DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Michael Tee on June 09, 2010, 10:39:37 AM
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http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0608/kucinich-war-critics-rebuke-usfunded-bribes-afghan-militants/ (http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0608/kucinich-war-critics-rebuke-usfunded-bribes-afghan-militants/)
NYT. Kucinich. Wonder how the conservatives are going to spin their way out of this one. Should be interesting. What they did indirectly with their war-mongering politicians initiating wars of choice, they are now simplifying by bypassing the politicians and buying the "threat" directly from the source. Always good business practice, and kind of . . . hilarious.
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Are you claiming the Obama Admin is unaware of this?
Are they not in control?
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<<Are you claiming the Obama Admin is unaware of this?>>
It's hard to tell. I don't know how much of a watch they keep on private enterprise.
<<Are they not in control?>>
LMAO. What U.S. administration is ever in control of private enterprise? Private enterprise is more or less in control of them.
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The US is paying the tab for NATO's security. The security companies, which are not US companies, are taking our money,tax payer money, for their services and making sure the Taliban continues to threaten NATO and US convoys by paying the Taliban to attack the occasional convoy. Most of the security companies involved are Afghan I believe.
That's the way it goes in Afghanistan and it has gone that way for centuries and will continue to go that way for at least decades to come. And believe it or not this kind of thing isn't as uncommon in war as you might think. It happened in Vietnam fairly often and the Special Forces in particular took advantage of it.
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I'm not sure what this has to do with capitalism. Kucinich seems complaining about money given by the U.S. government to prop up the government of Afghanistan. That isn't capitalism. The security companies in question are Afghanistan security companies. They are getting money from, and in some cases are founded by, Afghan officials. So it's not U.S. companies funding anything. The "Ultimate Capitalism" assessment is wrong all around.
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You have to consider the source, Prince
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I'm not sure what this has to do with capitalism. Kucinich seems complaining about money given by the U.S. government to prop up the government of Afghanistan. That isn't capitalism. The security companies in question are Afghanistan security companies. They are getting money from, and in some cases are founded by, Afghan officials. So it's not U.S. companies funding anything. The "Ultimate Capitalism" assessment is wrong all around.
Guess that explains why the Obama Admin had no comment. Wasn't their doing.
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<<The security companies, which are not US companies, are taking our money,tax payer money . . . >>
This was kind of news to me. It wasn't apparent from the source I read (The Raw Story) that the security companies were not U.S. companies, so I returned to the source and followed its link back to the original NYT story, which, sure enough, did say that the security companies were Afghan companies, often with strong family ties to powerful figures in the Afghan government. Technically, they were paid by the Afghan and American trucking companies convoying war materiel to the Afghan and NATO forces, on contract to the various militaries, so that it is not only American but other countries' taxpayer money that is flowing to the security companies through the trucking companies.
<< . . . this kind of thing isn't as uncommon in war as you might think. >>
My point was that as hard as it is to see the capitalist causes behind most of America's recent wars, this one instance is a crystal clear example of capitalist war-mongering. It is easy enough to obfuscate when governments start wars for ostensible reasons of state to mask the underlying capitalist rationale, but in cases such as this, with direct transfers of funds from the capitalists to their purported "enemies," there is no longer even the possibility of hiding the causal link.
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It has zero to do with captialism and everything to do with the way business is done in Afghanistan, Vietnam, and all the other third world nations on planet earth.