The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[David Andrews]

Has anybody followed the progress of the trans-Afghan oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea, which the Taliban held up for so long, prompting the 2001 invasion? 

Did oil companies get any construction underway during our occupation?

Have we allowed a Taliban resurgence because they finally made a pipeline security deal with us, since UBL's been "dead"?

Are any forces staying behind to protect a pipeline deal?  NATO?  Xe (former Blackwater) or other corporate mercenaries?

Why has Afghanistan "fallen" so fast?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/14/afghanistan-taliban-us-troops?traffic_source=Connatix

Edited August 17, 2021 by David Andrews

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Trump as president was Putin's agent and faithfully carried out the geopolitical strategy for Afghanistan that was given to him to implement.

Biden was indeed set up but he apparently willingly walked into the trap the had been devised in Russia, which decades ago lost its war in Afghanistan but learned important lessons from that experience.However, even Putin could not have foreseen the totally incompetent way Biden would implement the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    Is it another example of the oxymoron known as "military intelligence?"

    I'm wondering why our military intelligence people failed to anticipate the rapid capitulation of U.S. backed Afghan forces to the Taliban-- a process which, apparently, began after Trump and Pompeo negotiated their treaty with the Taliban in early 2020.

    

[Jeff Carter]

In 1979, Afghanistan was a secular nation which at least in the large population centres enjoyed equality for all persons under a relatively popular socialist government.This arrangement was deliberately destroyed by the United States, which directed money, armaments and encouragement to a conservative fundamentalist religious cult as a means to geopolitical advantage. Later, even before the events of 9-11, US leaders decided to overthrow these same fundamentalists and militarily occupy the country. Afghanistan, under US and NATO occupation, duly became one of the most corrupt entities on the planet, a sinkhole where over $2 trillion literally disappeared in plain sight. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the responsibility does not extend much beyond D.C.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Jeff Carter
clarification

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Has anybody followed the progress of the trans-Afghan oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea, which the Taliban held up for so long, prompting the 2001 invasion? 

Did oil companies get any construction underway during our occupation?

Have we allowed a Taliban resurgence because they finally made a pipeline security deal with us, since UBL's been "dead"?

Are any forces staying behind to protect a pipeline deal?  NATO?  Xe (former Blackwater) or other corporate mercenaries?

Why has Afghanistan "fallen" so fast?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/14/afghanistan-taliban-us-troops?traffic_source=Connatix

David,

You might be interested in reading this article:

The Oil Connection: Afghanistan and Caspian Sea oil pipeline routes

https://web.archive.org/web/20020615125843/http://www.newhumanist.com/oil.html

Scroll down about 2/3 of the way down the page and read through the Possible Caspian Oil Routes

I think the southerly, Afghanisatan route has been abandoned in favor of the westerly route from the Caspian through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea.

That's why Azerbaijan has been so much on the news lately. It think it also explains Ivanka Trump's interest in building a Trump hotel in Baku.

Steve Thomas

 

[David Andrews]

1 hour ago, Steve Thomas said:

I think the southerly, Afghanisatan route has been abandoned in favor of the westerly route from the Caspian through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea.

Thank you, Steve.  Will get my full attention and lead to further research.

Somehow, I get the itchy feeling that our long-term strategy will be to go back to Afghanistan, as we did in Iraq.

Either that, or this is a Trump deal with Putin, swapping Afghanistan for influence in the Azerbaijian-Georgia route.

Edited August 17, 2021 by David Andrews

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

In 1979, Afghanistan was a secular nation which at least in the large population centres enjoyed equality for all persons under a relatively popular socialist government.This arrangement was deliberately destroyed by the United States, which directed money, armaments and encouragement to a conservative fundamentalist religious cult as a means to geopolitical advantage. Later, even before the events of 9-11, US leaders decided to overthrow these same fundamentalists and militarily occupy the country. Afghanistan, under US and NATO occupation, duly became one of the most corrupt entities on the planet, a sinkhole where over $2 trillion literally disappeared in plain sight. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the responsibility does not extend much beyond D.C.

    I notice that using Muslims to attack communists was a popular CIA stratagem for decades -- going back to Indonesia in the 60s.  They used the same stratagem with Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and it was used in the 1990s in Bosnia and Kosovo (again with Osama Bin Laden) to attack the communist Yugoslav regime in Belgrade.*

   Few people seem to know that Bin Laden and his mujaheddin colleagues (i.e., "Al Qaeda") were using Bosnian passports in the 1990s, while supporting the Islamic Izetbegovic regime in Bosnia (and the Muslim KLA in Kosovo) in their war against the communist rump state in Belgrade.  The Saudis provided the funding.

   Fewer still seem to know that the CIA was arming and backing "Al Qaeda" (and Al Nusra) in our proxy war against Assad's regime in Syria, again with Saudi funding.

   Sibel Edmonds claimed that Osama Bin Laden was a CIA asset before and after 9/11.**

* https://www.amazon.com/Unholy-Terror-Bosnia-Al-Qaida-Global-ebook/dp/B003IT6PYK

** https://www.amazon.com/Classified-Woman-Sibel-Edmonds-Story/dp/0615602223/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Sibel+Edmonds&qid=1629225276&s=books&sr=1-1

Edited August 17, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Somehow, I get the itchy feeling that our long-term strategy will be to go back to Afghanistan, as we did in Iraq.

Either that, or this is a Trump deal with Putin, swapping Afghanistan for influence in the Azerbaijian-Georgia route.

David,

I don't think so.

If you look at a map, Afghanistan sits astride the major highway linking the Middle East and China on the east/west axis, and the Russian Steppes and the Arabian Sea on the north/south axis.

But everybody seems to want to go around it rather than through it. It's been called the Roundabout of the Ancient World

It's also been called The Graveyard of Empires, going back to Alexander the Great and Darius The Great. Even Genghis Khan couldn't hold it.

The Azerbaijian-Georgia oil route was designed to freeze out Russia. They wanted the oil from Central Asia to go north of the Caspian Sea across Kazakhstan.

Steve Thomas

[David Andrews]

42 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

The Azerbaijian-Georgia oil route was designed to freeze out Russia. They wanted the oil from Central Asia to go north of the Caspian Sea across Kazakhstan.

 

On this point: Most of the post-9/11 books and articles that address the pipeline routes say that the oil companies were leery of the former Soviet Azerbaijian-Georgia route because of Russian jealousy and its complications.  I'll look more closely at those.

[Ron Bulman]

I don't now how accurate Insider polls are but Bush II did start this round regarding the last 20 years.

Americans Rank Bush As Most Responsible for Outcome of Afghanistan War (businessinsider.com)

[Douglas Caddy]

[Douglas Caddy]

6 hours ago, Kathy Beckett said:

Doug, From what I'm hearing, our purpose there was to train Afghan soldiers to protect their country. This is something they didn't do. All the monies sent to them were abused by the Afghani govt. Never went to what it was supposed to go for.

So if we stayed, nothing would change. 

(Did you watch Rachel last night? She brought all of this up.)

Kathy:

We have tens of thousand U.S.. military personnel still in South Korea, Japan. Germany and elsewhere. Even 5,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan would have continued the stabilization of the country and protected the general population. The decision to withdraw left a billion dollars worth of our military equipment in the hands of he Taliban. Now it is one of the best equipped armies in the world. The plan to pullout was a complete disaster. The Taliban may now kill thousands of Afghans and then start a war of terror against Western Europe and America. 

I shall watch Rachel tonight and the rest of the week to hear her analysis of this and those she interviews.

Doug

[W. Niederhut]

35 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Kathy:

We have tens of thousand U.S.. military personnel still in South Korea, Japan. Germany and elsewhere. Even 5,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan would have continued the stabilization of the country and protected the general population. The decision to withdraw left a billion dollars worth of our military equipment in the hands of he Taliban. Now it is one of the best equipped armies in the world. The plan to pullout was a complete disaster. The Taliban may now kill thousands of Afghans and then start a war of terror against Western Europe and America. 

 

Serious question, especially now that some people are again raising the specter of the Taliban as a source of "terror" against Western Europe and America.

I would love to hear from Larry Hancock on this one.

What, exactly, is the evidence that the Taliban was ever a source of "terror" against Western Europe and the U.S.?

That notion has been endlessly drummed into our heads by our mainstream media for the past 20 years, like a Red Scare type mantra.  We could call it the Green Menace. 

Evidence?  The video and audio tapes repeatedly televised by the U.S. mainstream media of Bin Laden allegedly confessing that he was responsible for 9/11 have been exposed as crude fakes and false translations.

The Bush-Cheney carpet bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 was planned before 9/11, and was initiated on the grounds that the CIA's old mujaheddin associate, Osama Bin Laden, did 9/11, and was being harbored by the Taliban.  (Bin Laden twice denied having anything to do with 9/11 in 2001 -- but his statements to Al Jazeera and to a journalist in Pakistan were completely blacked out of the U.S. media.)

The Taliban said in September of 2001 that they would turn Bin Laden over to the U.S. authorities if the Bush administration gave them some evidence that Bin Laden was actually involved in the 9/11 attacks.  But we had no evidence.  Then we started bombing Afghanistan.  It was the beginning of Cheney and Rumsfeld's Project for a New American Century.

The narrative that Bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" were responsible for 9/11 was televised on 9/11 by CNN, the BBC, and Sky Television, by L. Paul Bremer, Ehud Barak, and Henry Kissinger, respectively.  Then it was endlessly repeated by Bush administration officials.  As a psy op, it was similar to the mass media blitz on 11/22/63 promptly labelling Lee Harvey Oswald as JFK's assassin, before Oswald was even charged with the crime by the Dallas Police.

Both Dick Cheney and FBI Director Robert Mueller later testified that evidence implicating Osama Bin Laden in the 9/11 attacks "was never forthcoming."

Imagine LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover testifying that JFK was actually killed by a bullet fired from the Grassy Knoll!

So, if Osama Bin Laden was, in fact, a Lee Harvey Oswald type patsy, why are we still repeating the old Bush-Cheney mantra blaming the Taliban for alleged international "terrorism?"

[Douglas Caddy]

Taliban2.0 could well be far more dangerous than 1.0. This is because the U.S. last week left sundry military equipment and arms behind, including modern fighter aircraft, Blackhawk helicopters, tanks, bombs and lots other things. its reach into other countries will be feasible. 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Taliban2.0 could well be far more dangerous than 1.0. This is because the U.S. last week left sundry military equipment and arms behind, including modern fighter aircraft, Blackhawk helicopters, tanks, bombs and lots other things. its reach into other countries will be feasible. 

And yet, Doug, if I'm not mistaken, the tribal warlords of Afghanistan have never been especially imperialistic or invasive, have they?  Is the concern that they would use the U.S. weaponry to attack neighboring Islamic countries like Pakistan, Uzbekistan, or Iran?

This brings us back to my question (above) about the origin and substance of beliefs that the Taliban is some sort of international Green Menace, requiring a continuation of Bush and Cheney's so-called, "War on Terror."

We bombed and occupied their country, ostensibly, to get the Saudi guy who had worked previously with the CIA.  Although, admittedly the Bush-Cheney "War on Terror" in Afghanistan and Iraq always seemed like a massive military operation in search of a rationale.

 

Edited August 18, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Ron Bulman]

Cat Sweat. Sedition Hunters.  Capitol Hunters.  I didn't know facial recognition technology was available to the general public.  "Beat him with an American Flag pole", after he'd been drug down the steps.  These supporters of the Police.

A bodybuilding Trump fan photographed dragging a police officer during the Capitol riot has been arrested after a months-long hunt by internet sleuths (msn.com)