The Real Reasons Our “Leaders” Are In No Hurry To Leave Afghanistan

Have you ever noticed that when Obama's right-wing pundit or Tea Party critics call him names; they use the terms “socialist,” “communist,” or maybe even sometimes “fascist.” For the moment, let's forget that they can't seem to make up their minds... Have you ever noticed that they never call him a “corporatist.”

Why is that?

When you think about it, calling any U.S. politician a “corporatist” would have some ring of truth. To get elected, they all have to take corporate campaign contributions. To stay elected, they have to bow to corporate interests. And to get anything done, they all have to compromise with the big-money powers-that-be.

Is President Obama a corporatist? Apparently not enough of one. It seems quite evident that those who pay those who tell us what to think are trying to push Obama to be more of a corporatist. Otherwise; the pundits would be name calling Obama a “corporatist.” It only makes sense. They don't call him a corporatist because that's what they want him to be.

They want Obama to sell out.

And here we are; not out of Iraq and it doesn't look like we'll be out of Afghanistan in 2011 either. What the hell happened?

The head of the CIA – that's right, the head of the CIA, Leon Ponetta, has estimated that there are only 50 to 100 Al Qaeda members operating an Afghanistan now. The United States presently has almost 100,000 troops in Afghanistan now. Yes, that would be 1,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan for every individual Al Qaeda member. And we still can't win. What a waste.

Why are we there anyway? To bring them “freedom” at the point of a gun?

To catch one man (Osama bin Laden), who is probably dead already anyway?

Or to make military contractors even richer on American taxpayer dollars?

Could it be because U.S. “interests” are to control the flow of oil?

Could it be because U.S. geologists estimate there is a Trillion dollars worth of minerals in Afghanistan?

Could it be because people within U.S. covert black operations are making too much money selling heroin? (Afghan heroin production is up 40 times since the invasion.) (Are you skeptical? Click here for some physical evidence of CIA involvement in the drug trade.)

Or could it just be that the U.S. has a nasty reputation of being the “bully on the block” (as General Colin Powell put it), and we don't want anyone to think they could beat us (though Viet Nam already has – sort of)?

Maybe it's some of all of these. And of course, maybe it's just politician's not wanting to be blamed for losing this “war” (that looks more like an occupation).

But that Trillion dollars in minerals looks pretty enticing...

I wouldn't be surprised that geologists studying Afghanistan with satellite imagery have suspected those minerals were there for quite some time – years – decades even. Maybe oil was only the secondary big-time profit motivation for invading and occupying Afghanistan?

Hey, if the oil companies could get us to invade Iraq, maybe the mining companies could influence us to invade Afghanistan. Of course, we were originally after Al Qaeda, but we could have had more than one motivation.

Need I remind you that the price of oil hasn't come down because Exxon and BP are getting sweetheart deals in Iraq. Don't expect the price of minerals to be any cheaper either. So, why bother to spend $7 billion a month in Afghanistan?

Well, some U.S. and international corporations stand to make a killing, and well, most of them don't pay any taxes anyway.

And yes, it's probably not their children dying over there either.