The real reason for the US occupation of Afghanistan is:

[branders seine]

[randr]

1. Control of pipe line

[branders seine]

2. Unrec'ers are so gutless and predictable.

:rofl:

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

31. For who?

[madokie]

3. its all about the pipeline

the plot was hatched in the secret cheney the dick's energy plan

[branders seine]

24. I don't see how even a million troops

could protect that pipeline.

[Shagbark Hickory]

4. I can't vote. Because I don't think there is any good reason for being in Afganistan.

[branders seine]

18. when it comes to US foreign policy,

"real" and "good" rarely intersect.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Its a federally funded jobs program

[EFerrari]

15. That's true, it is. n/t

[Unvanguard]

6. Well, this is a nice unbiased poll. n/t

[branders seine]

17. It includes all flavors of the officially stated reasons,

reasons from Obama's war speech, reasons speculated upon here, and an "Other" option.

How is that biased?

[NightWatcher]

7. as a staging before we sweep into Pakistan in the event of a military coup

ah yes, I think we're getting ready to chime in on another nasty civil war under the guise of 'protecting the nukes'.

We'll then install a friendly dictator who will turn on us in 5-8 years causing yet another invasion and occupation

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

32. Why would ground troops be necessary for installing a friendly dictator?

We have plenty of ties to the Pakistani military and they're more than capable of seizing power on their own.

[gratuitous]

8. It's top sekrit

No buddy kneads to no y.

[Pavulon]

9. I'll unrec and mock piper logic. right up there with mihop and birthers in crazy

that shitty country does not have roads and some pie in the sky pipe is not only impossible but not on any agenda anywhere. 8 years no pipe.

[anonymous171]

25. The state is not going to build it, so of course it would not be on any agenda. nt

[Wwagsthedog]

10. Other - Feed the military/industrial complex.

[branders seine]

19. war profiteers and their perpetual wars.

That's undoubtedly a major factor.

[ipaint]

11. We are building permanent bases all over the middle east

It's bigger than a single pipeline.

[Peace4us]

12. Bankers Love Wars

There is a reason for all wars. Bankers love wars, foment wars, finance wars and support wars to get countries world wide in debt so that they can collect the interest on the loans. They make far more money getting countries in debt through war than through getting people into debt for credit cards and mortgages.

If you were to reform the monetary system, as Dennis Kucinich wishes to do, you would eliminate the financial incentive for war.

[stray cat]

13. And a pipeline hijacked the planes and killed thousands....

[branders seine]

20. exactly as many pipelines as Afghans did that

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

35. No pipelines sheltered al-Qaeda or played games when it came time to cough Usama up.

[Sebastian Doyle]

38. Funny that you would use that spelling.

Few people do. I've only seen it used before by government agencies and FAUX Noize, in fact.

Not that it's necessarily incorrect, of course. Arabic names tend to have several different translations, just look at Libya's leader. Qadaffi? Ghadaffi? Khadaffi? Daffi Duck? (I've seen that one spelled all with all those variations)

[WheelWalker]

14. Congenital Hubris

[NoPasaran]

16. To do a Nelson Muntz on all the DUers who hated on warmonger Hillary last year

Ha Ha

[Shagbark Hickory]

21. I changed my mind. "OTHER" reason is as follows.

We don't have enough jobs here to employ all the soldiers when they get home. So if we can keep them there indefinitely until there are enough jobs for them to come home to, then the Obama adminstration won't have to deal with the homeless vets problem that is soon to follow.

[branders seine]

22. Add all those soldiers to the unemployment rate, and what do you get?

election trouble in 2012

[lapfog_1]

23. If I had to guess, then I think there are elements within our government

each of which has their own reasons for occupation:

1. The Military Industrial Complex - They realize that increased spending for military hardware always boosts their bottom line. Military hardware breaks down much faster when deployed, especially to harsh battlefield environments. New hardware design (and thus, new hardware procurement) happens when commanders are faced with new situations.

2. The oil pipeline - I'm certain that Karzai was selected because someone thought that this would be the way to secure a new oil (and more importantly, natural gas) pipeline. There are likely factions in our government who promote this as a vital national security interest. No "outside the box" thinking with these folks, it's all about securing increasingly scarce fossil fuel resources in the "grand chess game".

3. There will be another faction, led by hidden government employees, that buys into the PNAC / neocon American empire dream. Their plan was to establish military bases everywhere in and around the ME. Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Both as a projection of American military might and (more to the point) as a way to secure Israel. Just because we voted the head neocons out of office with Bush / Cheney, there is a great amount of evidence that they staffed the upper echelons of the civil service with like minded people, often by having their political appointees either convert to civil service directly, or by hiring people into the civil service who adhere to their belief system. Political appointees can be removed, civil servants are much, much harder to root out.

4. There is likely another faction (CIA) who are actually in favor of the poppy/heroin trade and their CIA assets that are in that business. I don't believe the CIA every got out of the drug business since the days of Air America (the airline, not the radio network) and right up to the present. Just like the drug users they sell to, they got hooked on this source of non-government funds, funds that don't have any congressional oversight.

5. The traditional military. They have a number of motives. 9/11. Bin Laden. "win" the war (even if they can't tell you what winning looks like), and don't abandon the sacrifice of the fallen. We are often too cynical and callous to put much weight into this as a motive... but I'm certain that many in the military feel strongly about these motives. They've been told that Bin Laden is the enemy, that there is a organized opponent who wishes to hurt the United States. They are patriotic people and they want to kill those who would indiscriminately kill us.

6. Our President. I think he has at least 3 motives, one - nearly the same as the traditional military motive, to kill or capture bin Laden and destroy his organization ( of course, he is a little late to the game with this one, it's more of a 2002 motive than current ). He gave speeches about it when he was one of the few people to speak out in OPPOSITION to the war in Iraq. He ran on this in the campaign just last fall. Two - our President is a person who has worked hard for nuclear non-proliferation. This is, in fact, what he won the Nobel peace prize for. The theory goes that if we pull out of Afghanistan, the Taliban (ignore Al Qaida for the moment) take over (throwing out the corrupt Karzai) and provide a nation state for support of the Taliban in Pakistan. That, in turn, causes Pakistan to fall to the Taliban faction there. From there, it's quite possible to imagine the Taliban in Pakistan handing a nuke warhead (but not the missile) to an Al Qaida follower or like minded cell (4 or 5 dedicated fanatics). They, in turn, could easily put said warhead into the hold of a cargo ship and park said ship off the shore of a large city anywhere in the world and then detonate it, hoping for a Western world nuclear response on Muslim lands... which would, in turn, so anger the Muslim world that they would all join with the fanatics and we'd have a new "Islamic Holy War" against the decadent West. I'd like to think that this is the motive that drives our President. A sort of "Sum of All Fears" thing (bad book in general, but then Clancy was right about predicting the use of airliners as weapons of terror). And, finally, I am beginning to think that HE thinks of himself as a "one term" President. And if he keeps a lid on the Taliban till after 2012, then they become the next President's problem. I don't know why he believes this, but so far, his life has been like JFKs or even Marilyn Monroe... a candle in the wind. There is something sort of fatalistic about some of his pronouncements and decisions. MLK like.


Anyway, all of these factions have their theories on why the war in Afghanistan must continue. There isn't a single reason. Each faction is wise enough to co-opt the theories and reasons of one of the others, so long as it prolongs the war and the occupation.

And what faction opposes the war and the occupation?

[Greyhound]

26. K&R. They don't seem to be fooling many here. n/t

[hayu_lol]

27. Yeah, it is the oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Basin...

that are the real reason for us staying in Afghanistan.

KBR(Haliburton)has the no-bid contracts to build the infrastructure(barracks, mess halls, and offices, warehouses, and motor pools)from the entry point of the pipelines into Afghanistan to the port of Karachi.

Think of what an enterprising and rabid small boat owner could do to just one Gas Tanker in the Port Of Karachi.

[EFerrari]

28. Fool me 253 times, shame on me. n/t

[Greyhound]

29. Consider that all that has been "accomplished" in Afghanistan was done in the first

~3 months by 1,000 Spec Ops. Eight years later there just isn't any leaf or twig to hide their agenda behind.

[EFerrari]

30. Once you see the pattern, it's hard to deny even when you'd rather

not know that the young bright president you wanted so much is right there in it.

I guess that's just politics.

[athenasatanjesus]

33. Spending on war is better then Spending on social programs

Wealth is all relative you are only wealthy if you have more money then the average.
If you put a trillion $$ on social programs and jobs that would raise the wealth of many people the wealth of the wealthiest would be worth less,even if the wealthiest people don't lose any money in the process.
Put a trillion $$ on a war now you have wasted money that could have been spent on those social issues,and can no longer budget them properly.

[27inCali]

34. the pipeline is definitely why Bush wanted in

and why he allowed 9/11 to happen.

I'm gonna give Obama some benefit of the doubt on this though and see if we really aren't significantly pulling out by 2012.

the pipeline seemed from the get go like such an impossible task. I mean you have to guard every fucking inch of that thing from angry locals, not to mention you have to construct a whole government -and keep it stable- first before you can even start building it. It is a sign once more that the Oligarchs are not as smart as they -and sometimes we- think they are. They just have so much inheritance money to burn, they can afford to lose a fortune on stupid shit like this without much worry. But that's what happens in a system of nepotism: they raise weaker and weaker, more and more spoiled kids who just cannot handle the responsibility the previous generation thrusts upon them: Bush is the perfect symbol of that.

[donheld]

36. TAPI is it

[Union Yes]

37. Other: We're warpiggin for Israel. nt

[Sebastian Doyle]

39. Well, maybe in the broader sense.

I don't think Israel, even the genocidally insane Netanyahu, really gives two shits about Afghanistan itself, except as a means to an end of surrounding, and eventually slaughtering Iran, which is what the Likud has long wanted more than anything.

[bvar22]

40. A Gumbo of all of the above, PLUS

*keep $$$$$ flowing to the MIC

AND

*keep the Economy looking better than it really is by employment and for soldiers that would be unnecessary if we started bringing them home.


Meet Hamid Karzai
or as Obama calls him, "The Government of Afghanistan".

He was appointed by Bush the Lesser to run Afghanistan.
He was one of the most despicable criminals in The World,
But NOW we like him so much
that our children will be dying to keep him in power.

[Swamp Rat]

41. Oil + MIC

= War in ___________________ (whoever has oil but no nuclear weapons).