"President Obama's surge of 21,000 troops now engaged in combat in Afghanistan comes on top of the 60,000 we already had there," says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law at Champaign.
"The Obama Administration simply ignored Section 4(a)(3) of the WPR when it announced the escalation," Boyle noted. "U.S. armed forces are in Afghanistan originally pursuant to WPR. Its requirement that the President get Congressional consent on substantial enlargement (of forces) was put there to deal with the kind of gradual escalation we saw in Viet Nam that eventually led to 550,000 troops being there," Boyle said.
"Clearly," Boyle added, "President (George W.) Bush never had authority from Security Council in the first place to invade Afghanistan, and the WPR requires that any enlargement of U.S. troops in a foreign nation be authorized by Congress." Boyle made his comments in a telephone interview with columnist Sherwood Ross of Miami, Fla.
President Obama "has now escalated the conflict into Pakistan and has set off a humanitarian catastrophe for 2-million of its people similar to what President Nixon set off in Cambodia," Boyle said. "What Obama is doing is destabilizing Pakistan and setting off a civil war there. It's a very dangerous, illegal, unconstitutional policy," Boyle said.
The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the first place because the Taliban government refused to allow UNOCAL oil to build the TAPI pipeline across its territory, Boyle said. He noted the route U.S.troops are taking in Afghanistan is that of the proposed pipeline. "I think
this (escalation) is about getting the oil and gas out of Central Asia by
avoiding Russia and without dealing with Iran," Boyle added.
The easiest way to do that, he said, is to construct pipelines south through Afghanistan, into Pakistan and then out to the Arabian Sea. The oil and natural gas resources of Central Asia, Boyle noted, are reported to be the second largest in the world after the Persian
Gulf.
In his new book, "Tackling America's Toughest Questions,"(Clarity) Boyle wrote, "What is going on now in Afghanistan is not self-defense. Let's be honest. We all know it. At best this is reprisal, retaliation, vengeance, catharsis. Call it what you want, but it is not
self-defense. And retaliation is never self-defense."
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- groups:
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- recommended by:
- Vierotchka
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- JanforGore
- added this
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Construction Work on TAPI Pipeline Project To Start From 2010
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And I thought Obama promised to withdraw the troops!
Thanks for posting this.
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When is the last time US military action actually arose from self-defense? The way in which the US military gets used is more like Mafioso enforcers than for the defense of this nation from outside aggressors.
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Pipelineistan Goes Af-Pak.
You won't even see this on CNN. And true, this is not about defense or freedom. It is about oil pipelines, and securing resources and minerals. Unfortunately, you won't get a conversation about that from those who support Obama and think he can do no wrong. He is simply clandestinely continuing the policies put in place that were put on hold while the rest of this route was established and secured. Heavy geopolitics and political maneuvering are going on here with more innocent civilians being bombed off the pipeline route for the profits of a few. It never really changes, does it? That's what they did in Darfur too.
_____________excerpt:
In the ever-shifting New Great Game in Eurasia, a key question — why Afghanistan matters — is simply not part of the discussion in the United States. (Hint: It has nothing to do with the liberation of Afghan women.) In part, this is because the idea that energy and Afghanistan might have anything in common is verboten.
And yet, rest assured, nothing of significance takes place in Eurasia without an energy angle. In the case of Afghanistan, keep in mind that Central and South Asia have been considered by American strategists crucial places to plant the flag; and once the Soviet Union collapsed, control of the energy-rich former Soviet republics in the region was quickly seen as essential to future U.S. global power. It would be there, as they imagined it, that the U.S. Empire of Bases would intersect crucially with Pipelineistan in a way that would leave both Russia and China on the defensive.
Think of Afghanistan, then, as an overlooked subplot in the ongoing Liquid War. After all, an overarching goal of U.S. foreign policy since President Richard Nixon’s era in the early 1970s has been to split Russia and China. The leadership of the SCO has been focused on this since the U.S. Congress passed the Silk Road Strategy Act five days before beginning the bombing of Serbia in March 1999. That act clearly identified American geo-strategic interests from the Black Sea to western China with building a mosaic of American protectorates in Central Asia and militarizing the Eurasian energy corridor.
Afghanistan, as it happens, sits conveniently at the crossroads of any new Silk Road linking the Caucasus to western China, and four nuclear powers (China, Russia, Pakistan, and India) lurk in the vicinity. "Losing" Afghanistan and its key network of U.S. military bases would, from the Pentagon’s point of view, be a disaster, and though it may be a secondary matter in the New Great Game of the moment, it’s worth remembering that the country itself is a lot more than the towering mountains of the Hindu Kush and immense deserts: it’s believed to be rich in unexplored deposits of natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chrome, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, and iron ore, as well as precious and semiprecious stones.
end of excerpt
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- JanforGore
- 5 months ago
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TAPI Pipeline New Containment Tool?
"U.S. support for the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline over a rival Iranian project may put Canadian forces in the middle of a new cold war, an economist says.
The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline, or TAPI, is a planned project to deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and on into India. The United States supports the project as part of a broader containment strategy to deter the influence of Russia and Iran in the energy market.
Canadian international energy economist John Foster released a report Thursday saying the Canadian government eschewed the geopolitical significance of its military operations in Afghanistan despite the potential for those forces to be called on to defend the pipeline, The Globe and Mail said Thursday.
"Government efforts to convince Canadians to stay in Afghanistan have been enormous," Foster writes for the Ottawa-based think tank Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. "But the impact of the proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline in areas of Afghanistan under Canadian purview has never been seriously debated."
Foster worries in the report that the Canadian military may be placed in the middle of a "new great game" regarding energy security in Central Asia."
_________Is this the real reason the Congress just passed another 106 BILLION for the "war in Afghanistan?" Our tax dollars are going to build another ^&^%^&& pipeline while they tout a bogus climate change bill that is supposed to cut the very emissions this causes? Just who the hell do they think they're kidding? And yet, silence from the crowd that did nothing but scream about Bush's war in Iraq "for oil."
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- JanforGore
- 5 months ago
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Someone (Canadian troops)has to protect the poppy fields and heroine shipments.
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We have no legal authority to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Obama is merely the President of the United States. We are all responsible for the actions of our government!
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I agree. And yet, where are we today? We support iranians taking to the streets and yet sit in our own homes allowing these people to continue the status quo and lie to us simply because they belong to the "party" the majority supports. It seems to not matter whether it is Republican or Democrat.
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- JanforGore
- 5 months ago
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The "Left" always believes that we will pull out of strategic military engagements they oppose.
That hasn't happened in American history. Vietnam? While anti-war opposition was very influential. President Nixon took his time about departing.
I too am not in favor of the Afghan campaign as many respondents here. There is not enough killing being done to make a difference. Until we install Hard and Ruthless Commanders and use brutal tactics, this remains little more than a "police action" parading as a strategic war.
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First of ll regarding the source:
The phrase oped news is a contradiction in terms. OPinion/EDitorial is not news by definition.Regarding the photo:
WTF?! that's the Alaskan pipeline. Wrong hemisphere.Regarding the content:
Rather than an actual article this seems to be a collection of quotes from some professor trying to sell a book. I can't tell if his opinions have any merit because the case is not actually made in the article. it may be interesting and it may be not but the article is not helpful in determining that -
So wait...NOW we are getting all uppity that a president is doing things you can't technically do?
Where the hell was everyone when we invaded two nations a few years back?
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- theultimateend
- 5 months ago
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SO What, The USA does not now nor did it ever accept the Laws of God (for Christians) nor our constitution nor the United Nations not the International courts in the Hague. We Americans are the only Sacred entity in this world and dont you forget it. Now Washington is immune to any and all world and national crimes against the people. The people are to be ruled by the Government and will be subject to any and all laws passed in the Congress and the halls of Justice in Washington DC. The only way to repeal all of the above statements is for Washington to indict the Bush adminstration and hold all of them accountable for their crimes. And investigate the Obama administration and anyone else who takes the oath to protect the constitution and to follow the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, because Obama is till carrying on the same international crimes of the Bush administration.
