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A trillion dollars? Really? What a round figure. Wait a minute ... that reminds me of something that I read recently. Now, what was it? Oh yeah, it was this obs

A trillion dollars? Really? What a round figure. Wait a minute ... that reminds me of something that I read recently. Now, what was it? Oh yeah, it was this observation by Vijay Prashad over at CounterPunch. http://counterpunch.org/prashad06112010.html http://counterpunch.org/prashad06112010.html "On May 30, at 10:06am, the United States exchequer turned over its trillionth dollar to the U. S. armed forces for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A trillion dollars is a lot of money. As my friends at the National Priorities Project put it, if I made a $1 million a year, it would take me a million years to earn a trillion dollars. The U. S. government expended the same amount in nine years, fighting two wars. So what did our trillion tax dollars buy?" Alan Greenspan: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil” (The Age of Turbulence, 2007, p. 463). Me: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Afghanistan war is largely about gas and mineral wealth” (My unpublished international bestselling debut, 2011, p. 231). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline

alttab 16y ago
I'll file this story under "nuke, pillage, plunder." While I'm not for war of any kind, and least we seem to have a semi-legitimate reason to be over there now. However, if there was trillions of dollars of valuable minerals, one could venture to guess we knew about those a while ago.
- igravious 16y ago
  The thing is alttab, aren't we meant to have gone past that stage in our historical development? You know, plundering and pillaging and what-not. The problem is that any legitimate exploitation of this mineral wealth is delegitimatized (God help me, does that word even exist?) somewhat by the manner in which the wealth was found to exist. It'd be great if Afghanistan became the California of Central Asia but I'm not going to be holding my breath for that eventuality.
igravious 16y ago
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise at the down-votes. From the article: "An internal _Pentagon_ memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,”" and "“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, _commander of the United States Central Command_, said in an interview on Saturday." and "“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the _Pentagon_ team that discovered the deposits" and "The _Pentagon_ task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development." and "Soon, the _Pentagon_ business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai." If someone points out that the US Pentagon has discovered riches under the soil of a foreign country its troops are waging a war in I'll certainly point out how much that war effort has cost and is costing each and every person in the States.

alttab 16y ago

I'll file this story under "nuke, pillage, plunder." While I'm not for war of any kind, and least we seem to have a semi-legitimate reason to be over there now. However, if there was trillions of dollars of valuable minerals, one could venture to guess we knew about those a while ago.

igravious 16y ago
The thing is alttab, aren't we meant to have gone past that stage in our historical development? You know, plundering and pillaging and what-not. The problem is that any legitimate exploitation of this mineral wealth is delegitimatized (God help me, does that word even exist?) somewhat by the manner in which the wealth was found to exist. It'd be great if Afghanistan became the California of Central Asia but I'm not going to be holding my breath for that eventuality.

igravious 16y ago

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise at the down-votes. From the article: "An internal _Pentagon_ memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,”" and "“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, _commander of the United States Central Command_, said in an interview on Saturday." and "“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the _Pentagon_ team that discovered the deposits" and "The _Pentagon_ task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development." and "Soon, the _Pentagon_ business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai." If someone points out that the US Pentagon has discovered riches under the soil of a foreign country its troops are waging a war in I'll certainly point out how much that war effort has cost and is costing each and every person in the States.