Failure to capture Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan? If the main idea had indeed been to arrest the planners of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the invasion of Afghanistan was a dumb thing to do. The invasion was, first and foremost, a reassertion of power and prestige, necessary because the 9/11 attacks put big holes in them, showing that even the Pentagon itself -- the headquarters of the biggest military in the world -- is not invulnerable to attacks. Afghanistan was the most convenient target among all countries -- reportedly about sixty -- in which Al Qaeda is said to have its cells. It was poor, it was diplomatically isolated, it had internally fractured, its military force was weak. Washington couldn't have very well invaded Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for instance, which are all Washington's allies.
>[lbo-talk] Unocal, China and the Middle East
>Mycos mycos at shaw.ca
>Tue Jun 28 13:57:53 PDT 2005
<snip>
>Well Doug, in all honesty I can say that from everything I have seen
>and read, profit taking is 'a' , if not 'the', primary engine of
>imperialism. Repeatedly, throughout history, gold, spices, silk, and
>now oil are very strong motivating factors.
Afghanistan is resource-poor, not resource-rich, in comparison to Iraq. Therefore, it is best to regard Afghanistan as a "loss leader" in marketing terms, a grand opening sale <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader> to draw suckers to Washington's supermarket of wars.
Besides, warriors do not need to seize any resource to make war economically productive. War itself is a big industry, a very profitable enterprise for friends of a war-making government. Even NGOs, which are ostensibly non-profit and humanitarian, can get a piece of action, too, after the target country's government crumbles. Fat grants to pay for their directors' salaries and aid workers' wages make them addicted to disasters.
Destruction and construction are both big businesses -- arrows, along with big tax cuts for the rich and bubble-inducing low interest rates, in the quiver of an empire in deflationary times. Remember the fear of deflation before the sharp rise in oil prices? E.g., Kenneth Rogoff, "Escape from Global Deflation: A Commentary," Nihon Keizai Shimbun, <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2003/071703.htm">, July 17, 2003; Matthew Davis, "Fighting Deflation in the U.S. and Japan," <http://www.nber.org/digest/jun05/w10938.html>, 29 Jun. 2005.
The best war of all in the history of the United States, from the point of view of the power elite, must be the Gulf War, as allies like Japan and Saudi Arabia practically financed the whole thing and US casualties (not counting the victims of the Gulf War syndrome) were very low. Riyadh and Tokyo's refusal to loosen purse strings for the ongoing Iraq War, forcing US taxpayers to foot the bill, may have done as much damage to Washington's prospect of winning the war as guerrillas and terrorists in Iraq.
Considering all this, I'd say, block the Unocal deal. Beijing might get motivated to dump the dollar. -- Yoshie
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