Examining Obama's Rationale for Escalating the War in Afghanistan (Jeremy R. Hammond)

[Tace]

President Barack Obama invoked the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as a justification for his announced troop increase for the war in Afghanistan.

Dec. 3 (FPJ) -- Outlining his rationale for the decision to send yet more troops to Afghanistan, President Barack Obama on Tuesday began with a familiar refrain: “We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people.”

“Al Qaeda’s base of operations”, he said, “was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban,” who “refused to turn over Osama bin Laden."

In fact, the Taliban offered to either try bin Laden in their court system or hand him over to a third country if the U.S. provided evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks. The evidence, however, was not forthcoming, and so the Taliban did indeed refuse on that basis.

There’s another half-truth in this remark, which suggests that the reason we went into Afghanistan was to get bin Laden. This is belied by the fact that there were plans to overthrow the Taliban that predated 9/11.

The consideration then had mostly to do with U.S. interests in seeing oil and gas pipelines constructed in transit through the country. It cannot have been coincidence that President Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan following the overthrow of the Taliban was Zalmay Khalilzad, who had previously conducted risk analysis for Unocal, the company trying to woo the Taliban and heading the consortium to establish a pipeline across Afghanistan until 1998, when company Vice President John J. Maresca testified to the House Committee on International Relations that unless there was a change in regime, no such pipelines could be built.

Unocal was later bought by Chevron, then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s former company, which is heavily invested in the region. Then Vice President Dick Cheney was also very personally involved in the region. He served, for example, as a member of Kazakhstan’s Oil Advisory Board. The list goes on.

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[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. "belied by the fact that there were plans to overthrow the Taliban that predated 9/11" WTF?

"There’s another half-truth in this remark, which suggests that the reason we went into Afghanistan was to get bin Laden. This is belied by the fact that there were plans to overthrow the Taliban that predated 9/11."

Of course there were pre-9/11 plans to overthrow the taliban. AQ had already blown up two of our embassies and one of our war-ships so of course there would be contingency planning. Hell, under Clinton we lobbed a bunch of cruise missiles into Afghanistan so it's no secret our intentions were unfriendly.

Ignored proposals for overthrowing the taliban was what a lot of Richard Clarke's book was all about.

I do not dismiss energy interests as a factor, but it's not like we were not already in a low-grade war with AQ before 9/11, and by proxy in a very hostile position toward the taliban, no matter how much Bush wanted us to think that 9/11 came out of the blue.

By 9/11 Afghanistan had diplomatic relations with two countries, IIRC. It's not like they were popular.