Success in Afghanistan
Less than four months after invading Afghanistan, President Bush in his 2002 State of the Union message declared a victory in his Global War on Terror: the Taliban were no longer in power in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden remained at large, but the U.S.-led coalition, the President said, had "...captured, arrested, and rid the world of thousands of terrorists, destroyed Afghanistan's terrorist training camps...and freed a country from brutal oppression."
Congress had authorized him to use military force against those directly responsible for 9/11,
and those who harbored the terrorists as well; the Taliban were defeated, apparently, because they'd harbored Osama bin Laden.
Buried in the President's triumphant declaration, however, was a meaningful disconnect: by no means had the Taliban "harbored" Osama bin Laden. Grateful for American support during their conflict with the Russians, the Taliban hoped to retain a good relationship with the U.S., but bin
Laden had bombed two U.S. embassies and an American warship. He was "just a damn liability" for the Taliban: far from "harboring" bin Laden they had tried for eleven months to have the Bush Administration take him into custody.(1)
No, the Taliban were crushed because they wouldn't yield, in negotiations with the Bush Administration, in granting a pipeline right-of-way across Afghanistan for Unocal, an American oil company.
Now a series of permanent U.S. military bases in Afghanistan was superimposed on the pipeline route; the Bush Administration stood ready to finance the construction; and Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal consultant, was the "Interim Administrator" of Afghanistan. In less than a month he would clear the way for Unocal.
The President boasted of armed victory, but he was celebrating its intended consequence: the geostrategic pipeline route across Afghanistan was now firmly under U.S. control.
Iraqi Oil: a More Complicated Project
Now the Bush Administration could turn to the 200 billion barrels of oil in Iraq.
As the President spoke, his Administration was already committed to an eventual invasion. The State Department was busy engineering the postwar seizure of Iraq's oil, as Cheney's "Energy Task Force" had specified. But there remained a huge hurdle for George Bush: Congress had not authorized him to spread the Global War on Terror anywhere he wished. Only regimes complicit in 9/11 could be targeted.
President Bush's next move was obvious. He had to manufacture the probability of another catastrophic terrorist attack--with Saddam Hussein as the murderous villain.
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