There is a good reason Afghanistan is called the graveyard of Empires. I don't think the Bush administration was operating in any known reality...so this "fantasy" was probably a part of it. The rest is greed and giving tax dollars to his buddies based on no bid contracts for civilians to take over many of the military functions...like cooks, mechanics, laundry, construction, etc....also throw in the "protection" role of Blackwater or whatever they call themselves these days...Xe I think...or did they change that too? You have a pretty sweet deal for defense contractors. Military industrial complex is swimming in cash...at least until the treasury is drained. He certainly didn't try to bolster the treasury with the tax cuts to the rich. The ones to the middle class and lower class were a pittance and in reality didn't do squat. Welcome to the fascist police state my friends...
-----Original Message----- From: Judah McAuley [mailto:ju...@wiredotter.com] Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 10:17 PM To: cf-community Subject: Re: Pics from the NATO Protest Afghanistan also has significant deposits of minerals used in high tech manufacturing. However, I really don't think that was the reason we invaded. It's possible that some far right delusional folks thought we might take over Afghanistan and suppress the Taliban and do a good job extracting resources and helping guard against an alliance over oil between Russia and the Middle East. But, given history, I think that most people in their right minds would have regarded that as a rather extreme fantasy. We can bomb a country back to the dark ages, but when it's already in the dark ages? Really, what are your odds of success? No, we've got the good old fashioned military industrial complex at work. I know, seems trite, doesn't it? Eisenhower warned us against it, after all. That makes it pretty long in the tooth. Obviously just hippy shit these days that people tell each other as they fit aluminum foil hats. There is a huge amount of money to be made and a huge amount of power to be had by simply being at war. Doesn't matter so much with who. There are advantages one way or another with different enemies. Sure, if we did manage to triumph in Afghanistan, it would have some nice benefits. Same thing for Iraq. Or Iran. But that's all secondary. A nice bonus, if you will. Keeping people afraid allows you to pass further draconian laws that blow away privacy. Being at war allows you to funnel massive amounts of money to a tiny number of big companies and agencies with secret budgets and no bids. Spending trillions on wars allows you to look at the increasing deficits and say, "oh no! We need to cut everywhere other than defense!" and put people further into poverty and even more into subjugation. The brilliant part of the "war on terror" is that it isn't a war with anyone. It's a war with an idea. No one ever gets to easily claim "we've won" and be able to show it. There is no white flag from the enemy. Anyone who ever says "we're done" will have a well trained group of media attack dogs jumping them and saying "you gave up and are a coward" and "you've placed everyone's children at risk". Hell, that's happened to Obama and he doubled down in Afghanistan. Nope. The legacy of 9/11 is that we have a country where we funnel almost unlimited (and totally untracked) amounts of money into an endless war against unknown and constantly changing enemies while sacrificing an untold number of civil liberties for no appreciable end game. There are plenty of other games within a game (like the millenarian folks that think that Israel has to have some sort of weird war stuff to happen for the rapture to come) but when you have hugely profitable companies making large amounts of money and government power brokers gaining greater control over the populace, they'll be pretty happy with a continued state of rolling unrest. Authoritarianism suits large industry and large government. And war is the best way to ensure that authoritarianism keeps a strong grip on our country. Judah On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Larry C. Lyons <larrycly...@gmail.com> wrote: > > exactly the only greed factor I can see is with KBR, but during that > time period they didn't have the same presence as they did in Iraq. I > think Tim can enlighten us on that - he was there. > > But the only real money to be made in Afghanistan are with opium and weed. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:351397 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
