The Northern Alliance was backed by Russia and Iran. Iran almost fought a war with the Taliban in 1998. Both countries are right by Afghanistan and therefore are directly concerned about possible Taliban reaquisition of power, with all the negative consequences that occurred last time. Keeping an Islamist government out of Afghanistan was why the Soviets fought the Afghan War in the first place (ironically, as a reaction to Iran). So it is a not a big surprise that both countries are glad that the US is fighting their enemies for them.
PS. the current quietude in Iraq is directly related to the fact that Iran stopped running guns to the Shia insurgents in 2007, which is probably because Iran considers Iraq to be an ally at present and therefor there is no point in running guns to them, and is probably also connected to Obama's very muted response to the (likely) Iranian vote fraud.
----- Original Message ---- From: Andy <andy274 at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Mon, December 14, 2009 6:55:46 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Obama: killing for 2012
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:31 AM, Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:
> Doug:
>
>> Note that U.S. oil companies did rather poorly in the recent round of
>> auctions in Iraq. Companies from China, Malaysia, France, and Russia did at
>> least as well or better.
>
> Is this a profitable pattern for Russia? If, as CDoss says, the Russians are
> happy to support the US in Afghanistan, then perhaps they're looking at the
> same scenario: the US does the killing and dying in an energy-rich area of
> the world, then Russia (and others) comes in to bid without having to deploy
> a single battalion. Seems like a smart move to me.
Or quietly supporting insurgents, hoping to draw the US into exhausting itself. Wouldn't that be funny?
-- Andy
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