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Ah, those warmongering Dems! God love 'em!

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VegetableMan
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15 Jul 2020, 6:25 pm

This is one issue with which I agree with Trump. We should have been out of Afghanistan a decade ago!


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15 Jul 2020, 7:52 pm

A decade? Two, imho. ... Make that 4and a half, actually. Although... I did enjoy Rambo high-fiving the Taliban when I first saw Rambo 3 a few years ago.


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18 Jul 2020, 4:37 pm

Obama said he wanted to get out, then found out it was more complicated than that.

Trump said he wanted to get out, then found out it was more complicated than that.

There is a phased long-term reduction in troop numbers. However, NATO troops are continuing to support and advise their Afghan counterparts. I'm not sure it is reasonable to describe Resolute Support Mission as a war. Indeed, it's an ongoing effort to maintain peace and hold back the Taliban. The Democrats are no more pro-war than Trump is pro-Taliban. It's a delicate and complicated situation that cannot be reduced to pithy slogans.



Mr Reynholm
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18 Jul 2020, 5:11 pm

Yes the Democrat and Republican Parties are owned by the same entities.



VegetableMan
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18 Jul 2020, 6:04 pm

Mr Reynholm wrote:
Yes the Democrat and Republican Parties are owned by the same entities.


Correct. With the Pubs, their BS is out in the open for all to see. The Dems are more dangerous because they still try to portray themselves as progressives, which is a steaming load of excrement. They're able to get more horrible s**t passed because the keft goes to sleep when they're in office. (Evidence: Eight years of Obama!)

Why we're still in Afghanistan canned be summed up in one word: Lithium
 It's not complicated at all.


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funeralxempire
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18 Jul 2020, 6:19 pm

VegetableMan wrote:
Why we're still in Afghanistan canned be summed up in one word: Lithium
 It's not complicated at all.


That moment you realize your second favourite Nirvana song is also the sequel to oil. :nerdy:


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If you feel useless, just remember the USA took four presidents, thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.


shlaifu
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18 Jul 2020, 8:40 pm

VegetableMan wrote:
Mr Reynholm wrote:
Yes the Democrat and Republican Parties are owned by the same entities.


Correct. With the Pubs, their BS is out in the open for all to see. The Dems are more dangerous because they still try to portray themselves as progressives, which is a steaming load of excrement. They're able to get more horrible s**t passed because the keft goes to sleep when they're in office. (Evidence: Eight years of Obama!)

Why we're still in Afghanistan canned be summed up in one word: Lithium
 It's not complicated at all.


You're still in Afghanistan because the US decided to beat down rebels in a strategically important area of its empire. But just like the British learned three times in the 19th century, Afghanistan is easy to conquer and impossible to hold. Yet the imperial teoops are still trying, because this are if the globe has actually become more volatile over the last 20 years, rather than less. Mire rebels tgan expected
Sure, the resources are nice, and funneling tax money towards the arms industry helps, too.
But eventually, it's about having a military presence in a province that's revolting


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CockneyRebel
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19 Jul 2020, 2:41 am

VegetableMan wrote:
This is one issue with which I agree with Trump. We should have been out of Afghanistan a decade ago!



I agree. I think that Trump has made the right move.


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Brictoria
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19 Jul 2020, 3:18 am

VegetableMan wrote:
Mr Reynholm wrote:
Yes the Democrat and Republican Parties are owned by the same entities.


Correct. With the Pubs, their BS is out in the open for all to see. The Dems are more dangerous because they still try to portray themselves as progressives, which is a steaming load of excrement. They're able to get more horrible s**t passed because the keft goes to sleep when they're in office. (Evidence: Eight years of Obama!)

Why we're still in Afghanistan canned be summed up in one word: Lithium
 It's not complicated at all.


The strange thing is that although the Republicans are supposedly the party of "war"\"military action", looking at the history, it's the Democrats who seem most adept at getting their country into these large-scale wars:
US Civil war - Unsure if Democrats (or some other, non-Republican party) who broke away and triggered this, but caused by Republican party seeking to end slavery.
WW1 - Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) in power for duration.
WW2 - Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (both Democrats) in power for duration.
Korean war - Harry S. Truman (Democrat) sent troops in.
Vietnam war - John F. Kennedy (Democrat) sent over 15,000 troops (above the 900 present when he entered office), followed by Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) who increased this to a peak of over 536,000.

With a history like that, anyone wanting to keep the USA out of foreign wars would seem best placed to vote Republican, not Democrat.



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19 Jul 2020, 7:55 am

funeralxempire wrote:
VegetableMan wrote:
Why we're still in Afghanistan canned be summed up in one word: Lithium
 It's not complicated at all.


That moment you realize your second favourite Nirvana song is also the sequel to oil. :nerdy:

And equally untrue in both cases. Afghanistan has neither oil reserves nor commercially viable lithium reserves.



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19 Jul 2020, 8:53 am

China
USA
Zimbabwe
Brazil
Have worlds top lithium reserves


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19 Jul 2020, 10:46 am

U.S. identifies vast mineral resources in Afghanistan


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19 Jul 2020, 4:46 pm

^ yes, but it costs more to extract and transport the minerals than they are worth. Afghanistan has no ports and the mineral-rich areas don’t have good rail links because of the mountains everywhere.

See this article, which is a direct rubbishing of the NYT article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstal ... 970b912615

Also see: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featu ... 48895.html :

Quote:
Rich in copper, lithium, talc, marble, gold, uranium and others, Afghanistan's vast mineral wealth is estimated to exceed one trillion dollars. But according to data, every year the government loses around $300m in revenue from mining.

(Whole article is worth a read)

Further: https://www.fortuneindia.com/polemicist ... ium/103069

Quote:
The truth is minerals have no value as long as they are under the ground and then, even when they are taken out, their value depends on the swings of the spot and future commodity markets.
The excavation and transportation of minerals is not easy—especially, for instance, when one of them is lithium, highly inflammable when it touches water.
The Afghan government—or should one say, these days, the government in Kabul—had been trying to lure America to stay on in Afghanistan and keep the Taliban at bay using these mineral mines as a lure. Some of the biggest deposits are anticipated to be in areas controlled by the Taliban.
But this doesn’t seem to have worked. Even if the minerals could be mined out, transporting them from landlocked Afghanistan would not be easy—to say the least.



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19 Jul 2020, 5:43 pm

The_Walrus wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
VegetableMan wrote:
Why we're still in Afghanistan canned be summed up in one word: Lithium
 It's not complicated at all.


That moment you realize your second favourite Nirvana song is also the sequel to oil. :nerdy:

And equally untrue in both cases. Afghanistan has neither oil reserves nor commercially viable lithium reserves.


Commercially viable being the keyword. I believe you're correct in your assessment that the cost to extract at the moment exceeds the profit margin, but this wouldn't be the first time a resource that contributed to great conflict eventually turned out to be worth far less than originally envisioned.

Further, it might be like Canada's tar sands where the fact that it doen't make financial sense to extract that resource at one time (like now) doesn't mean it won't ever become profitable to do so (like decades from now).


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If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. —Malcolm X
If you feel useless, just remember the USA took four presidents, thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.


shlaifu
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19 Jul 2020, 7:35 pm

Brictoria wrote:
VegetableMan wrote:
Mr Reynholm wrote:
Yes the Democrat and Republican Parties are owned by the same entities.


Correct. With the Pubs, their BS is out in the open for all to see. The Dems are more dangerous because they still try to portray themselves as progressives, which is a steaming load of excrement. They're able to get more horrible s**t passed because the keft goes to sleep when they're in office. (Evidence: Eight years of Obama!)

Why we're still in Afghanistan canned be summed up in one word: Lithium
 It's not complicated at all.


The strange thing is that although the Republicans are supposedly the party of "war"\"military action", looking at the history, it's the Democrats who seem most adept at getting their country into these large-scale wars:
US Civil war - Unsure if Democrats (or some other, non-Republican party) who broke away and triggered this, but caused by Republican party seeking to end slavery.
WW1 - Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) in power for duration.
WW2 - Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (both Democrats) in power for duration.
Korean war - Harry S. Truman (Democrat) sent troops in.
Vietnam war - John F. Kennedy (Democrat) sent over 15,000 troops (above the 900 present when he entered office), followed by Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) who increased this to a peak of over 536,000.

With a history like that, anyone wanting to keep the USA out of foreign wars would seem best placed to vote Republican, not Democrat.


True. But if you vote Republican right now, chances are there's going to be a war. Somewhere. Maybe within the US.

4 more years of Trump will change global alliances.


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The_Walrus
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20 Jul 2020, 5:41 am

funeralxempire wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
VegetableMan wrote:
Why we're still in Afghanistan canned be summed up in one word: Lithium
 It's not complicated at all.


That moment you realize your second favourite Nirvana song is also the sequel to oil. :nerdy:

And equally untrue in both cases. Afghanistan has neither oil reserves nor commercially viable lithium reserves.


Commercially viable being the keyword. I believe you're correct in your assessment that the cost to extract at the moment exceeds the profit margin, but this wouldn't be the first time a resource that contributed to great conflict eventually turned out to be worth far less than originally envisioned.

Further, it might be like Canada's tar sands where the fact that it doen't make financial sense to extract that resource at one time (like now) doesn't mean it won't ever become profitable to do so (like decades from now).

There is no conflict over Afghanistan’s lithium reserves. NATO has been steadily decreasing its troop involvement for a long time and the 2010 estimate of the value of the rocks doesn’t seem to have changed that. Indeed, ten years later, every analysis of global lithium resources I could find completely ignores Afghanistan. Seems like the US government’s report jumped the gun.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a huge multilateral operation in response to 9/11. The country’s lithium resources weren’t discovered for another nine years, and seem to have conveniently been “discovered” when Evo Morales was playing hardball over the Bolivian resource. If the aim was to secure lithium resources that we didn’t even know about, then it is very strange that the coalition withdrew long before those resources were secured, and that the likes of Russia and India were happy to support NATO’s invasion.