For a while, it was a variation on this article, until the start of the second clip. There, he started talking about all the natural resources waiting to be exploited.

Suddenly, his motives became clear. As a capitalist from a billionaire class, he knows there’s no way he can enter a sovereign nation to exploit it. He can’t count on a CIA-like venture to overthrow a legitimate ruler as was done in Iran, or in any number of other sovereign nations. There’s too much turmoil.

He wants to ‘legitimize’ his seizure using tax dollars and the war as excuses. While an earlier commenter pointed out the religious aspects of the conflict as reasons why Prince’s ideas are nonsensical, Prince himself is not concerned about that. All he wants is the OK to enter into a country to exploit its resources, and pay whatever human military cost is needed. The humans, after all, are compensated for the risk — and he personally is not at risk. After all, he’s the viceroy.

Our history of war after WWI demonstrates our ineptness in this arena. And, even after we withdraw from failure after failure, we return later to establish mutually beneficial economic ties –corporation to corporation, corporation to national government. The losers in all this are the civilians and soldiers, pawns all.

Meanwhile, American discussions of the Afghan war rarely have the word ‘Pakistan’ in them.

If you want your head to explode, just peruse this Wikipedia entry.

So why have we spent $2.4 trillion in Afganistan?

The United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler (1881-1940) is perhaps most famous for his post-retirement speech titled “War is a Racket.” In the early 1930s, Butler presented the speech on a nationwide tour. It was so popular that he wrote a longer version as a small book that was published in 1935:

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people.

“Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

“In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows…

“Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few — the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

“And what is this bill?

“This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.”

Top current war profiteers:

1. Lockheed Martin (U.S.)
Arm sales 2013: $35.5 billion, profit $3 billion
Profile for 2014 Election Cycle
CONTRIBUTIONS: $4,132,497 (ranks 44 of 16,793)
LOBBYING: $14,581,80
69 out of 109 Lockheed Martin lobbyists in 2013-2014 have previously held government jobs.

2. Boeing (U.S.)
Arm sales 2013: $30.7 billion, profit $4.6 billion
Profile for 2014 Election Cycle
CONTRIBUTIONS: $3,227,934 (ranks 67 of 16,793)
LOBBYING: $16,800,000 (2014), $15,230,000 (2013) (ranks 10 of 4,065 in 2014)
83 out of 115 Boeing Co lobbyists in 2013-2014 have previously held government jobs.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/blood-money-these-companies-and-people-make-billions-of-dollars-from-war/5438657

Isn’t it wonderful what we learn from history?

1 – There is no ‘Afghan’ or ‘Afghanistan’ nor will there be in the foreseeable future.
2 – Many tribes, no nation.
3 – They sit on a fortune in minerals but would rather wallow in blood and buggery than exploit resources.
4 – Unruly, cruel, sly, narrow-minded.

Though the historical exercise about where it went wrong will remain interesting. There are disputes about whether the failure was the US ignoring the place 2003-6 or going in too hard into the South and with too many nation-building aspirations. Or variants of the two themes.

I tend to think the latter was unnecessary and therefore the main mistake that set off the Taliban revival. There are plenty pro and con arguments.