Source: Boiling Frogs PostWilliam Blum
With
the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good conclusion (or
halfway decent … or better than nothing … or let’s get the hell out of
here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis
we haven’t yet killed), the best and the brightest in our government and
media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears
that no one seems to remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was
not really about 9-11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has
created by its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines.
President Obama declared in August
2009: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a
war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do
so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even
larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more
Americans.”
Never mind that out of the tens of
thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in
Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do
with the events of September 11, 2001.
Never mind that the “plotting to
attack America” in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United
States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States bombed
those countries?
Indeed, what actually was needed to
plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United
States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven”
mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists
intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with
Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the
American occupation.
The only “necessity” that drew the
United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military
presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of
Central Asia — which reportedly contains the second largest proven
reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world — and build oil and
gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.
