Small correction: "recent" discoveries show perhaps $3 trillion of mineral "resources" in Afghanistan, including many fundamental to the global industrial economy: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

I don't think there is a good imperialist reason to keep a military occupation in Afghanistan. It's not called 'the graveyard of Empires' for nothing. And there's nothing there that they couldn't get the old-fashioned way, simply by buying it in the marketplaces.

I agree with Carl that the iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium could probably be purchased regardless of what regime is in power in Afghanistan. It's not like under the Taliban the export of pomegranates, apricots, pistachios, woven rugs etc. stopped. I think of the comment by the Japanese trade official on the eve of the first Gulf War. In response to the allegation that the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait threatened the world's oil supply, he said, "In our experience, those with petroleum want to sell it..." Recall that the Talibs continued to negotiate about the construction of a natural gas pipeline from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean with U.S. and other oil companies right up to their overthrow.

"Surely there can be a number of reasons..." Well of course. My point is just that we should try to figure out what they are. Certainly the Afghan War has always been presented as part of a "war on terror" (altho the Obama administration partly due to Pentagon concerns about an open-ended crusade against "evil" everywhere has backed off from using that turn, much to Dick Cheney's chagrin) and has thus justified the establishment of empire (or rather the expansion of an existing empire). But what does it profit an empire, if it gains more territory with little to show for it than headaches? (In this case, loss of popular support with political consequences for those in power, strained budgets, rising deficit, international criticism, falling support from allies, to say nothing of the cannon fodder because the soulless system doesn't care about them?)

My feeling is that the initial attack on Afghanistan, which made it necessary to absolutely conflate al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the minds of the people and proclaim the doctrine that "will will not distinguish between terrorists and the states that harbor them" was the necessary "bridge" to cross before attacking Iraq. That is, had the U.S. done what Rumsfeld advocated the day after 9-11---attacking Iraq rather than Afghanistan because there were "no good targets" in Afghanistan (yes, he really said that! http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-20-clarke_x.htm) ---doing so while claiming that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, it wouldn't have been sufficiently convincing. And Tony Blair wouldn't go for it. Blair reportedly insisted that if there were to be action against Iraq it would have to be preceded by the attack of Afghanistan because that would seem more sensible to the British and U.S. publics.

It was a miscalculation in the sense that the Bush administration didn't anticipate the difficulties in imposing a regime that wouldn't alienate the people to the extent it has, and that would prove so weak in asserting central control, or that the Taliban (with a real social base) would be able to revive as it has, alongside former CIA operative Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami and other groups. This is why they are now openly talking about talking with the Taliban and why the brass is saying the war cannot be won militarily.

The defense industry is surely profiting from endless war. But does it drive policy more than, say, politicians' desire for votes? Notice how at their debate the Republican front-runners spent only 10% of their time talking about foreign policy and much of that was critical of an ongoing presence in Afghanistan. Does it drive it more than top officials like Gates, who before the Libya "operation" stated frankly that anyone advocating another U.S. war against an Arab country would have to have a hole in his head?

Again I'm struggling to understand how the war is advantaging U.S. imperialism as a whole, and how (specifically) it emanates from the logic and needs of the system itself.

I should add among the headaches caused by the war: the destabilization of Pakistan. The drone strikes which haven't substantially damaged the Afghan Taliban or its Pakistani spin-offs while infuriating ordinary Pakistanis, the endless humiliations of the Pakistani government that repeatedly (if only pro forma and by arrangement) condemns as violations of Pakistani security--- how do they serve the system as a whole? They seem more likely to produce another military coup and a more stridently nationalistic if not some sort of Islamist regime that will end cooperation with the U.S.

The present degree of cooperation is a result of the U.S. ultimatum made by Powell's deputy Armitage to Musharraff right after 9-11: meet our demands "or we'll bomb you back to the Stone Age." The carrot was billions in military assistance which the generals thought they could use in their confrontation with India (but then, of course, the U.S. established an alliance with India). A lot's happened in 10 years; the U.S. may be losing some of its intimidating powers and a break in relations could happen. The reaction to the assassination of bin Laden has led many mainstream commentators to ponder that. How would provoking that abet the interests of U.S. imperialism?

Any discussion of US policy in these regions must distinguish between Bush and the neoconservatives versus Obama. I didn't vote for Obama and never would vote for any Democrat. But the motives are different in any case.

The Obama administration came into office with the task of avoiding an imperial debacle like the helicopters taking off from Saigon at the last moment. Obama's most important goal is to avoid a visible defeat of US imperialism, after 8 years of recklessness under Bush. The way that Obama handles these situations should not be seen as an agenda introduced by either him or his main advisors (e.g. Zbigniew Brzezinski) but rather as their way of coping with the train wreck left to them by the earlier administration.

Obama, Brzezinski et al do not wish to allow for a "cut and run" appearance. They wish to seem decisive as imperial overseers. At the same time they do seek to effectively carry out a shift whereby other European powers are encouraged to play roles and a greater emphasis may be given to airstrikes over troops on the ground. That is a shift which they would like to carry out without appearing to be retreating in a way which betrays weakness.

Can that be done? Every imperial planner around Obama must be asking that question. But this is the framework where one should start from to understand Obama's agenda, and to distinguish it from earlier agendas during the Bush years. Without that distinction I don't think one can really understand what is going on.

I agree we must distinguish between Bush and the neocons (and I'd add, Cheney who had a special role in making the Office of the Vice President a special hub of neocon activity, shrouded in unprecedented secrecy in order to cover up the systematic disinformation campaign he'd overseen) on the one hand and Obama on the other. Obama has a somewhat different relationship to the corporate elite than did Bush, although he's equally beholden to them for his position and he's shown that even as president he cannot (and isn't disposed to) challenge it meaningfully. Instead he postures as a mediator, conciliator, taking "both views" into account and slicing it down the middle. Thus he miffs his mainstream liberal supporters/allies and remains more or less acceptable to his detractors too. On foreign policy he (and Hilary Clinto) have generally gotten a thumbs up from the neocons.

But I don't see his main project as mitigating the Bush-era damage and avoiding another "imperial debacle." His tripling of US forces in Afghanistan, provocation of the Pakistanis, agreement to the French-led Libyan campaign (already a debacle) all suggest a willingness to risk such debacle. Whether that's because he feels that to do the opposite (quickly withdraw from Afghanistan, defer to the Pakistanis and stop the strikes mostly killing civilians, and turn Sarkozy down on the matter of Libya) would make him look weak, lose him the presidency, and hasten the decline of the US as a world power or whether he really believes in what he's doing is anyone's guess.

The question is---and realizing that the System isn't analogous to a board of directors of a corporation but a complex and contradiction-written thing---why is U.S. imperialism behaving as it is right now?

Hegel said (and Baran & Sweezy famously quoted): "The truth is the WHOLE." Looking at U.S. imperialism, as a whole, how do we understand its "necessity" (if that's in fact what it is) to charge on in the graveyard of empires?

When Obama took office the sounds left behind by the Bush administration were still suggesting that an invasion of Iran was in the near future. I think, without having access to any special documentary record, that Obama and his advisors effectively scotched that idea. There had been talk about the USA placing nuclear weapons in Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe as a deterrent against ... Iran. Obama seems to have dumped that one too.

These types of policy followed under Bush/Cheney were significant in encouraging the formation of a China/Iran/Russia alliance against US imperialism. That would have the real makings of a likely debacle. Beefing up troops in Afghanistan while taking a more concilatory attitude towards Russia is still not an imperial policy which I intend to support at the ballot box. But I do think it fits more with Obama trying to avoid open debacles and staying out of major quicksands.

A recent Ney York Times piece by Gideon Rose of the Council on Foreign Relations

www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26afghan.html

entitled "What Would Nixon Do?" seems consistent with my own impressions above. Rose speaks of a need for "a strategy for getting out without turning a retreat into a rout..." That's how I see Obama trying to work things. Of course Nixon escalated the war into Cambodia as part of the general retreat strategy, and Obama can be expected to do something similar.