October 7 2016 marks the 15th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by us-led NATO forces 15 years since the bombs began raining down on the country 15 years of drone strikes and civilian massacres detainees in prison torture insurgency and bombings warlords and drug lords and CIA kickbacks 15 years of death 15 years of destruction and still like a decades-long nightmare it continues I'm announcing an additional adjustment to our posture instead of going down to 5,500 troops by the end of this year the United States will maintain approximately eighty four hundred troops in Afghanistan into next year through the end of my administration the narrow missions assigned to our forces will not change they remain focused on supporting Afghan forces and going after terrorists but maintaining our forces at this specific level based on our assessment of the security conditions and the strength of Afghan forces will allow us to continue to provide tailored support to help Afghan forces continue to improve the world was told that the invasion launched after the invocation of NATO was self-defense 3d was a response to the false flag events of September 11 2001 pong September the 12th and North Atlantic Council met again and responds to the appalling attacks perpetrated yesterday against the United States of America the council agreed that if it is if it is determined that this attack was directed from abroad against the United States it shall be regarded as an action covered by article 5 of the Washington treaty which states that an armed attack against one or more of the allies in Europe or in North America shall be considered an attack against them all but this explanation like the official narrative of the events of 911 itself was a carefully constructed lie as Professor Michele chossudovsky of the Center for search on globalization explains the US government's demand for Osama bin Laden's extradition were proven disingenuous when they repeatedly denied the talibans offers to extradite him and the invasion itself a major theater operation was launched impossibly quickly what happened is that NATO essentially declared war it was confirmed subsequently but it declared war on Afghanistan on the grounds that Afghanistan had attacked America through its support of al-qaeda it was extremely tenuous but in a bitter irony nobody actually questioned the logic of this of this decision and that included trade unions NGOs and so on the other element which i think is very crucial is that you do not prepare a large-scale theater war thousands of miles away in less than 28 days that war was prepared before nine eleven uh and consequently public opinion was led to believe that this was a an act of retribution military analysts where mum on the subject they know that the logic and the timing of military of military projects now the third element I think which is very important is that the Afghan government which the u.s. refers to as the Taliban approached the US State Department on two occasions and said if you want to have bin Laden extradite the United States to us justice we will consider and we will discuss it and that with that proposal had been turned down by by the Bush administration on the grounds to quote george w bush we do not negotiate with terrorists quote unquote so that in effect the Afghan war was already in the pipeline and I think what is also important is that the Afghan the one Afghanistan under the global war on terrorism which was launched with with the one Afghanistan sets the stage for a series of wars under the same mandate of going out to terrorists that we have of course we have a rack then we have then we have Libya we have Syria we have Yemen we also have Pakistan the drone war and and then we have a extension of the global war on terrorism to sub-saharan Africa to South East Asia that the invasion of Afghanistan had been planned well before nine eleven was first revealed by me as naik the former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan who told BBC news that he was told by senior American officials in mid-july of 2001 the military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October this story was confirmed by Donald Rumsfeld who told the September 11th Commission hearings in March of 2004 that the first major national security directive of the Bush administration was a plan to combat the Taliban in Afghanistan although it was not officially signed until October 25th 2001 nearly three weeks after the invasion began it was in fact drafted in june of that year and was sitting on the President's desk waiting to be signed on September fourth two thousand one one full week before nine eleven dr. rice has stated that she asked the National Security Council staff in her first week in office for a new presidential initiative on al-qaeda in early March the staff was directed to craft a more aggressive strategy aimed at eliminating the al-qaeda threat the first draft of that approach in the form of a presidential directive was circulated by the NSC staff in june of 2001 and a number of meetings were held that summer at the deputy secretary level to address the policy questions involve such as relating an aggressive strategy against taliban to us pakistan relations by the first week of sep tember the process it arrived at a strategy that was presented to principals and later became nsp d9 the president's first major substantive national security decision directive it was presented for a decision by principals on sep tember fourth two thousand 17 days before the 11th and later signed by the president with minor changes and a preamble to reflect the events of September 11 in October so if the plan to invade Afghanistan was not about 911 then why were the neocon so eager to take over the country like any major military operation there are multiple strategic objectives to be achieved securing a key transportation corridor from rich Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves has always been one important objective of the Afghanistan war soon after the Taliban came to power in 1996 the administration of Bill Clinton backed a secret plan for a pipeline through Afghanistan from Central Asia which has vast reserves of oil and gas the Taliban were offered a generous cut in the deal and secretly invited to Washington and Texas they were treated royally taken shopping and flown to tourist attractions like the NASA Space Center and Mount Rushmore their tour was so secret that no television news covered it most Americans knew nothing by the time George W Bush came to power the link between al-qaeda and the Taliban was an embarrassment and September the 11th gave Bush an opportunity to get rid of them today Afghanistan is run by a regime install by the Americans and the pipeline deal is going ahead a groundbreaking ceremony of Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan India tapi gas pipeline project was held on sunday at the ancient city of mary of turkmenistan turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari were present at the function the 25 year old concept of toppy has come on ground reality and it will be completed by 2019 the ancient city of Mary in Turkmenistan witnessed the historic groundbreaking ceremony of the ambitious thought menaced on Afghanistan Pakistan India gas pipeline project that is tarpey project that will ensure energy security in South Asia Vice President Hamid Ansari pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and leaders of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan attended the groundbreaking ceremony the leaders pushed a button with started the welding process of pipes the leaders appreciated the seven point six billion dollars toppy pipeline project and termed it as an initiative to connect energy rich Central Asia with energy starved South Asia for a new dawn of economic engagement through regional connectivity but this was by no means the only objective of the invasion from the monetary perspective there is as much as a trillion dollars of untapped mineral wealth in the country that could make it one of the world's leading mining centers in the coming years a mineral wealth that has been known about for decades we might's Afghanistan hits the jackpot in a sense a team of us geologists and Pentagon officials discovering vast riches of untapped mineral deposits there they say could be worth as much as a trillion dollars for that country a senior military official says that this could turn the war-torn nation into one of the biggest mining centers in the world it's an astonishing piece of news chief Santana's live from Washington as chief how was this discovery made and how could they have not have known that it was there well some people didn't know the Soviet apparently made some preliminary maps when they occupied Afghanistan back in the 80s and those maps recently came to the attention of a Pentagon team which did some high-tech aerial surveillance to discover the extent of this massive potential wealth and they found that Afghanistan has deposits of iron and copper that could make it a major producer in the world and deposits of lithium that rivaled the large reserves in Bolivia lithium is used in batteries that power everybody's computers and BlackBerry's General David Petraeus the CENTCOM commander said there's stunning potential in that mineral wealth Martha and there is also the fact that the world's lucrative multi-billion dollar heroin trade sources almost entirely from the country with up to ninety percent of the world's opium coming from the record crops that are being diligently protected by US troops so here's the question why are American troops now helping Afghan farmers grow that opium Nick Schifrin reports from Afghanistan on a controversial new policy in western kandahar poppy farmer score till harvest their crop and the Americans do nothing to stop them US soldiers grief farmers can you show me with father field is yours they commiserate with farmers having a bad harvest tell mom very sorry for his field here and play as they're harvesting and in one case they even paid a farmer a thousand dollars after us and afghan special forces burned his crop if you can come down to the base on my next visit i will make a payment this is controversial the opium trade is the Taliban's main source of funding around here this puppy isn't only a plant it's the very basis of the economy here papi grows everywhere in this area and most of the farmers base their entire income for the entire season on this harvest and that's why soldiers ignore and encourage the farmers if the u.s. burned their crop farmers would blame the US for their poverty and turned toward the Taliban Afghanistan today produces over ninety percent of the world supply of heroin and the invasion of Afghanistan occurred at a moment when the Afghan government together with the United Nations had implemented a far-reaching drug eradication program in other words they were eliminating opium and an implementing crop rotation crop substitution with the support of the UN they were congratulated by in the United Nations General Assembly in fawn of 2001 and in fact what the Taliban government achieved was a 19 more than ninety percent collapse in opium production recorded in in let's say in 2001 now immediately upon the influx of US troops and occupation of Afghanistan the production of opium sprung up to its historical levels and has increased multiple times since then the oil and gas pipelines the mineral extraction the opium all of these are factors in the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan yours after any pretence of an excuse for NATO's presence evaporated but there is one factor that has made Afghanistan the target of would-be world rulers for centuries its location in 1904 sir halford John mackinder PC the director of the London School of Economics published an essay in the geographical journal titled the geographical pivot of history in that essay mackinder laid out the heartland theory a theory that would come to dominate foreign policy and geostrategic thought the Heartland theory holds that the earth's surface can be divided into a world island the offshore islands and the outlying islands the Heartland lay at the center of the world island and the Eurasian landmass and its importance was summarized in Mac endures famous dictum who rules East Europe commands the Heartland who rules the Heartland commands the world island who rules the world island commands the world this is why control of the central asian region and Afghanistan in particular has been prized by Empire since the 19th century when Britain and Russia engaged in diplomatic struggle intelligence operations military conflicts and subterfuge for control over Afghanistan in what was called the great game and this is why former national security adviser and perennial Washington insiders big new Burzynski was able to predict in his 1997 magnum opus the grand chessboard that the first major war of the 21st century would take place in Afghanistan but password to 1997 in that year are old friends big new Brzezinski released his book the grand chessboard American primacy and it's geo strategic imperatives because evidently as big noob rozinsky was not so shy about proclaiming the quest for world domination he also did not mince his words about the eurasian heartland and how important it is to America's global primacy for America the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia for half a millennium world affairs were dominated by Eurasian powers and peoples who fought with one another for regional domination and reached out for global power now a non Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively it's preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained he goes on to refine Mac endures Heartland notion down to a specific area that he calls the Eurasian Balkans and this area is precisely the Central Asia Caucasus region he explains it's important muscle it is important Leslie the Eurasian Balkans astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly oratius richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities are also geopolitically significant moreover they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors namely Russia Turkey and Iran with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region but the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region in addition to important minerals including gold the use of the metaphor of the Balkans is doubly evocative for students of history it represents not only the strife and ethnic conflict we saw in the balkanization of yugoslavia at the end of the 20th century but also the powder keg of tensions that ignited the first world war at the beginning of the 20th century subsequently Brzezinski predicted that the first Great War of the 21st century would take place in this Eurasian Balkans region and lo and behold four years after the grand chessboard was published the first Great War of the 21st century was being waged in Afghanistan by the United States and his NATO allies meet the new great game same as the old Gregg Ian this time its NATO against China Russia and what might loosely be termed a resistance block but the idea is almost the same dominate Central Asia Caucasus and use it as a pivot point to dominate the world Brzezinski had no crystal ball he did not know that the neo-cons would be in office in 2001 he had not seen nsp d9 he did not know how 911 would be used as the fig leaf to cover the naked ambition of NATO's land grab but he did understand the geo strategic imperatives of world empires and he knew that control over Central Asia was crucial to control over the world without NATO's Afghanistan toehold the u.s. hegemon would have no chance of countering China and Russia in the new great game of the 21st century this is what Afghanistan was is and always will be about Empire the naked ambition of would-be world rulers as long as that ambition remains unchecked NATO will continue to keep its forces in the region at any cost and as Russia and China continue to exert their own influence in the region that deployment brings us one step closer to direct military confrontation and the people of Afghanistan once again are crushed underfoot mere pawns in the game for world empire
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