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Comment by mattdw | Hacker News Reader

The thing I don't understand about this is why the US would be prospecting in Afghanistan in the first place. Is there any valid reason why the US should have made this discovery? (Genuine question; I can't think of any reasons.)

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Nation building. We (supposedly) learned from our first exercise in Afghanistan that you can't help a people fight off their oppressor then leave them to fend for themselves. Things quickly degrade to where they were with the Taliban as the ruling body. Some believe it is in our interest to build up the nation with a favorable government in place.

And no, GWB's administration didn't invent this ideology. Neither did PNAC, or any of the other conspiracy-nut targets. This kind of thing has been going on for thousands of years.

Did you read the article? The discovery was accidental. There were charts secreted away by Afghan geologists during the Taliban years.

In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.

Heh… caught out. Thanks for doing my reading for me ;).

We look for large valuable resources in order to help democracy. (I'm only half-joking, I think there are both sinister and non-sinister reasons why this may occur, which is why it makes it hard to discern true motives.)

Profit, certainly. They have control over the country and its' government; so they can take advantage of the resources.

Only in an extremely naive world would you get downvoted for this. Is HN becoming a less enlightened place? Do we truly believe that we went to Afghanistan solely for the terrorists??

For what purpose do you believe we went into Afghanistan?

For their opium?

[Edit: Afghanistan, not Iraq.]

It is a pretty strategic location on the Silk Road, that's for sure.

Which in an era where silk and the like goods travel by container ship means...?

... OK, if not for the instability it would be useful for pipelines, but what else? (Serious question.)

Firstly, because we had a valid pretext for war (Taliban et al). But very important too is the fact that wars are profitable. And not from a resource standpoint; war production itself (e.g. weapons manufacturers, engineering firms to rebuild, etc) is highly lucrative and there certainly were agents lobbying on behalf of those companies, and pivoting themselves to be in a position to provide services "in the event of a conflict". That resources were actually discovered during occupation is just icing on the cake.

Less enlightened? HN sadly has never been very politically enlightened when it comes to America and geo-politics.

Edit: And I think that's because HN has a heavy American user base, and I don't think Americans get very good news (or are even very interested in the complexities of modern geo-politics). Good or bad, I think that's a fair assessment. So what you get are a lot of: "America is in Afghanistan and Iraq for altruistic reasons that have nothing to do with the resources under these people's feet."

> and I don't think Americans get very good news (or are even interested...)

What a stupid thing to say. Do you think that Americans who visit HN are prone to bouts of Fox News watching? Do you think Google News or bbc.co.uk is censored here?

> HN sadly has never been very politically enlightened when it comes to America and geo-politics.

This thread in particular shows great enlightenment on geo-politics. Just read the top comments.

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