stinky wrote:Let me ask you guys: what would you have done after 9/11?
What's funny is almost no 'liberal' rejected the invasion of afghanistan.
actually, i will raise my hand as one of the people who SERIOUSLY was against the invasion of afghanistan.
we were not attacked by afghanistan, or even a country at all, for that matter. but after that invasion, i talked to so many people who really said "afghanistan attacked us". they had NO IDEA that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were saudis and yet we were still buddy buddy with them.
afghanistan as a country did nothing to us, in fact, the crazy fundies running that country at the time were really an offshoot of our own policies inside that country during the cold war. we fucking funded them for pete's sake. literally MONTHS before 9/11, the US gave the taliban regime millions of dollars, ostensibly to curtail opium farming in the country.
May 2001: US Gives Taliban Millions
Secretary of State Powell announces that the US is granting $43 million in aid to the Taliban government, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop occurred in January on orders of the Taliban. [Los Angeles Times, 5/22/2001] This follows $113 million given by the US in 2000 for humanitarian aid. [US Department of State, 12/11/2001] A Newsday editorial notes that the Taliban “are a decidedly odd choice for an outright gift ... Why are we sending these people money—so much that Washington is, in effect, the biggest donor of aid to the Taliban regime?” [Newsday, 5/29/2001]
what is even sicker about this is all the hoohah we made about saddam being a horrible guy (which he was), but the taliban? these guys are sickos. as ar the people we buddied up to to depose them...we just keep making such nice friends...
but we were buddying up because we wanted something they had: the direct route for a pipeline to get oil from the oil reserves in areas north of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. we also wanted the ability to tap the natural gas reserves as well. well, we had shot missiles at em in 1999, so they were prolly not real happy with us, but the nice chunks of money they got from us prolly greased the wheels a bit.
but here came 9/11 and an emmanuel goldstein figure to go after, who was known to hide there and BING! perfect excuse to bomb the shit out of an already mostly destroyed country (thanks again cold war). and then LOOKIE...we install hamid karzai, whose ties to Unocal (the company that wanted the pipeline) make him a great choice. guess who else benefits from building oil pipelines? your favorite and mine...halliburton.
so in summation, afghanistan was just as important to the US plan to keep their hands on the world's natural resources as iraq was.
some fun links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD201A.html
this is a great timeline:
http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/p ... meline.htm
my favorite part is: Unocal says it will give aid to to Afghan warlords once they agree to form a council to supervise the project. Taliban take Kabul.
Unocal expresses suport for Taliban takover, saying it makes pipeline project easier. Unocal later says it was misquoted.
i guess my main issue is that some people will call the things i have pointed out in this post paranoid ranting, or completely untrue, without first stopping to read the points and ask themselves why it all comes together so nicely.
but the facts are there, you just have to put them together.
so yeah, i was totally against the attack on afghanistan. and there's why...
(but NEVER mercyplease!)
