During my six years in the Army National Guard, most soldiers I served with thought Afghanistan was the good war. I have reason to believe otherwise.

I deployed to Iraq, not Afghanistan. But after 9/11 and before the start of the current Iraq war I participated in demonstrations on my campus against US military intervention in Afghanistan. When I came home from Iraq in 2005 I worked as a researcher for a documentary about Afghanistan called Afghan Women. What I've concluded from my experiences is that the U.S. war is Afghanistan is about superpowers contesting for energy resources, military bases, and political influence.

Super Power Rivalry Today

The U.S.'s current occupation of Afghanistan was a reaction to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. But the geo-politics that fueled those attacks and the U.S. s response revolve around oil and superpowers fighting for hegemony.

The Carter Doctrine (which says the U.S. will use any means necessary to defend U.S. vital interests - a.k.a oil - in the Persian Gulf) was developed and adopted largely under the pretext of opposing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the early 1980s. President Carter explained in his 1980 State of the Union address that Soviet aggression in Afghanistan needed to be opposed because of it's challenge to U.S. dominance over oil:

"The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world's exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow. The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position, therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil."

What Carter didn't explain was that his administration - namely then secretary of state Zbigniew Brzezinski who is now one of Barack Obama's top foreign Policy advisors - sent aid to economically elite Muslim insurgents in order to pull the Soviets in their very own Vietnam like quagmire six months before Soviet troops entered Afghanistan. After facing sustained inseargent resistance, the new pro-Soviet Afghan government requested USSR military aid (more here).

Over nine years of war, the U.S.'s CIA aid to Afghanistan's fundamentalist insurgents led the formation of "The Base,"  which in Arabic is Al Qeada. The Base specifically refers to the personnel database of "freedom fighters" in the Holy War against the Soviets. The Carter Doctrine also led to the creation of CENTCOM, who s AO includes Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nearly ten years after Carter declared the U.S.'s vital interests, and two years after Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan defeated by U.S. backed insurgents, President Bush, the daddy, announced economic sanction on Iraq for invading Kuwait. Bush noted that the US receives half its energy supply from the Middle East and declared, "We remain committed to take whatever steps are necessary to defend our long-standing vital interests in the Gulf." Many of daddy Bush's administration recall in memories, interviews, and speeches that the war wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for the implosion of the Soviet Union, the U.S.'s hegemonic rival for the better part of four decades. The Gulf War was a show of strength to the U.S.'s weakened hegemonic rivals.

Fast forward to 9/11/2001. It was U.S. troop's presence in Saudi Arabia, left from the Persian Gulf War, that fueled Al Qeada's 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden, a Saudi billionaire and leader of The Base, supports Saudi control of Saudi oil and opposes U.S. forces on the land of the two holy cities Mecca and Medina.

Super Power Rivalry Today

Being a New Yorker and an Iraq war vet I know that many think we are doing the right thing in Afghanistan. But the way I look at it, the popularly stated reasons for invasion are lies. Even if Afghanistan is really about finding Bin Laden, why would you send in tens of thousand of troops to find one person? Even if it is about defeating the Taliban and freeing the Afghan people, why would you kill thousands of civilians and make deals with political islamists and opium war lords? If they really started a war in retaliation to 9/11, why did the federal government fight so hard to keep first responders and survivors from getting health care and death benefits? It doesn't add up.

Me, I believe what the strategic thinkers and decision makers say to each other more than I believe what they say to us. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Elizabeth Jones, said that US interests in Central Asia extend beyond Afghanistan into creating pro-US democracies on Russian's southern boarder and securing the oil rich Caspian Sea region. The director of the Army s SSI says that Central Asia is a strategic region due to"important, some might even say, vital interests. These interests include: Its proximity to Russia, China, India, and Pakistan; location as the center of the Global War on Terrorism; and its large energy holdings."  To me, that means U.S. interests haven't changed much from the Carter Doctrine, even through Republican and Democratic administrations. And to me, rivelry between great powers is why the US sent us into Afghanistan.

Recent events like Georgia s U.S. backed attack on Russia and Russia s response as well as China s formation of the regional security organization called Shanghai Cooperation Organization show that the rich and powerful of the U.S. has every reason to continuing lying to us about Afghanistan as they have about Iraq.