Guest “America last… again” by David Middleton
Biden’s Clean Energy Program Loses Out on Afghan Lithium
BY IERAUGUST 24, 2021
Afghanistan is the “the Saudi Arabia of lithium” –a metal that is essential for electric vehicle batteries and battery storage technologies. According to the International Energy Agency these technologies account for 30 percent of the current global demand for lithium. Demand for lithium is projected to increase 40-fold above 2020 levels by 2040, along with rare earth elements, copper, cobalt, and other minerals in which Afghanistan is also naturally rich.
China currently controls the supply chains for most of the production and/or processing of these minerals. Now China may have another source.
According to MarketWatch:
"The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban has led to grave concerns about the safety of Afghan citizens and foreigners alike, but also raised questions about the future of the nation’s vast mineral reserves, once valued at as much as $3 trillion.
The chaos may offer China, which dominates the world market for rare earths, widely used in technology, to step in to develop the mineral reserves, which also include lithium, used in the manufacture of batteries.
“Chinese dealmakers have their bags packed, and will arrive on the first flights after the airports open,” said Byron King, geologist and mining and energy writer for Agora Financial."
In 2010, an internal U.S. Department of Defense memorandum identified the extent of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth at a value between $1 trillion and $3 trillion. In the past, the Afghan government hoped the prospect of lucrative mining contracts would be an enticement for U.S. officials to prolong the American military presence in the country. But, with the Taliban now in charge, that option is no longer available. The Taliban have long illegally tapped the country’s minerals (especially lapis lazuli, a gem) as a source of up to $300 million in annual revenue for their insurgency.
[…]
Conclusion
To have Afghanistan’s minerals under Taliban control is a blow to American economic interests. And, despite the Taliban’s struggle to maintain basic public services and utilities in the cities that they have seized, the opportunity is there for China or Russia to capture some of the country’s mineral wealth. In yet another way, President Biden’s policies will benefit China and Russia while costing the American people.
IER
America Last… Again
But, but, but… Trump!
No, Trump Didn’t Force Biden’s Withdrawal
The Taliban violated the Doha agreement, so the U.S. could have stayed.By S. Paul Kapur
Aug. 31, 2021The Biden administration has consistently blamed the Trump administration’s 2020 Doha agreement with the Taliban for the Afghanistan debacle. The agreement, the Biden team insists, left the president no choice but to remove U.S. forces unconditionally from Afghanistan by Aug. 31. In fact, President Biden’s failure to hold the Taliban to the terms of the Doha agreement contributed to this disaster.
[…]
Trump administration officials emphasized the conditional nature of the U.S. commitment when the Doha agreement was signed. As Defense Secretary Mark Esper put it in March 2020, Doha “is a conditions-based agreement.” If “we assess that the Taliban is honoring the terms of the deal,” including “progress on the political front between the Taliban and the current Afghan government,” the U.S. will “reduce our presence toward a goal of zero in 2021.” But Mr. Esper made clear that the American withdrawal wouldn’t be automatic. “If progress stalls,” he warned, “then our drawdown likely will be suspended, as well.”
The Taliban didn’t honor its political commitments and ultimately took Afghanistan by force. The Biden administration’s claim that the Doha agreement left no choice but to quit Afghanistan unconditionally is false. Given the Taliban’s behavior, the U.S. wasn’t obligated to withdraw by May 1, by Aug. 31, or any other date. Withdrawal was a choice. And the Biden administration’s announcement of this choice in April triggered the Taliban offensive to retake Afghanistan and set the disastrous U.S. departure in motion.
[…]
Wall Street Journal
The Doha agreement actually afforded the Biden administration a huge opportunity…
Breaking the Stalemate: Biden Can Use the U.S.-Taliban Deal to Bring Peace
U.S. troop withdrawal looms over negotiations a year after the historic agreement.Thursday, February 25, 2021 / BY: Scott Worden
On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the U.S.-Taliban agreement, Afghanistan remains unfortunately far away from peace. The historic agreement paved the way for a full U.S. withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and the start of intra-Afghan talks on a political settlement of the conflict. As the May 1 withdrawal deadline nears, the Biden administration is undertaking a rapid Afghanistan policy review to determine its overall strategy toward the slow-moving intra-Afghan negotiations in Doha, Qatar. A key reason for the lack of movement in talks is that both sides are anxiously waiting to see what Biden decides.
It is important to recognize that the U.S.-Taliban agreement was designed to be a stepping stone to a comprehensive settlement of the conflict and not a replacement for an Afghan agreement. By agreeing to a conditional timeline to withdraw combat forces, the United States was able to overcome the Taliban’s resistance to negotiate directly with the Afghan government. The Afghan peace process and the U.S. agreement are mutually dependent. Without U.S. forces as leverage, the two sides may not continue to negotiate. Without a negotiated agreement, terrorist safe havens will likely persist and the U.S. will remain threatened by al-Qaida and, increasingly, ISIS.
Conditions or Timelines?
The biggest question now is whether the United States assesses that enough of the conditions laid out in the February 29, 2020 agreement have been met to withdraw all U.S. combat forces by May 1. By most measures, the answer is no. There are four “interrelated” elements of the agreement: (1) counterterrorism actions by the Taliban; (2) a conditional timeline for U.S. troop withdrawal, (3) commencing intra-Afghan talks, and (4) discussion of conditions that would lead to a permanent cease-fire.
[…]
United States Institute for Peace
“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to [frack] things up.”
Yet searing, anonymously sourced quotes from Obama kept appearing through the race. One Democrat who spoke to Obama recalled the former president warning, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to [frack] things up.” Speaking of his own waning understanding of today’s Democratic electorate, especially in Iowa, Obama told one 2020 candidate: “And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.”
Politico, August 14, 2020
The Taliban v. the Chinese Communist Party reminds me of the Iran/Iraq war, in that I really want both sides to lose. Medieval fanatics against racist neo-Fascists—some choice.
Iran and Iraq were similarly sized armies and capabilites, so basically a stalemate. China has at least a 10-fold advantage in active military personnel and an incalculable advantage in military technology. China would (and will IMO) absolutely bulldoze the Taliban. But I don’t think that will happen for a while. They will likely first colonize Afghanistan like they do to other 3rd world countries once a modern highway through the Wakhan corridor is established.
China will not bulldoze the Taliban. Afghanis have defeated three empires — British, Russian, and US. China is just another one.
First, the Taliban have to reopen the airports. They’ve asked Turkey to provide ATCs, but so far, no go.
The Talibs need the airports to fly in Chinese engineers and execs and fly out terrorists to all the world.
Gosh, maybe they will have to start training their own to perform some of the mundane tasks like maintenance and Air Traffic Control. That could actually have a beneficial affect on the population as more and more of them are trained in modern technology and possibly exposed to the real world.
If I were a Turkish ATC I would certainly not be volunteering to go work for the Taliban either. It strikes me as a very dicey place to work.
The biggest exporters of terrorism are sitting in Langley and DC.
Yanks need to bring their government to heel before it’s too late.
Actually, it’s probably already too late. Your Deep State stole the 2020 election and all the gun-hugging patriots let them do it.
Even now, hundreds of the Jan 6 rioters are rotting away in solitary confinement… ie, the US has more political dissidents in prison than Russia.
Chinese trolls on WUWT?
I’d have to agree w/you. Mindless fanatics have gotten themselves in control here now. “Tolerance” for everything/anything was ingrained into the public here for so many decades and this is the result.
All 3 that you mentioned were not next door neighbors with comparatively overwhelming military manpower (not just military technology). They were empires at the end of their expansive influence, whereas China is at the beginning of its zenith and has the capability to entirely repopulate Afghanistan as a military stronghold. They won’t play by the same rules the other 3 did.
Russia is right next door and threw lots of manpower into their war.
Britain was right next door in Pakistan/India.
I doubt China would want to send in millions of troops.
As much as I’d like to agree with you, Felix, China’s military is as full of “disposables” as a double-sized box of Kleenex. They’re in a border squabble now with India, have been for some months now. They don’t care how many troops they lose: ALL are viewed as disposables.
Afghanistan is China’s cakewalk into the mideast. Can’t get there through nuclear and highly populated India and Pakistan.
Don’t be so sure. They’ll have to step lightly or pay a high price like everybody else.
Lrp, the Chinese troops are disposables, just like people were during Mao’s 10 year famine. The nastiest person on Earth was Stalin, when he had 37,000 Red Army officers executed over several years, because they posed a threat to his power and authority. Remember, it was the Chinese Red Army that bulked up the North Korean military during the Korean War. Human life means nothing to them.
I see no real difference here today.
No offense meant, but if my view seems cynical, it’s based on what Stalin and Mao did, among other things.
There’s been a major change in China since those earlier conflicts. 70 years, most Chinese families had 6 to 7 kids. In modern China, after 40 years of the one child policy, most families only have one child.
If China loses a lot of soldiers, there will be a lot of families who no longer have an heir. That has the potential to create a lot of social unrest.
China can’t afford to go toe to toe with the Taliban. But they don’t have to. They can stand off and use artillery and airplanes to destroy village after village. Yes, the people can disperse into the hills whenever the Chinese get near, but can the disperse with their crops and flocks?
However, if China loses a lot of men in foreign wars it will help to equalize the uneven ratio of men to women.
Human life means nothing to any psychopathic “leader”… including the ones sitting in DC.
“disposables” “burdens” Negotiable assets in the semantics of Western enlightenment, and Chinese social progress.
If the US didn’t treat its soldiers as disposable, they wouldn’t be sending them off to die or be maimed in these ruinous wars of choice. Or letting them freeze to death as homeless persons, either.
Adams warned you about foreign entanglements and going forth to find monsters to destroy.
The USSR was next door, not Russia. There’s a lot of muslim land between Russia and Afghanistan.
And it was the USSR — the Russian Empire — which had its little war there. That’s still two out of three empires which were right next door to Afghanistan. My statement stands.
There’s a big difference between waging war from one’s own soil and from occupied hostile territory thousands of miles away from one’s own country. And with limited resources. Afghanistan is a difficult challenge to remote armies, but not to a neighboring country that can field millions of soldiers and isn’t constrained by Christianized western ethics. With it’s shortage of women, China could probably recruit tens of millions of soldiers quickly by offering Afghan slave-brides as war booty. There’s no way the Taliban could withstand such an army
Afghanistan has many neighbours who’ll change camps quickly should the Chinese try outright occupation
Excuse me the British empire was next door and lost, the occupied and controlled both what are now India and Pakistan and still lost. Ditto for the USSR.
You over estimate the value of having a captured nation as a launching point for aggression. Many of these nations were almost as hostile to the Russians as the Afghans were.
They won’t need to. A few hundred thousand will be sufficient.
China has to be gentle. There are many Muslims around the world who could make Chinese business a difficult proposition.
“hey won’t play by the same rules the other 3 did.”
Yes, I doubt that the Chicoms will allow the Taliban or anyone else to have a Safe Haven to retreat to. Instead, the Chicoms will go into their Safe Havens and wipe them out, and there won’t be any more Safe Havens for them.
I agree. I’m waiting for the shoe to drop.
The safe haven is Pakistan do you think China is going to go into Pakistan?
Both countries have nuclear weapons though China’s arsenal is much larger and more advanced. But as your question implied it is unlikely China would invade Pakistan. However, note they are not averse to firefights with India which has a larger nuclear arsenal than Pakistan.
I wouldn’t rule it out.
Yeah, but military conquest isn’t China’s plan — slow takeover and control is, especially for the resources. They’ll use the Taliban…..
In the case of the Americans, the Afghanis did not defeat the Amercan military. The Afghanis defeated a defeatists named Joe Biden. That’s all.
Like I said, if you want a “Forever War”, allow your enemy a safe haven to retreat to when the going gets tough for them. The North Vietnamese could retreat to North Vietnam or Cambodia. The Taliban can retreat to Pakistan.
If you want to do away with Forever Wars, and win the war quickly, then attack the Safe Havens and eliminate the ability of your enemy to resist.
We get into Forever Wars because politicians are only thinking in four-year increments, so they hamstring the American military for their own personal political purposes. And then that continues over the years, and you get a Forever War, that polticians are afraid to bring to a conclusion, so they just let it go on and on and on, as long as they don’t have to be the one to make the big decision.
And then Joe Biden comes along and makes a big decsion which just happens to be the worst decision that could have been made. it couldn’t get any worse than this, internationally.
It can get worse than this domestically, if Joe Biden continues to allow the United States to be invaded by illegal aliens.
Republicans should refuse to cooperate with Biden or the Democrats on anything going forward until Biden closes off the U.S. Southern Border.
America gets into forever wars because that’s where the profit is.
Yes, if the US went in all guns blazing and slaughtered even more of the locals than they do already, they might be able to “win” in places like Afghanistan, but then the US empire could no longer pretend it was “the good guys”, and as the US citizenry likes these comforting lies they tell themselves, support for such adventurism would be lost.
Try to think why the US gets involved in these conflicts in the first place. It’s not like Nazi Germany, that had run out of foreign exchange via years of idiotic military Keynesianism and needed more fertile land for its citizenry.
Cui bono? And please don’t peddle the ObL excuse for invading Afghanistan; they’d drawn up plans for taking Afghanistan long before that pretext, and continued occupying the country long after he’d left.
The paranoia is strong with this one. Yes, we get it. You’ve been taught to believe that the US is the source of all evil in the world, and you lack sufficient intelligence to question what you have been taught.
I couldn’t have said it better, MarkW. You nailed it.
I see where a new Rasmussen poll has 52 percent calling for Biden to resign over the failure in Afghanistan.
Americans need to come out and show they do not agree with what Biden did, and in that way, the United States may get some of its respect back.
Impeachment and removal of Biden would be the best way to salvage the U.S. reputation.
The British never had an overwhelming number of troops. Also the difference in weapon technology between the British and the Taliban was not that great.
The Russians faced a mujahedeen force that was wielding American weapons and intelligence.
The Americans never seriously tried to defeat the Taliban. They relied on a strategy of outlasting them.
The Chinese will have overwhelming manpower . They will have an overwhelming technological advantage. They won’t have to worry about anyone else arming the Taliban. Finally, the Chinese won’t be squeamish about destroying an entire village if they think the village is supporting the Taliban.
Pakistan created and supported the Taliban. Pakistan needs China. The Taliban will be thrown under the bus if China so orders.
Pakistan is now running Afghanistan. That was Pakistan’s aim all along. They have been successful because Biden handed Afghanistan to them on a Silver Platter.
While the Chinese military currently consists of 3,350,000 estimated people (ha ha), their “fit for service” population is 617,270,275. Afghanistan’s population is just shy of 40 million, and certainly not all of them are fighters. In fact, they’re mostly just victims.
China could easily mobilize a force to go in to Afghanistan and simply kill everyone – a 1 to 1 force, if necessary. And they would have no compunction about doing so. Anyone who thinks the Taliban could stand up to China is badly mistaken. In fact, the likelihood of such a Chinese win is probably enhanced by the CCP’s desire to capitalize on Biden’s failure, by demonstrating that it could win where we surrendered. These are dangerous times.
As Ghandi and Thoreau pointed out, civil disobedience only works against an enemy who is inherently moral. We, the British, and the Russians to a lesser extent, are moral. The Chinese are not moral and don’t care. They will exterminate the Afghans if needed. They are currently doing so with the Urghars. Mao murdered 60 million Chinese, they will have no hesitation.
Ruthless leaders don’t care how many people d!e, on either side, as long as it’s not them, and as long as they get their way.
The Chicoms have lots of cannon fodder to throw into the battle.
China won’t hesitate to ethnically “cleanse” anyone who gets in their way … using any and all means at their disposal. The Afghans will come to miss the gentle, humanitarian embrace of the U.S.A..
China doesn’t need to fight for what it can buy.
Unlike the US – which has the USD’s world reserve currency status to protect and a crony-capitalist MIC influencing its government – China’s fascists tend to prefer trade to invasion.
They can make plenty of money out of Afghanistan without the expense and disruption of attempting to quell a land that is famous for being difficult to quell.
With that money they buy overseas influence, resources and companies, while the US government concentrates on plundering their own taxpayers via ruinous – and evil – wars of choice.
The Taliban will not be fighting the Chinese. The Taliban are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pakistani military/intelligence complex, which is the only functioning institution in Pakistan. In order to survive they must get money from foreign governments. For many years it was from a combination of the US, Saudi Arabia, and China.
Now that the US is pulling out and siding with India against China, the Pakistanis must rely on China
Pakistan has already sold the minerals in Afghanistan to China. China will mine them with Chinese labor guarded by Chinese soldiers. The Taliban will leave them alone.
True. The Talibs’ main funding sources are opium and the Pakistani ISI, which lucre allowed them to bribe theire way back into power..
Or so the Chinese think.. . .
Having faith in the rationality of Medieval fanatical is a losing game.
Damn autocorrect! Fanatics, not fanatical
Sounds like autocorrect is being fanatical.
Spell check is your enema!!
You are probably right either way, Tom.
And a lot of the prices for things like rare-earth minerals is based on them being by-products of other mining. There are almost always other sources when the price is right.
It is not faith in rationality. It is faith in the need for money. And the Chinese will kill all of them if they have to. Just ask the Uighurs.
Considering the Russian record on being ruthless, I really doubt the ability of the Chinese in shrecklischkeit to surpass the Russians.
Have the Chinese killed all the Uighurs, then?
Taliban: religious sadists.
Why for god’s sake should China fight Taliban???
The Taliban will stabilize Afghanistan.
The Chinese will bring money.
Taliban is the best choice possible!
My understanding of Afghan history is that the Pathans and other tribes will stop fighting each other, and fight the outsider who moves in, until the invaders leave, then go back to fighting each other.
As the Chinese are not Muslim, and not a cousin of any Afghan, the Taliban, as stereotypical Afghans, will certainly declare a feud masked as a jihad against them. Non-Afghan Muslims might be tolerated as long as they were useful.
China does have a large number of Uighurs (Chinese Muslims) in a re-education camp. They can be used against Afghans, as they are considered disposables.
The assumption made here by many is that China will use military forces to take over Afghanistan. They will, in fact, use economic forces. They’ve already started, and will likely succeed.
The Taliban are much more easily bribed than fought. A mutual hate of ‘the West’ will definitely help. All the while China will drain the resources dry and sell the results to ‘the West’ for their insane efforts to control the weather.
Exactly. Military campaigns are extremely expensive, have unpredictable outcomes (even if only politically) and are usually a last resort.
There’s no reason why the Taliban will attack the Chinese if the latter don’t invade, and there’s no reason for the latter to invade because they can offer investment and royalties to the Taliban for the resources they extract.
China getting hooked on producing lithium and green hardware has an interesting consequence. The scientific truth regarding the relationship between CO2 and the surface temperature will eventually win, causing the demand for green to drop dramatically as the primary emotional trigger resulting in climate change guilt arising from industrialization will dissappear.
I see the Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a long, cold winter. Perhaps they have been studying the Milankovitch cycles, as I have been doing ever since noting that fascinating conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the evening sky last December, followed by brutal cold in February across much of the USA and then a short, hot summer.
Uh, no. The Milankovitch cycles are many thousands of years long. They change imperceptibly from year to year.
Uh, no. Take a look at any chart of the results of the longest cycle, the 100,000 year one. The changeover is anything but imperceptible. See, for example, Burroughs, “Climate Change in Prehistory”. At the times of changeover, sea levels dropped and rose on the order of 30 inches per century, and did so for thousands of years. That rate of change would be cause for panic today! Temperature changes were correspondingly steep, see the lectures “The Physics of History” from “The Great Courses.”
I get the Almanac every year. Everything I’ve read about their forecasts suggests it’s due to the solar cycle. They’ve never mentioned Milankovitch.
Rest assured only after extensive study of the envornomental and ecological impacts of massive mining operations will the Afghan/China consortiums carefully undertake the most sensitive extraction methods possible.
LOL. And Afghan NIMBYs/greenies will protest & sue against any proposed mining operations.
Steve McIntyre – an actual mining exec has noted the Afghanistan lithium deposits have been greatly overstated as basic intel porn by the intel community
similar to Iraq’s wmd
Yes, I agree. It ranks up there with the scare stories about the Soviets wanting Afghanistan for access to warm water ports in south Asia.
To be fair, Afghanistan does have more mineral resources than warm water ports… /SARC
That was the goal not only of the USSR but the Russian Empire. During the Great Game, the British and Persian Empires headed them off.
The Soviets fomented rebellion among the warlike Mari tribesmen of Pakistani Baluchistan in order to facilitate their objective.
But now China has a port in Baluchistan.
After KGB agent, British PM Harold Wilson pulled out of Aden in 1967, the USSR moved in.
https://medium.com/indra-networks/8th-operational-indian-ocean-squadron-soviet-presence-in-indian-ocean-region-a4e4ae82ee44
The USSR backed South Yemen in order to control the Red Sea choke point and the Horn of Africa. It used Socotra as its base in the western IO.
Khrushchev poisoned anti-Communist Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell in order to advance Soviet stooge Wilson, who became PM in the 1964 elections.
Canadian PM Lester Pearson resigned in 1968 when the Mounties got the goods on his Soviet espionage. That gave us the Trudeaus.
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt himself might not have been a Soviet agent, but his chief of staff was. The USSR Politburo had good reason to think they were winning in the 1960s to ’80s.
Then (1819-21):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Russian_Antarctic_Expedition#:~:text=The%20First%20Russian%20Antarctic%20Expedition%20took%20place%20in%201819%E2%80%931821,Fabian%20Bellingshausen%20and%20Mikhail%20Lazarev.&text=The%20Russian%20Antarctic%20expedition%20ended,expedition%20a%20half%20century%20earlier.
Now (2021):
https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/iran-russia-start-naval-drill-indian-ocean
When the Imperial Russian Navy really needed IO bases, so as not to have to steam the Baltic Fleet to the Sea of Japan (1904-05):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima
I don’t understand why anyone is promoting this fiction of a mineral rich Afghanistan? The only nation interested in Afghanistan is Pakistan. Why they are interested and how they managed to bamboozle the Biden administration into thus disastrous defeat is the real question.
There’s no doubt that Afghanistan has abundant mineral resources.
The problem is in getting the various factions to stop killing each other and blowing stuff up, long enough to establish the required infrastructure and exploit the resources.
Pakistan is probably even more difficult to figure out than Afghanistan.
Biden wanted to end the war on or before the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and then spike footballs during a victory lap, celebrating ending our longest war.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/31/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-speech-508036
It’s as if Churchill declared Dunkirk a victory and moved on to anything other than World War II.
“Biden wanted to end the war on or before the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and then spike footballs during a victory lap, celebrating ending our longest war.”
It will be the Taliban and the other terrorists of the world who will be celebrating on September 11, 2021.
I wonder how they will celebrate? By attacking the United States? Knowing they would love to be able to do it.
Biden better close that Southern U.S. border.
A significant number of Americans were left behind in Afghanistan because they couldn’t exfiltrate prior to Jihad Joe:s deadline… Our State Department gave the Taliban a list of those left behind.
I have a very bad feeling about 9/11/2021.
It’s only 10 days till 9/11/21. I doubt they could put together anything more than a few symbolic strikes.
It’s 9/11/2022 that worries me more.
It doesn’t take long to put together a public beheading in Afghanistan and then broadcast it to the world.
Psychos already in the U.S. and loyal to ISIS, might decide that day is the time to act out their fantasies of violence.
One thing about it, we can be sure a very large number of psychopaths are heading to Afghanistan. Radical Islam is the psychopaths’ religion. It gives them persmission to act out thier internal violence and even get praised for it if they are especially deadly. Birds of a feather, are flocking together.
One MOAB might not get them all, but it would get a lot of them.
Tribal warfare has been a feature of those areas since before Genghis Khan.
It is not a fiction. the USGS did a survey over 10 years ago of Afghanistan’s mineral deposits, which are plentiful, even if difficult to reach. And to be blunt, China wants complete control of Southwest Asia, which includes Afghanistan.
They’ve had a deal with Iran for some time now:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/17/china-is-getting-mired-in-the-middle-east/
The CCP wants to outflank and surround India. First Tibet, then Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Finally, the Central Asian ‘Stans. Since Uzbek and Uyghur are dialects of the same language, that’s a hard sell.
Kazakh and Kyrgyz are also mutually intelligible dialects. Turkmen is more akin to Azeri and Turkish, but all in the Turkic family. Tajik, like Dari in Afghanistan, is a hillbilly Persian dialect, scorned by Iranian Farsi speakers. Pashto in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the Indo-Iranian branch, but about midway between Persian and Urud-Hindustani on the Indo-Aryan branch.
… So what?
Catholics and Protestants within countries spoke identical dialects yet still slaughtered each other for centuries.
Long before there were Protestants, the Catholics were off making friends in the Holy Land.
Long before the Catholics started making forays into the Holy Land, the Muslims were busy killing anyone who wasn’t a Muslim in the Holy Lands.
The Pakistani nukes are designs and materials provided by China. AQ and ISIS would love to get their hands on those. The nightmare scenario that keeps DoD Pentagon mission planners up at night trying stop.
Those Paki nuke exigency plans are worthless with a President Biden as a CIC unwilling to authorize them, just like he recommended against the mission that killed bin Laden when he was VP. Joe Biden is George Costanza of the WH nightmare, every action he takes is the opposite of what should be done..
“And to be blunt, China wants complete control of Southwest Asia, which includes Afghanistan.”
The Chicoms actually want complete control over the Universe. They are thinking big and forward.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is stuck with Joe Biden and the Democrats who live in a delusional fantasy world. The only big thing they think about is how much of other people’s money can they manage to spend.
Yup, you better get invading to stop those evil Chicoms! Quick! Give your MIC a few more hundred billion every year to fend off this latest hobgoblin!
PS – the Chinese government are not communists. They never got beyond socialism; now that they allow some Capitalism they’re technically fascists.
The leaders of the Chinese government are ruthless, murderous criminals who ought to be locked up away from decent human beings. Their pretty smiles are only skin deep.
“and how they managed to bamboozle the Biden administration into this disastrous defeat”
Biden bamboozled himself into this defeat, he didn’t need any outside help to express his appeaser mentality. He was perfectly capable of doing that all by himself. Biden started his political career out in 1972 being against the Vietnam war, and this has colored his personality since that time. Biden is the classic anti-war appeaser.
Appeasers can’t deal with International Bad Guys. When they get in a situation like that, the first thing they do is look for an exit. That’s what Biden did and that’s why we are where we are right now. Biden couldn’t run away fast enough.
When did he get a personality?????
By kissing other peoples derrieres.
Sorry, most of the world sees the US as the bad guys now.
That’s what happens when you go forth to destroy “monsters” – you risk becoming one yourself.
John Adams tried to warn you…
Translation: Me and my far left buddies hate the US for standing up to the Soviets.
“Sorry, most of the world sees the US as the bad guys now.”
I don’t think you speak for the world. You are welcome to your personal opinion, of course.
And the Oil in the South China sea, that why we fought the Vietcong was it. Funny there is not much oil coming out of the South China sea fifty years later.
The British Geological Society’s map of lithium sites and occurences across the world shows nothing in Afghanistan.
What makes the Afghan lithium attractive is that it is a chloride in salt pans and brines, like Bolivia, so cheaper to mine than hard rock spodumene deposits. And, the initial estimates were that the reserves are as big or bigger than Bolivia, the world’s present #1 producer.
Rio Tinto is investing nearly $2.5 billion for Jadar lithium in Serbia (ex. Yugoslavia) aiming to produce over 2 million tonnes of lithium carbonate over the expected 40-year life of mine, making Rio Tinto one of the top ten lithium producers in the world.
https://www.riotinto.com/news/releases/2021/Rio-Tinto-commits-funding-for-Jadar-lithium-project
For mineral connoisseurs who have not come before acros mineral Jadarite more info here
https://www.mindat.org/min-31570.html
Have we figured out how to keep lithium from catching fire without warning?
Shouldn’t we fix that before we go mining a bunch of it?
Perhaps we should use something else for our batteries.
Wouldn’t that be embarrasing for the lithium miners.
No, Rud https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/09/01/lithium-how-the-taliban-will-fight-climate-change/#comment-3332274
Top producers are Australia, Chile, China and Argentina:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-lithium-analysis-idUSKCN1T00DM
Chile has the largest reserves.
There is a fair amount of lithium near Jalalabad, but this “Saudi Arabia” of lithium (most at WUWT will guess correctly) is just media hype.
I was queried about development of these by principals of a Pakistani coal company. They were interested in whether the ore could be hand picked profitably (I received a package of old maps). I began work on a preliminary study including layout (it has to be well designed to be orderly) and hand picking, including hand cobbing as a separate step, which involves breaking waste away from coarse spodumene, which is apple green and easily recognized, appeared likely to be quite profitable employing several hundred per two shift day.
I hasten to add, given all, the hysteria associated with mining ‘battery minerals” that spodumene pegmatites are essentially a very coarse granite and such ore is not a hazard. Spodumene is inert. Ordinary work and safety precautions include wearing a mask, hard hat and hard toed boots. Water is used liberally for hand picking to ease mineral ID and the ore is emerged in water before distribution to picking belts.
Oops and also safety glasses!
Ear protection! Those belts and bits are loud!
Silicosis!
I’m under the impression that most of the known lithium deposits reside in South America. Another mineral that you don’t know is there until you look for it. The USA has large deposits of it’s own. Once again …. like with fossil fuels …. the only things standing between taking advantage of USA resources are politics and money. Capitalism solves the money problem.
It might help with the environmental issues as well.
If Chile adopt a new, Communist constitution, its production will continue to fall.
Yes. The world’s biggest lithium mine is in US. The processing of the ores is the issue where it seems China has become the cheapest and doesn’t care about waste byproduct.
This is another over the top tabloid stretch with resource estimate studies. Large scale mining requires huge investment unless you’re talking about child labor in the Congo. It is too complex for the Taliban to pull it off and no international mining group would set foot in the place. Another overlooked fact is that Chinese workers have been slaughtered in Pakistan by militant groups on several occasions so Belt and Road will not work.
I see a post on lithium and a picture of Joe Biden. So naturally I’m thinking he’s finally going to get some help.
I liked this one, but many may be unaware.
Li is for mania. I don’t think that that’s Slow Joe’s main problem.
They don’t have a pill to fix stupid. That’s Joe’s main problem. He wasn’t any smarter in 1972 than he is now, and he wasn’t brain damaged then (as far as I know).
his organic brain damage came in the ’80s, but he was always mediocre at best, and always a pathological liar and incompetent.
It looks like the USGS took down their over-hyped mineral resource report for Afghanistan. There were no takers for good reason and there will be none now. All the fools have moved off to safer places to lose money.
USGS Afghanistan catalog…
https://mrdata.usgs.gov/catalog/science.php?thcode=1&term=fAF
So far, every link I’ve clicked on returns this:
They’ve probably taken them down because they’re an embarrassment to all the neocon types who think they illustrate how the US “lost” the resources.
Newsflash, kids: the resources weren’t yours to begin with.
Opium is the best cash crop in Afghanistan. (U.S. supported local governments were unable to offer a better option, which is why the governments never became very popular). Maybe opium influenced the estimates of mineral resources.
And now they power their irrigation pumps with solar panels, not diesel generators…
Everyone has admitted that for those locations that are far off grid, solar makes sense.
Only the terminally clueless believe that such examples demonstrate anything about the usability of solar in general.
There is perhaps a solution to the supply problem for lithium:
https://www.acuitykp.com/blog/sodium-ion-batteries-a-potential-replacement-for-lithium-ion-batteries/
However, they don’t speak to the problem of cobalt, which may be even more of a supply bottle-neck for electrification.
Since days of young Nikola Tesla and AC currents, application of mas electrification required lot of copper and iron, easy to recycle and enough of it around for foreseeable future, and further more they are not hazardous metals.
In the Nature Reviews paper ‘Mining our green future’ Prof. Richard Herrington, Head of Earth Sciences at the UK Natural History Museum says
“Even for metals such as aluminium and cobalt, for which end- of- life recycling is up to 70%, secondary supply still only accounts for 30% of their growing demand; in the case of lithium, recycling currently only accounts for 1% of present demand”
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-021-00325-9
After 20 years representing my company on certain matters in Washington, I learned the Democrats can’t see past the first iteration on most matters, especially business.
As to this President, recalling the description by Clint Eastwood of the status of a drill in Heartbreak Ridge, I think he has earned the nickname President ClusterF*ck, as it is the result of every decision he’s made. Let’s see President Trump top that one for a nickname for him.
Biden thinks he is a whole lot smarter than he really is. Biden knows a lot of things that are not true, but he doesn’t know that.
Kamala may be a better choice. At least, she has a much shorter history of being wrong, and since she is inexperienced, maybe she won’t think she knows it all, like Joe, and will seek out some advice. I can’t see how she can be any worse than Biden unless she secretly has a dictator hidden within. She looks like the type, but maybe she’s not bold enough at this point.
That is also a leftwing trait. For a perfect set of examples, witness our various guests, griff, Simon, nyolci, etc.
Biden is a puppet, nothing more.
The US DS hated Trump because he occasionally had thoughts of his own, talked about ending the US’ disastrous military adventures abroad, and brought unwelcome attention to the “dignity” of the (largely ceremonial) position of POTUS with his inarticulate narcissistic blowhardery.
The other presidents at least had the sense to stick with what their handlers gave them via teleprompter. Trump routinely went off script, and made the average person actually think about what “their” government was really all about.
The Status Quo definitely didn’t like Donald Trump.
The Status Quo definitely didn’t like Donald Trump.
Frankly, that’s good enough on its own.
I’ve noticed that regarding leftists in general.
Is the problem, poor people who don’t have money? Then obviously the solution is to give the money.
Ask them how people will react to free money, the leftists just aren’t interested. In their minds, they have solved the problem and they want to move on to the next problem to solve.
The idea that handing people free money will change how people behave and completely undo their “fix”, just doesn’t penetrate their little minds. If you try to force them to think about it, they will just get mad at you and will declare that you aren’t interested in solving problems.
Collectivists essentially think that government is some kind of magic entity that can fix all the world’s problems if only the “right” people are put in charge.
When you point out that the “right” people tend to turn out to be like Mao, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or Hitler, or Mengistu/Lenin/Bela Kuhn/Hoxha, they think this is an aberration rather than the inevitable consequence of enabling the people most interested in seizing power – ie, psychopaths – to seize power.
They are, in short, like children, who never evolved beyond seeing society as a kind of family with government playing the role of mummy and daddy.
dysfunctional convergence
Reagan was in charge in a bigger clusterf#$& in Lebanon
US Embassy bombed 80 killed
USMC barracks truck bomb 240 killed
In between all that US Marines alongside French and Italian troops escorted PLO fighters to board waiting ships.
Some have short memories ….
Lebanon was another case of politicians hamstringing the U.S. military for political purposes.
Get this: The U.S. Marine guards who were guarding the entrace to the underground parking garage of the building the U.S. Marines were living in at the time, were not allowed to have ammunition in their rifles, which made them incapable of repelling the truck bomber who went racing past them into the underground garage where he detonated his truck bombs and killed 283 U.S. Marines.
The U.S. Marine guards said the truck bomb driver had a great big smile on his face as he drove past them into the garage.
Our U.S. politicians were afraid of causing some kind of incident if they allowed the guards to be armed, so their unfounded worries ended up getting 283 U.S. Marines k!lled. Pure stupidity.
What should have happened was the U.S. Marine guards should have been armed, and if it had been up to me, a U.S. battle tank would have been parked in front of the entrance to the underground parking garage which would make it impossible for a car or truck bomb to get past.
And it’s not like car and truck bombs were not an active threat in Lebanon. They were going off all over the place at the time. It should have been no surprise that the terrorists would try to bomb the U.S. Marines. Leaving them unarmed and vulnerable to car/truck bombs was a crime.
Who were these ‘US politicians’ then… Cap Weinberger was Reagans Defence Secretary. why not say so.
Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know who issued that order. Whoever it was should be condemned as I did above. And I don’t care who it was, it was a stupid decision, an obvious mistake, before it was made, and it got U.S. marines killed.
This bad decision ranks right up there with the decision of the U.S. general in Afghanistan, who allowed the Taliban to occupy Kabul, even though the Taliban had offered to keep their troops out of the city. This stupid general (I don’t know his name yet) told the Taliban to go ahead and enter Kabul because all he needed was the Kabul airport.
This general should be immediately removed and should never be allowed to command troops again, as his judgement is obviously flawed.
Had U.S. troops controlled the streets of Kabul, as the Taliban offered to allow this U.S. general to do, then there would not have been the chaos that occurred with people trying to get to the Kabul airport.
U.S. troops might not have been able to prevent a suicide bomber, but the bombing wouldn’t have taken place at the airport, it would have taken place at a checkpoint far away from the airport.
The general that made this stupid decision has to go ASAP, and the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should go with him. All of them have displayed their inablity to effectively lead the U.S. Military.
The Secretary of Defense, General Austin also presided over the Islamic Terror Army debacle in Iraq, alongside Joe Biden, so he, and his current boss, the president, are obviously unfit to lead the U.S. military.
Probably piss off the wrong President and get bombed back to the 12th Century.
Does that count?
BTW – Why is it always around the 12th Century? Any guesses?
Sometimes it is the Stone Age.
BOTCHED
Hmmm….
So the US should necessarily dominate the world’s supply of lithium by military force rather than market forces?
Haven’t we heard similar arguments before about oil?
When did the US dominate the world’s supply of oil by military force rather than market forces?
I keep hearing these claims about the US going to war over oil, but the US never seems to get any addtional oil from any of these wars.
Trump always said we should get the oil, when we went to war in Iraq (which I vehemently disagree with him about, one of the few things), but in the end, even Trump didn’t get the oil, instead he saved the oil for the Kurds, and left it in the ground.
So when did the US get paid in oil for going to war?
The US has a long history of not demanding much from the losers in the wars that we have fought.
No, just more bases to launch some more “democracy” from.
And fealty.
Your hatred of all things American is duly noted.
Your inability to believe anything other than the worst says more about you, than it does about the US.
If the “independent” rulers of countries demand US currency – which the US creates at virtually no cost to itself – in exchange for oil, who really “owns” that oil?
Look up the petrodollar. Essentially, the US guarantees the continuation of the various Arab “monarchies” (read: despots) as long as they demand USD for their product.
Saddam declared he would accept Euros. Gaddafi tried to set up a usury-free gold-based regional currency.
And look what happened to them.
I don’t know if Trump was kidding or not when he used to say, “We should keep the oil”. I have to assume he was actually kidding because he never made any attempt to take any oil from Iraq.
What makes me cringe when Trump would say something like that, is he would play right into the hands of the conspiracy theorists who claim the U.S. is Imperialist and/or colonialist. The America-hater says, “see, I told you so, the U.S. is just in it for the money/oil.
Who said anything about the US trying to use the military to dominate anything? That’s your peculiar paranoia.
Kosovo..it’s now a NATO protectorate ..a bit like Crimea is for Puttin..at least he can say the population is russian
Panama declared inpendence from Colombia with US marines in place. Panama Canal zone was then granted as a US protectorate.
US invaded Panama again around 80 years later
bloody nonsense! “a bit like” allows you to blunder on about something you know F-A about.
Crimea is still part of Ukraine officially….like who controls the water supply controls the country. (agriculture is now DOA in Crimea!).
Btw I have (had) been there many times, and the place has always been bankrupt, surviving on hand outs, & hidden subsidies of all kinds….
+
In view of the various Milosevic genocides in Bosnia etc, how you can hold that Montenegro (subject of another recent Putin attempted coup) and Kosovo are anything other than independent states which have been protected against the ravages of the genocidal ex Tito armies (which were the largest in Europe at the time).
We are all relieved here that peace was forced into the Balkans, so that Croatia, Montenegro, and to some extent Bosnia & Serbia, don’t start any more hate campaigns & wars for the foreseeable future
Still a nato invasion of part of a country….troops still there because ..?
Its exactly Crimea or Ossetia
What about Turkeys invasion of part of independent Cyprus , their trpoops till there
No need to get your jodhpurs all wrinkled
Nato what??
WTF, you from the SPB troll factory?
Next thing we hear from you, “fall of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century”, you ignorant pl…nk…r!
In this case, let’s return (Kaliningrad) Königsberg to Germany shall we, it’s well overdue.
Danzig is now Polish, and I have no problem with EU members working it out for each other..
..Intruders such as some frustrated little KGB agent can reinvent the DDR just as is now happening in Russian federation,
(and that horrible cockroach guy next door who is routinely beating & torturing all those that don’t agree with his bent, perverted version of reality).
South Africa, Libya, yes. Otherwise, handmade tales.
When the hell were we in South Africa. Libya as a Oblama cluster frack with slow Joe and corrupt Hillary’s support. Wonder how paid off Hillary in that case after all she never did anything without a big check.
Syria… Trump’s baby
And there was the Doha surrender , attended by Mullah Mike Pompeo. Was going to be signed at Camp David ..for historical comparisons…until media storm made Trump blame someone else for the idea.
Both Syria and Libya are squarely in Obama’s lap… assuming you think these POTUS guys actually decide anything.
Trump eliminated the Islamic Terrorist Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, which thrived under Obama and Biden.
The Trump agreement with the Taliban was a reasonable agreement that would not have put the Taliban in power.
A Trump administration official said yesterday that Trump intended to keep Bagram airbase operational, which means he also was going to provide air support to the Afghan army, and he would leave the U.S. intelligence assets in the country along with a small contingent of American and NATO troops.
Trump’s agreement was predicated on the Taliban meeting certain goals and if they didn’t meet those goals, then the deal was off.
Biden threw the deal away, because if he did not, then he would not have been able to withdraw troops under Trump’s deal because the Taliban were in violation of the agreement, and the Trump deal (to withdraw) was officially “off” at the time.
Biden said to hell with any agreement, we’re leaving, and that’s what he did. And then he tries to blame it on Trump, just like the weasel he is.
You havent read the Doha agreement have you.
Trump wanted and was proceeding with with total withdrawal, thats why Esper was fired …he and the generals wanted a fall back position.
Exact wording, shows no Bagram mentioned.
‘The United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel within fourteen (14) months following announcement of this agreement
and to make doubly sure that no bases are left
‘The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all their forces from remaining bases.’
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf
The US was precluded from supporting the Afghans against Taleban advances. US was only going after ISIS-K and Al Queda positions.
they dropped an MOAB of one ISIS or AQ border site, nowhere near the Taleban advances.
There was no Trump Deal ‘off’ , you fool.
Trump was telling Biden a few months to ‘withdraw faster’ and spoke out about extending from May to end of August.
From April 2021.
‘Former President Trump said President Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan is “a wonderful and positive thing to do,” but criticized the timeline and said the U.S. “should get out earlier.”https://www.axios.com/trump-praises-biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-5f4c2449-0725-40b7-b0c3-7892e6146344.html
Ive rarely seen someone speak so much ‘horsepaste’ – also known as Ivermectin.
“Exact wording, shows no Bagram mentioned.”
General Kellog, Vice President Pence’s National Security Advisor, said yesterday that he took part in the negotiations with the Taliban and he said Trumps intention was to keep Bagram airbase operational.
“There was no Trump Deal ‘off’ , you fool.”
From your Doha link:
“The four parts above are interrelated and each will be implemented in accordance with its own agreed timeline and agreed terms. Agreement on the first two parts paves the way for the last two parts.”
None of the requirements of the agreement were finalized, so if Trump wanted out by May 1, or Biden, then they both would be violating the Doha agreement since the Taliban had not met the requirements of the agreement.
Trump administration officials who have talked about this say they were prepared to take years to implement this agreement (they were assuming Trump would be re-elected at the time).
Trump popping off to goad Biden does not negate the Doha agreement. Biden threw the Doha agreement in the trash and turned tail and ran away.
As people are saying- It’s curious that mighty American Capitalism had total control of this mineral bonanza for 20 years, and they did nothing. This leads to at least 2 conclusions – it’s a mirage, or America has lost it’s ability to manufacture anything?
The US would have been obliged to either kill all the locals, or actually run the country for the benefit of them rather than the stockholders of Raytheon et al.
From the article: “The Taliban didn’t honor its political commitments and ultimately took Afghanistan by force. The Biden administration’s claim that the Doha agreement left no choice but to quit Afghanistan unconditionally is false. Given the Taliban’s behavior, the U.S. wasn’t obligated to withdraw by May 1, by Aug. 31, or any other date. Withdrawal was a choice. And the Biden administration’s announcement of this choice in April triggered the Taliban offensive to retake Afghanistan and set the disastrous U.S. departure in motion.”
Biden says he was left no choice but to pull out.
That’s a lie. Biden created the situation he found himself in.
What Biden did not want to do was put more American troops into Afghanistan.
Biden talked to the Afghan President in July and discussed how the battles against the Taliban were not going well. The Afghan president said this was correct and requested that Biden supply air support for his Afghan troops to enable them to beat back the Taliban.
That July phone call was the last time Biden spoke to the Afghan president, and Biden did not provide air support against the Taliban, instead he pulled U.S. troops out of Bagram airbase, which is where the Afghan air support came from.
So Biden knew in July that the Afghan army was losing the battle to a reinvigorated Taliban, supported by Pakistan, and the only way for Biden to stop the Taliban was to increase U.S. military involvement, and Biden was not willing to do that under any circumstances. Biden wanted out and he was going out and the Afghan army be damned.
Biden essentially signed the Afghan government’s death sentence by not supporting the Afghan army.
Biden knew the Afghan government was going to fall if he didn’t help them, and he decided not to help them, because he didn’t care if they survived or not, as long as he got American troops out of there.
Biden’s hope was that the Afghan army could hold off the Taliban long enough for Biden to remove all the troops from Kabul without being attacked.
Biden figured wrong. As he always does.
Biden created this whole horrible situation because he is an appeaser at heart and his actions are just what an appeaser would do. Now the world’s bad guys have Biden’s number. They are not afraid of him, and that’s not good for the rest of us.
The hearing over this Afghan debacle are going to be electric. Biden thinks this will blow over. It’s not going to blow over, Joe. I think we are going to have public executions taking place in Afghanistan featuring captured Americans that Joe left to the mercies of the terrorists.
No, this isn’t going away, Joe.
Joe thinks the Afghan war is over. Joe, just because you quit, doesn’t mean the enemy has quit. As I said, Joe is a dangerous, delusional fool. That ought to be obvious to everyone by now.
Not to dispute your conclusions, but Trump negotiated with Taliban with the exclusion of Afghani government. I would be hard pressed to invent a better illustration of the fact that President Ashraf Ghani was an American puppet. No wonder he fled fast.
His Vice President has joined up with what used to be called the Northern Alliance… The US government won’t take their phone calls.
Nation building with the Taliban. Different folks. Different strokes.
I wouldn’t expect an appeaser like Biden to look favorably on doing anything of a military nature in Afghanistan. He has washed his hands of them, and that is that, as far as he is concerned. That’s my take on it.
The so called President of the Afghani government up to that post was a university professor in one of out elite schools, the idioracy installed one of their own, and the end left him hanging. He was at least bright enough to bail.
He was elected.. he was with World Bank and worked under previous president in Afghanistan
He was re elected under dubois circumstances in 2019 while Trump was president…so he was Trump’s boy who wouldn’t come the agreement with Taliban as required by Doha surrender….but of course Trump could campaign on Troops home by Xmas.
Trump actually put pressure on the Afghan president to negotiate with the Taliban and either threatened, or did, withhold money from him until he agreed to talk.
The Afghan president wasn’t acting much like an American puppet then.
The exact Trump agreement will come out eventually. Trump had no intention of turning Afghanistan over to the Taliban or of abandoning Americans and friendly Afghanis. Trump is a deal maker. I bet he had a good plan laid out.
Trump was not cutting and running, he was trying to preserve the status quo with his deal.
Biden didn’t give a damn about the status quo.
Read the agreement …there was no restriction on Taleban kicking Afghan army’s backside…mostly they just shook hands and took over ..Inshallah as they say
Trump reduced US troops in country from around 13000 to 3000 , and had to fire defence secretary Esper when he tried to undermine his rapid drawdown.
No way was Biden going to do a troop surge after the hand he was dealt…repudiate the agreement wasn’t going to happen as it was international level agreement and not a domestic executive order.
Even Trump had to wait out the time periods for walkaway from Paris climate Accord and Iran nuclear deal. No exit clause in Doha surrender.
“Read the agreement”
Do you have a copy we could read?
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf
Total and complete withdrawal. No bases to remain. Nothing preventing Taleban to continue fighting Afghan Army ( there was supposed to be a second agreement between TB and Kabul Gov, but didnt happen in the 12 months Trump had in office.)
Read also Trumps comments from around April this year about withdrawing faster.
The dirty little secret here is that the West doesn’t really need the lithium for batteries, we need it for its psychiatric medical properties! 😛
The only empire that did not die in the graveyard of empires was the Ghenghis Khan empire. The Mongols succeeded by obliterating the Afghan population in their path, however, they had enough sense to stay out of the mountains.
What about Alexander the Great?
It did not work well for Alexander the Great. He went into the mountains and had his teeth broken. He drank himself into incompetence after that. The Mongols and their descendant Babur the Great conquered all of Afghanistan, except the mountains. Some of the Mongol descendants are the Hazaras.
Everyone keeps writing about Biden “thinking” or “doing” whatever….surely you see/hear he is only doing what he is told to say or do….he hasn’t made a decision since it was announced he was running for President. The real concern is…no one has ID’d who is actually making those decisions and writing the script for what he says…
I think this Afghanistan debacle is Joe’s baby. He did the same stupid “cut and run” from Vietnam, and from Iraq, and now from Afghanistan, and in the process, caused millions of innocent people to be k!lled and/or displaced. Biden has ruined millions of innocent lives with his delusional thinking. He was delusional and ruining lives before he got old. He’s very practiced at it and doesn’t need anyone to tell him how to do it, even now.
Lithium, copper and cobalt are not rare earth elements
(and rare earth elements are not particularly rare)
How China will fight climate change….maybe
WSJ
China Warns Kerry Climate Cooperation Depends on Overall TiesU.S. climate envoy says talks in China were constructive, detailed
It really is fascinating the way you interpret every change in production levels, of anything, as proof that your paranoid fantasies have any basis in reality.