Reply
In this case the Taliban was and is a very disgusting terrorist organization imposing a harsh version of Sharia law on the people. They were against any non Muslim country and against the more secular Muslim countries. This cause many problems. They harbored other Muslim terrorist organizations like al Qaeda
Therefore this story is just a bunch of foolishness. Wars are very rarely started on the spur of the moment. The Taliban harboring al Qaeda which had sent terrorists attacking the US ans which had declared war on the US went on for years. The 9/11 incident was the second attack on the Twin Towers by al Qaeda. While the trigger point to war the pressure had been building up for years.
This is similar to WW2. The pressures of Germany and Japan had built and there was war in Europe and Asia before we became directly involved. Pressure had built for us to be involved. Pearl Harbor was just the trigger point.-
71%
hyperbola6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
If "humanitarian motives" were the motive for our wars, then we would have ended the zionist state of israel long ago. After all, they are the authors of the biggest refugee problem in the world and have 60 years of history of crimes against humanity.
Reply -
-
-
-
100%
djn3nunez36 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
This is similar to WW2.
Reply
In that FDR wanted to go to war and needed a catalyst? Pressure in the form a a raw materials embargo including oil, against Japan?
The similarities stop there. The Taliban and al Queda are simply not reminecent of either Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in any way shape of form.
-
-
100%
Hallucinations6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I must say there is plenty of facts in that article to prove that Bush had plans other than terrorists. I heard that it was over oil before but didn't really believe it. Well I believe it now. I honestly don't know what to say. Sign the petition folks. Tell people about the peitition and we'll get them to talk. We need to work togheter folks tell people.
Reply -
50%
vader826 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I am no fan of George Bush,and question the Iraq war, but Afghanistan was attacked because they were harboring those responsble for spilling blood on American soil. The article mentions previous planning for a potential invasion, it is not suprising considering Al-Queda's previous attacks on U.S. interests. In the case of both Iraq and Afghanistan I believe that we created our own enemies in the interest of opposing Soviet influence in the region, that being said, it seemed like the logical thing to do at the time,hindsight is always 20/20. Regardless of what created Al-Queda or the Taliban, they intentionally killed thousands of innocent civilans without provocation. Take note of the difference between collateral damage and deliberate acts of cowardace.
Reply-
100%
Jaydee406 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
You better rethink the term "without provocation". When you go into somebody else's house and cause trouble you invite it back into your own home so yes they had provocation to take Americans lives because Americans took lives in the region first. The real Question is why invade a country with full military when it was a criminal issue and should have been handled as such? Did they want people or land?
Reply -
100%
dissent6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"The article mentions previous planning for a potential invasion, it is not suprising considering Al-Queda's previous attacks on U.S. interests."
Reply
the article does "mention previous planning for a potential invasion" it also mentions that the planning was because of oil and how we wanted it, not because al qaeda. try reading the headline
-
-
sonofreasonComment removed: Hard Banned2 Replies
-
100%
NoWayMan6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
um, yeah.
Reply
Bush's texas oil buddies - led by Unocal out of Sugarland, TX and other companies, such as Enron - were actually holding meetings with the taliban a few years prior to 911 in an attempt to secure a deal for a trans-afghan pipeline. despite objections from many Unocal shareholders.
unocal then helped create the Central Asia Gas Pipeline (CentGas) consortium.
but the deal fell through. then Bridas from argentina stepped in to make the deal with the taliban. a tentative deal was hammered out but then what happened? argentina's economy fell apart. hmmmmmm.
then 911 happened.
then we blamed it all on the taliban, ignoring the fact that almost all the hijackers were from saudi arabia and not one sinlge hijacker was a taliban.
then we invaded afghanistan.
and now the trans-afghan pipeline is being built by CentGas (and btw, Unocal, which was bought by ChevronTexas, claims it no longer has ties with CentGas). -
-
AbuAmirahComment removed: Spammer, Hard Banned
-
Neutral
Nothing_Tangible6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Just do some research with an open mind and try to connect the dots in this list.
Reply
Samuel Prescott Bush
Fritz Thyssen
Adolph Hitler
E.R. Harriman
Frank & John D. Rockefeller
Turkmenistan
Pakistan
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A
Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board
Buckeye Steel
Remington Arms
National Association of Manufacturers
More News
LA Times
A story of shock, chaos and bravery unfolds in Ft. Hood shooting
Historic healthcare overhaul passes House
Afghanistan government says foreign officials are interfering
Unemployment rate rises above 10% ; Obama signs jobless benefit extension
Jason Rodriguez : Shooting at downtown Orlando office building leaves 5 hurt, 1 dead
Submit a Story
Advertisement
Add a Comment
Sign In With Your Propeller Account
Please keep your comments relevant to this story.
To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.