Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it's a good thing we replaced the Taliban with the CIA then.
The US replaced the Soviets with the Taliban first.
Baby steps...
No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
#32Regardless of the political motivations that sparked the announcement, I was excited to hear about it. I became interested in Afghanistan in 2001, along with everybody else. Before that, my only exposure to the country was my reading of "The Man who would be King", by Kipling. Everything that I've heard about the Afghanistan economy has had to do with opium and heroin. To have it announced that there was a very real…
Your demographic is showing. Some of us became interested in Afghanistan back in '79, when the Soviets invaded, and President Carter (remember him?) re-instated draft registration. Seemed pretty important at the time, but seems to be forgotten now...
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Re: No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
#33Regardless of the political motivations that sparked the announcement, I was excited to hear about it. I became interested in Afghanistan in 2001, along with everybody else. Before that, my only exposure to the country was my reading of "The Man who would be King", by Kipling. Everything that I've heard about the Afghanistan economy has had to do with opium and heroin. To have it announced that there was a very real…
Your demographic is showing. Some of us became interested in Afghanistan back in '79, when the Soviets invaded, and President Carter (remember him?) re-instated draft registration. Seemed pretty important at the time, but seems to be forgotten now...
I was, of course, aware of the soviet occupation of Afghanistan, but it wasn't an interesting thing to me. The Soviets were interesting to me, of course, but not the Afghans. 2001 made Afghanistan interesting in it's own right, not just a chapter in a Soviet story.
Re: No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
#34Regardless of the political motivations that sparked the announcement, I was excited to hear about it. I became interested in Afghanistan in 2001, along with everybody else. Before that, my only exposure to the country was my reading of "The Man who would be King", by Kipling. Everything that I've heard about the Afghanistan economy has had to do with opium and heroin. To have it announced that there was a very real…
> To have it announced that there was a very real possibility that there may be a way to grow their economy in a very real and significant way, and a way that benefits the rest of the world, rather than harms it, is exciting news to me. How about educating the population, improving the infrastructure and so on? Lots of places without any real natural resources seem to do fine.
> Lots of places without any real natural resources seem to do fine
Really? Who? Japan that's who ... and everybody marvels about how the heck they managed it. Who else? Not fair saying any country that had colonies once, even if they no longer do, as they got their "jump start" from the resources of their colonies.
What country has actually succeeded without natural resources? Keep in mind that natural resources aren't just minerals. They may be geographic circumstance, such as "the only land route between X and Y", or ocean access, or "the shortest route between A and P", etc.
It's very fashionable to say that you can get by on brains alone, but it turns out that more is generally required.
Re: No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To have it announced that there was a very real possibility that there may be a way to grow their economy in a very real and significant way, and a way that benefits the rest of the world, rather than harms it, is exciting news to me. How about educating the population, improving the infrastructure and so on? Lots of places without any real natural resources seem to do fine.
> Lots of places without any real natural resources seem to do fine Really? Who? Japan that's who ... and everybody marvels about how the heck they managed it. Who else? Not fair saying any country that had colonies once, even if they no longer do, as they got their "jump start" from the resources of their colonies. What country has actually succeeded without natural resources? Keep in mind that natural resources are…
Your broad definition of natural resources makes it hard to bring counter examples. But what about South Korea? (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_on_the_Han_River)
Re: No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To have it announced that there was a very real possibility that there may be a way to grow their economy in a very real and significant way, and a way that benefits the rest of the world, rather than harms it, is exciting news to me. How about educating the population, improving the infrastructure and so on? Lots of places without any real natural resources seem to do fine.
> Lots of places without any real natural resources seem to do fine Really? Who? Japan that's who ... and everybody marvels about how the heck they managed it. Who else? Not fair saying any country that had colonies once, even if they no longer do, as they got their "jump start" from the resources of their colonies. What country has actually succeeded without natural resources? Keep in mind that natural resources are…
Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Luxembourg, Mallorca, and so on.
The colonies thing is sort of dodging the question. How did England end up with India as a colony, or Belgium with the Congo? They had great military strength, grounded in their technological edge, despite being poorer in natural resources than India and the Congo. But that same technological edge can be used today to trade for resources instead of taking them by brute force — or, as Germany showed during WWI and South Africa showed during the sanctions, to get by with less natural resources.
Re: No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
#37If US knows already (before the war) that Afghanistan is terribly rich with minerals, so that explains why they did the war and settled down.
But how can we forget the reason US told us why they invading Afghanistan? Fighting Terrorism (under the name of AlQaida).
The image is clear now.
Edit: Assuming US knows that before war.
Re: No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
#38Re: No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to elaborate? Did it cover lithium / anything discovered , and not just theorized? Does anyone have a copy lying around they can check?
I listened to said NPR programme and the guy speculated the resources might have been known all along, but only now did the (high) price of these minerals and the (low) cost of their extraction make them more attractive. I, personally, have a more cynical and conspiratorial view of things: I think the U.S. intelligence cooked up the trillion figure in order to wane the production of opium for at least a decade, by pr…
I, personally, have a more cynical and conspiratorial view of things: I think the U.S. intelligence cooked up the trillion figure in order to wane the production of opium for at least a decade, by promising Afghans a better bounty and a reason to form national unity.
A good rule of thumb: ignorance and incompetence explains well over 99% of the unfortunate aspects of the world and evil or deliberate planning well under 1%.
Re: No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Lots of places without any real natural resources seem to do fine Really? Who? Japan that's who ... and everybody marvels about how the heck they managed it. Who else? Not fair saying any country that had colonies once, even if they no longer do, as they got their "jump start" from the resources of their colonies. What country has actually succeeded without natural resources? Keep in mind that natural resources are…
Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Luxembourg, Mallorca, and so on. The colonies thing is sort of dodging the question. How did England end up with India as a colony, or Belgium with the Congo? They had great military strength, grounded in their technological edge, despite being poorer in natural resources than India and the Congo. But that same technological edge can be used today to trade for resources inst…
They had great military strength, grounded in their technological edge, despite being poorer in natural resources than India and the Congo.
India and the Congo weren't really countries when the Europeans showed up: what we now think of as those countries had vast collections of tribes more than anything else. They hadn't (and to some extent still haven't) undergone the unification that many European countries were undergoing or had undergone when colonization started.
Even England had problems with Scotland and Wales up until relatively recently, and problems with Ireland up until about ten years ago.