The bare face of American kleptocratic imperialism

[Buddha Vacana]

phpBB .

[Buddha Vacana]

A few quotes from the video:

"It sounds like we are going to be involved in extricating... uh... releasing mineral wealth"

"The Chinese are already there (in Afghanistan) and doing that (looting natural resources) and I think that the United States is concerned that we are not getting our share"

- "Under US military ethics, can the US government go in with the protection of US soldiers and extract the wealth of another country?"
- "Well, we can. We've done it before, there's no reason why we can't do it again."

[pulga]

What would become of Afghanistan if NATO ended its commitment and withdrew?

NATO and Afghanistan

'Fully committed' NATO backs new U.S. approach on Afghanistan

I suppose it is up to the people of Afghanistan to decide whether they want the help and the security the Western nations provide them. And whether it is fair for the Afghans to bear some of the cost in providing such assistance.

[Buddha Vacana]

I suppose it is up to the people of Afghanistan to decide whether they want the help and the security the Western nations provide them.

They are the last people to whom anyone will ask the opinion. Certainly not anyone in the US. Not even a journalist.

And whether it is fair for the Afghans to bear some of the cost in providing such assistance.

So, in your view the US are there to "provide assistance"?

You don't seem to know much about the history of the country.

When you play sorcerer's apprentice with other countries it is not their responsibility to pay for the uncleanable mess you have created for them, even less so for you to profit from it.

[m0rl0ck]

Im an American citizen and i never fail to be surprised at the astonishment the depth of the USAs moral depravity engenders.
After slavery, genocide and human experimentation on unsuspecting American citizens, seriously whats left?

The philosophy of manifest destiny guides the morality of my country and to boil it down to a short version, manifest destiny is the belief that whatever one can take by force, belongs to one by divine right.

[pulga]

So what would become of Afghanistan if NATO ended its commitment and withdrew?

[chownah]

So what would become of Afghanistan if NATO ended its commitment and withdrew?

Assuming that no one else stepped in with troops, it would become a training ground for terrorists itself and make the already existing training ground for terrorists in pakistan more secure.

I am not supporting troops in afghanistan.

chownah

[Buddha Vacana]

So what would become of Afghanistan if NATO ended its commitment and withdrew?

I don't think anyone here is qualified to answer that question.

Let me remind you that your question on this thread looks very much like a strawman argument, given that the problem addressed in the OP is actually not military occupation but *kleptocracy*, or resource grab if you will.

[DooDoot]

Let me remind you that your question on this thread looks very much like a strawman argument, given that the problem addressed in the OP is actually not military occupation but *kleptocracy*, or resource grab if you will.

Seems like many here are not "inquirers" (but watchers of the corporate mass media) and don't know the origins of terrorism.

In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, sat on a secret committee charged with investigating the CIA’s clandestine mischief in the Mideast. The so called “Bruce-Lovett Report,” to which he was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government’s denials. The report blamed the CIA for the rampant anti-Americanism that was then mysteriously taking root “in the many countries in the world today.”

For Americans to really understand what’s going on, it’s important to review some details about this sordid but little-remembered history. During the 1950s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers—CIA Director Allen Dulles and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles—rebuffed Soviet treaty proposals to leave the Middle East a neutral zone in the Cold War and let Arabs rule Arabia. Instead, they mounted a clandestine war against Arab nationalism—which Allen Dulles equated with communism—particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies thath they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism. At a White House meeting between the CIA’s director of plans, Frank Wisner, and John Foster Dulles, in September 1957, Eisenhower advised the agency, “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect,” according to a memo recorded by his staff secretary, Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster.

The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949—barely a year after the agency’s creation. Syrian patriots had declared war on the Nazis, expelled their Vichy French colonial rulers and crafted a fragile secularist democracy based on the American model. But in March 1949, Syria’s democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Quwatli, hesitated to approve the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. In his book, Legacy of Ashes, CIA historian Tim Weiner recounts that in retaliation for Al-Quwatli’s lack of enthusiasm for the U.S. pipeline, the CIA engineered a coup replacing al-Quwatli with the CIA’s handpicked dictator, a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za’im. Al-Za’im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him, four and a half months into his regime.

Following several counter-coups in the newly destabilized country, the Syrian people again tried democracy in 1955, re-electing al-Quwatli and his National Party. Al-Quwatli was still a Cold War neutralist, but, stung by American involvement in his ouster, he now leaned toward the Soviet camp. That posture caused CIA Director Dulles to declare that “Syria is ripe for a coup” and send his two coup wizards, Kim Roosevelt and Rocky Stone, to Damascus.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... 213601?o=0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9j1H330Nmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vwvj15Srus

[binocular]

/.../the American people who believed, at face value, their government’s denials.

It's hard to believe that the American people didn't know these things. It seems more likely that they pretended not to know them, and that there was/is an unspoken rule to pretend not to know these things.

In societies, there are "public secrets" -- things that everyone (or almost everyone) knows, but almost nobody will go on record about them; and if anyone does, the others pretend not to know and ostracize/stigmatize the person who spoke up about those things.

[Buddha Vacana]

I believe the word you are looking for is taboo

[Santi253]

I don't get the point of this thread. Isn't Rachel Maddow a progressive, not an imperialist? She's on the good side.

[Buddha Vacana]

I don't get the point of this thread. Isn't Rachel Maddow a progressive, not an imperialist? She's on the good side.

I guess this is sarcasm. If not, just watch the op's video

[Santi253]

I don't get the point of this thread. Isn't Rachel Maddow a progressive, not an imperialist? She's on the good side.

I guess this is sarcasm. If not, just watch the op's video

Videos can be taken out of context. Jimmy Dore is a pot smoking comic, not a journalist.

[Buddha Vacana]

Videos can be taken out of context. Jimmy Dore is a pot smoking comic, not a journalist.

So...?
Does that make what he says be automatically wrong?