At the time there was a lot of talk of the usual "making Afghanistan safe for American business" thing, that's been the actual motivation in some historical US

At the time there was a lot of talk of the usual "making Afghanistan safe for American business" thing, that's been the actual motivation in some historical US invasions of countries with very weak militaries. For example, a Slate article debunking one of the more popular specific claims of that sort, published Dec. 2001: https://slate.com/culture/2001/12/is-the-afghan-war-about-an-oil-pipeline.html https://slate.com/culture/2001/12/is-the-afghan-war-about-an... I'm not sure I find its debunking as complete or convincing as the author seems to think it is.