Reasons for invading Afghanistan

[A New Era]

I've heard some talk of the U.S. being very eager in regards to construction of oil pipelines in Afghanistan.


Anyways, I'm not really familiar with U.S. goals in Afghanistan. Anyone who have any good and realistic suggestions?

[non-vio-resist]

I've heard some talk of the U.S. being very eager in regards to construction of oil pipelines in Afghanistan.


Anyways, I'm not really familiar with U.S. goals in Afghanistan. Anyone who have any good and realistic suggestions?


It's called BLATANT FUCKING IMPERIALISM!!!!!!:crying:

[Ultra-Violence]

^^^^
That and opium

[A New Era]

Please be a little more constructive, non-vio-resist. If you are going to say "imperialism" you should elaborate on their goals. Imperialism is a means to an end, not an end in itself.


That and opium

Could you elaborate?

Taliban makes money out of the opium. Does the U.S. make money on opium? If so, how?

[Martin Blank]

I've heard some talk of the U.S. being very eager in regards to construction of oil pipelines in Afghanistan.

Not oil pipelines, natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea fields. Michael Moore covered the issue in his Fahrenheit 911.

[The Intransigent Faction]

Please be a little more constructive, non-vio-resist. If you are going to say "imperialism" you should elaborate on their goals. Imperialism is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Could you elaborate?

Taliban makes money out of the opium. Does the U.S. make money on opium? If so, how?

Well, as a Canadian, I know of the reasons for America's involvement but as for details I know much of Canada's involvement as well.
It is essentially neo-imperialism as the occupation certainly puts Canada & America in positions of great influence as far as what happens in Afghanistan.
Remember that the Taliban were originally backed by the West as a counterrevolutionary movement. That of course backfired as Afghanistan developed into a sort of theocratic dictatorship. You most likely know this but it's important to highlight because this makes it difficult to argue that the bourgeois West is there on moral/ethical grounds. What other reason could they have?
Just like in Iraq, the presence of Western troops is fanning the flames of fundamentalism and as a result this is pointed to as justification for continued occupation. The attempt at revolution in Afghanistan was crushed years ago and now that the U.S. puppets have gone rogue and are no longer necessary to use in a proxy war against the Soviets, the West has decided they've served their purpose and should now be disposed of.
Granted, the Taliban was a brutal regime, but what the West seeks to do is establish Capitalism in Afghanistan which would naturally mean another market for Western leaders to exploit. We're there to grant power to political opportunists willing to ally themselves with Western bourgeois for their own benefit. Karzai himself is former Taliban. That, my friend, is blatant imperialism.
As for opium, Opium production has in fact skyrocketed during the invasion and Afghanistan has become the primary source of opium worldwide. This means that drugs like heroin end up in the veins of workers all throughout the West. This is used to fund the insurgency. For all it's bragging about assistance in development, under the West's watch the opium industry has become increasingly profitable. Workers are left to resort to growing opium as a desperate bid for a sustainable living. Naturally when they feel that this means of sustainment is threatened, they will take up arms and are quickly branded as "Taliban" or at least Taliban sympathizers.
Put simply, the bourgeois are there to help themselves--not Afghan workers.
It's too easy to use contemporary hysteria to bury the past these days. There were in fact talks in the 90s with members of the former Taliban government regarding the construction of gas pipelines in Afghanistan.
So I suppose the best answer to your question would be that as far as I'm aware no evidence suggests a direct benefit by the American government or private businesses from Afghanistan's opium industry, but it is in fact the workers who are left to depend on this industry for sustainability and who inevitably take up arms when it is threatened. Meanwhile there are a variety of other ways to profit from the situation and the West's role in Afghanistan.

[non-vio-resist]

Please be a little more constructive, non-vio-resist. If you are going to say "imperialism" you should elaborate on their goals. Imperialism is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The post was a bit crude, but I believe the term imperialism, if one knows what it really means, needs no further elaboration. It's like saying Stalin was a state capitalist or Hitler was a fascist; these statements say what they need to say. I believe that the U.S. is occupying Afghanistan and the entire middle-east for the same "imperial ambitons" (to borrow Chomsky's phrase). This is the m.o. of any empire. When the U.S. does it, they are essentially looking for client states. Hussein and the taliban, while atrocious, were not per se client states of the empire. I mean, this was essentially the Cold War: small countries saw opportunity in different economic models than radical neo-liberal ones (offered by big countries like China and the USSR) and their countries were invaded for it; many of these countries were in the midst of democratic revoluition when the U.S. put a halt to that only to install respective dictators whos only qualification was either an affinity the "free market" (the Orwellian English euphemism for "profit over people"), or for one that let economists educated in places like the University of Chicago or Harvard to be the principle architects of the state economy.

While crude, I thought "blatent fucking imperialism" needed not further elaboration.

[RedAnarchist]

Whatever the reasons, the countries currently fighting the Taliban will need to prepare for a long war, because history shows that Afghanistan is not an easy place to control, especially from outside of it.