Russ Baker: The Real Reason for the Afghan War!

When the United States decided to invade Afghanistan to grab Osama bin Laden, and failed, but stayed on like an unwanted guest, could it have known that the Afghans were sitting on some of the world's greatest reserves of mineral wealth? According to the New York Times, the vast scale of Afghanistan's mineral wealth was recently discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. Other evidence and logic point to the fact that everyone but the Western public knew for a long time, and before the 2001 invasion, that Afghanistan was a treasure trove. We were interested to see a new piece from the Times that emphasized those riches without stressing the crucial question: Was the original impetus for the invasion really Osama, or Mammon? The failure to pose this question is significant because the pretense of a "recent discovery" serves only to justify staying in Afghanistan now that the troops are already there, while ignoring the extent to which imperial style resource grabs are the real drivers of foreign policy and wars, worldwide. As long as we continue to dance around that issue, we will remain mired in disaster of both a financial and mortal nature. As long as we fail to tote up who are the principal winners and losers, then we fail to understand what is really going on. Some of the least likely candidates for insight are waking up. To quote Alan Greenspan: "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Who will say the same about Afghanistan and its mineral wealth? Once we acknowledge what General Wesley Clark claims, and which the media keeps ignoring, that he was told the US had plans ready at the time of the 9/11 attacks to invade seven countries including Iraq and Afghan, then the larger picture begins to come into view. At this point, we can't help but revisit our "WhoWhatWhy" exclusive tying the 9/11 hijackers to that very reliable US ally, the Saudi royal family, which itself needs constant external war and strife throughout the Middle East to keep its citizens from focusing on its own despotism and staggering corruption, and to maintain its position as an indispensable ally of the West in these wars. So, learning that the hijackers themselves may have been sponsored by, or controlled by elements of the Saudi royal family is a pretty big deal!