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Wasn't the old joke that the US only invaded countries where there was oil ? (i.e. in answer to your question, the US would have "helped" if it was oil that wa

Wasn't the old joke that the US only invaded countries where there was oil ? (i.e. in answer to your question, the US would have "helped" if it was oil that was in the ground)

somethoughts 5y ago
I think Key & Peele covered the topic well in this one! But We Have Oil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3jcmFNxRzQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3jcmFNxRzQ
- MikeDelta 5y ago
  Key & Peele are great at bringing serious topics to the attention, but also just poking fun at typical characters we encounter in daily life.
hncurious 5y ago
Oil is largely a red herring, in this case anyway. Julian Assange in 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war" https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1427929346262642688 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1427929346262642688 US veteran that oversaw training of Afghan forces, 2021: "I would sit in on staff meetings, because part of my position there was with a Joint Command that was building the Afghan military and police force — the division that I worked with was about training and policy for the Afghan police. And that also included arming and funding them. I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment." https://mtracey.substack.com/p/a-big-money-funneling-operation-afghanistan https://mtracey.substack.com/p/a-big-money-funneling-operati... And now said equipment is confirmed lost or in the hands of the Taliban: "A U.S. defense official on Monday confirmed the Taliban’s sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous." https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-army-taliban-185017ba2944eb43392a0ad8ffffb25f https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-army-taliban-185017ba29...
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  with this in mind and playing along why did the US stop the endless war there? One answer could be: it was Trump who started this and he wanted to stop the corruption, and the US is getting better. Another answer could be: it hasn't stopped, its just a lull before the US starts up endless war again. I suspect that one can make any argument fit any reasons from any angle and there will be some truth in some of each of the ideas.
  - wpurvis1 5y ago
    The US will be going back to war as soon as it can find a casus belli. The US Dept of defense is the largest single employer on the planet. Our arms industry is enormous. If there is no war the industry faces the threat of reduced employment and ultimately income. Aside from that, here's a quote from Biden's speech about Afghanistan I find relevant. "Today, the terrorist threat has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan: al Shabaab in Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Nusra in Syria, ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia. These threats warrant our attention and our resources." https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-afghanistan/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
  - peter422 5y ago
    Or maybe there are multiple competing interests, and the interest who wants an endless war lost out to public pressure and loss of faith of 2 different presidents. The war in Afghanistan was still fairly popular among the general public until very recently.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    That's what scares me; the pigs feeding at the trough of "endless war" aren't going to get less hungry, and they're not going to take kindly to the idea of missing a meal. No matter how many stupid looks they show on TV and how much "complete surprise" they proclaim, there's people been making a living off this war for a while and they saw the writing on the wall. Do we expect they've packed up and gone home to a quiet retirement? Or is the next chapter of "how much shit can we waste" already on railcars?

Wasn't the old joke that the US only invaded countries where there was oil ? (i.e. in answer to your question, the US would have "helped" if it was oil that was in the ground)

somethoughts 5y ago

I think Key & Peele covered the topic well in this one! But We Have Oil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3jcmFNxRzQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3jcmFNxRzQ

MikeDelta 5y ago
Key & Peele are great at bringing serious topics to the attention, but also just poking fun at typical characters we encounter in daily life.

hncurious 5y ago

Oil is largely a red herring, in this case anyway. Julian Assange in 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war" https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1427929346262642688 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1427929346262642688 US veteran that oversaw training of Afghan forces, 2021: "I would sit in on staff meetings, because part of my position there was with a Joint Command that was building the Afghan military and police force — the division that I worked with was about training and policy for the Afghan police. And that also included arming and funding them. I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment." https://mtracey.substack.com/p/a-big-money-funneling-operation-afghanistan https://mtracey.substack.com/p/a-big-money-funneling-operati... And now said equipment is confirmed lost or in the hands of the Taliban: "A U.S. defense official on Monday confirmed the Taliban’s sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous." https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-army-taliban-185017ba2944eb43392a0ad8ffffb25f https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-army-taliban-185017ba29...

thinkingemote 5y ago
with this in mind and playing along why did the US stop the endless war there? One answer could be: it was Trump who started this and he wanted to stop the corruption, and the US is getting better. Another answer could be: it hasn't stopped, its just a lull before the US starts up endless war again. I suspect that one can make any argument fit any reasons from any angle and there will be some truth in some of each of the ideas.
- wpurvis1 5y ago
  The US will be going back to war as soon as it can find a casus belli. The US Dept of defense is the largest single employer on the planet. Our arms industry is enormous. If there is no war the industry faces the threat of reduced employment and ultimately income. Aside from that, here's a quote from Biden's speech about Afghanistan I find relevant. "Today, the terrorist threat has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan: al Shabaab in Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Nusra in Syria, ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia. These threats warrant our attention and our resources." https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-afghanistan/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
- peter422 5y ago
  Or maybe there are multiple competing interests, and the interest who wants an endless war lost out to public pressure and loss of faith of 2 different presidents. The war in Afghanistan was still fairly popular among the general public until very recently.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  That's what scares me; the pigs feeding at the trough of "endless war" aren't going to get less hungry, and they're not going to take kindly to the idea of missing a meal. No matter how many stupid looks they show on TV and how much "complete surprise" they proclaim, there's people been making a living off this war for a while and they saw the writing on the wall. Do we expect they've packed up and gone home to a quiet retirement? Or is the next chapter of "how much shit can we waste" already on railcars?