> However, the war against the Taliban is not about terrorism. Its aim is to
> remove a political force that could not deliver on the deal it made with
> U.S. oil firms for the security of the planned pipeline through Afghanistan,
Oil capitalists only get upset when existing assets are threatened, as in the Gulf War; they're not into speculative gambles on hypothetical assets which would take years to develop. Oil firms are giant, behemoth corporations, which don't depend on a single national market, don't think in the terms of Lenin's ultra-imperialism, which was really a theory of Russia's Czarist-era state capitalism, and really don't give a damn about who's in charge, as long as they can pump the oil; just look at Conoco, a big supplier for PetroVietnam.
-- Dennis