Quote:
Originally Posted by Rochard
So your saying that we need a "foothold" in the Middle East in case there is a war?
Do you have any idea of how dumb that sounds? We need to start two wars in the Middle East "in case" we have a war in the Middle East?
The truth is no one has a viable reason for us to be in Afghanistan. Don't tell me we are taking resources we haven't taken, pipelines that haven't been built, or the fact that we started multiple wars in the Middle East to be in a better position in case there is a war in the Middle East.
You got nothing there.
|
No, not at all. I don't advocate any US, NATO or international community "footprint" or stronghold in the Middle East at all. I was just saying that occupation of the entire area, whether overtly military/security-oriented or underhandedly a la Iran/Mossadegh of the 1950s, is in their agenda and will probably be reached.
I think that area should (have been?) be allowed to develop or founder according to their means and resources. If there's any terrorism or targeted foreign interests in the area (and elsewhere) it's because the West has been dicking around there forever, at least since the early fifties, all in corporate interests, not even on a real idealogical foreign-policy front.
If the west hadn't grown so reliant on oil industry resource acquisition, maybe alternate energy industries could have flourished here at the expense of foreign resources, oil in particular.
The problem with US Foreign Policy is that it doesn't just want to be one of the players - it wants to dominate - to BE - the game board.
From the 80s and 90s to now it's been push and pull with those objectives, from Iran/Contra to the Iran/Iraq conflict to the Russian/Afghan situation. Then, two things happened that gave the neocons their hard-on - first they got their monkey-boy Bush elected with many of them in tow, and then 9/11 happened - from which they profitted in many ways, not just monetarily, which you have to admit whether 9/11 was a let-it-happen, made-it-happen or none-of-the-above event.
Also - regarding your statement about the US interest in Afghanistan's opium production: from Air America to Iran/Contra, to the Pablo Escobar consolidation in South America brought about by the CIA, and other such trafficking connivances of the special branches, can you really laugh off the possibility (granted it's undocumented yet) that certain levels of US foreign operations has an interest in the opium trade on an under-the-radar level?