IP: Oil, Afghanistan and America's pipe dream -- note this comes from Paristan

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 19:30:42 -0400
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
> Subject: Oil, Afghanistan and America's pipe dream
>
> Dave - I thought you and the IPers might enjoy a current Pakistani 
> perspective on America's interests and goals beyond halting terrorism 
> based in Afghanistan.  It certainly might explain why Cheney is remaining 
> invisible.
>
> >From Dawn - The Internet Version (Pakistani newspaper)
>
> http://www.dawn.com/2001/10/25/int15.htm
>
> Oil, Afghanistan and America's pipe dream
> By George Monbiot
>
> LONDON: "Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here," 
> Woodrow Wilson asked a year after the First World War ended, "that does 
> not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and 
> commercial rivalry?"
>
> In 1919, as US citizens watched a shredded Europe scraping up its own 
> remains, the answer may well have been no. But the lessons of war never 
> last for long.
>
> The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism, but 
> it may also be a late colonial adventure. British ministers have warned 
> British members of parliament (MPs) that opposing the war is the moral 
> equivalent of appeasing Hitler, but in some respects our moral choices are 
> closer to those of 1956 than those of 1938. Afghanistan is as 
> indispensable to the regional control and transport of oil in central Asia 
> as Egypt was in the Middle East.
>
> Afghanistan has some oil and gas of its own, but not enough to qualify as 
> a major strategic concern. Its northern neighbours, by contrast, contain 
> reserves which could be critical to future global supply. In 1998, Dick 
> Cheney, now US vice-president but then chief executive of a major oil 
> services company, remarked: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a 
> region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the 
> Caspian." But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The 
> only route which makes both political and economic sense is through 
> Afghanistan.
>
> <snip>
>
>
> - David
> --------------------------------------------
> WWW Page: http://www.reed.com/dpr.html


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