My take is that the US political class was operating on the correct belief that their violence would lead to an event that would give them the excuse they needed to launch USAPATRIOT and the GWOT, or something like it. I guess you could compare it to, idk, flooding of a drained swamp. You know that a swamp will flood next time there's a big rain upstream. You don't have to destroy the dikes. You just wait for your moment. Like a predator employing an ambush hunting strategy. They know prey will come along and they're content to wait.
Analyzing the occupation and invasion is hard for me. If you assume their goal was to remove Saddam and create a stable regional "democratic" ally under US hegemony they clearly fucked up and were totally incompetent. If you assume their goal was to get filthy stinking rich, prop up the MIC, expand the US police state, and they didn't really give a shit about Iraq or about the US military, then they succeeded spectacularly. Idk how much of each is true.
They can get filthy stinking rich doing nothing, though. They're basically all insider trading and getting richer ever day no matter what, with or without a war. I'm sure there are some hungry ghosts who just yearn for an ever greater "more" and are not satisfied with just getting richer if they aren't also getting richer faster, but they don't have any plans bigger than that. Just more, forever.
If their goal was to expand US influence and dominance over the world, they failed. If their goal was to acquire cheap resources, they failed. If their goal was to assert US hegemony, they failed. If their goal was to stabilize trade and resource extraction, they failed.
I just don't think they planned any of this out. They just bumbled from event to event and tried to opportunistically profit on a case-by-case basis, in turn being unable to build a long-lasting project, and that's why it eventually became a debacle and had to be abandoned.
That also doesn't really answer my original question: why did they start with Afghanistan? If the goal was Iraq, why bother? Just start there!
From what I remember Afghanistan started out very small, with a very small number of troops on the ground allegedly looking for bin Laden, then... I think we started supporting the Northern Alliance warlords against the Taliban for some reason, and things snowballed? idk, I really haven't looked in to the history of Afghanistan in a long time.
My take is that the US political class was operating on the correct belief that their violence would lead to an event that would give them the excuse they needed to launch USAPATRIOT and the GWOT, or something like it. I guess you could compare it to, idk, flooding of a drained swamp. You know that a swamp will flood next time there's a big rain upstream. You don't have to destroy the dikes. You just wait for your moment. Like a predator employing an ambush hunting strategy. They know prey will come along and they're content to wait.
Analyzing the occupation and invasion is hard for me. If you assume their goal was to remove Saddam and create a stable regional "democratic" ally under US hegemony they clearly fucked up and were totally incompetent. If you assume their goal was to get filthy stinking rich, prop up the MIC, expand the US police state, and they didn't really give a shit about Iraq or about the US military, then they succeeded spectacularly. Idk how much of each is true.
They can get filthy stinking rich doing nothing, though. They're basically all insider trading and getting richer ever day no matter what, with or without a war. I'm sure there are some hungry ghosts who just yearn for an ever greater "more" and are not satisfied with just getting richer if they aren't also getting richer faster, but they don't have any plans bigger than that. Just more, forever.
If their goal was to expand US influence and dominance over the world, they failed. If their goal was to acquire cheap resources, they failed. If their goal was to assert US hegemony, they failed. If their goal was to stabilize trade and resource extraction, they failed.
I just don't think they planned any of this out. They just bumbled from event to event and tried to opportunistically profit on a case-by-case basis, in turn being unable to build a long-lasting project, and that's why it eventually became a debacle and had to be abandoned.
That also doesn't really answer my original question: why did they start with Afghanistan? If the goal was Iraq, why bother? Just start there!
From what I remember Afghanistan started out very small, with a very small number of troops on the ground allegedly looking for bin Laden, then... I think we started supporting the Northern Alliance warlords against the Taliban for some reason, and things snowballed? idk, I really haven't looked in to the history of Afghanistan in a long time.