Fliping thru the tv channels and I can across Pat Robertson showing his 700 Club viewers
a. Where Afghanistan is located
b. Neighboring countries which all support Afghanistan
c. Where there is a flat area in Afgh. so American troops can land somewhere in this country “so far, far away”
d. Why the Russians wanted to control Afgh. [because they need a deep ocean seaport as he points to the middle of India. :rolleyes:
I hope that Bush disowned this idiot with his earlier comments that concluded Americans brought on the WTC/Pentagon tradegy themselves via minorities, feminists, abortionist, gays, the ACLU and …
Why does it not suprise me that Pat Robertson thinks a land locked country would be a good place to put a deep water port? :rolleyes: Nothing else he says makes any sense.
I firmly believe that Pat didn’t “fully understand” what Jerry was talking about. Pat doesn’t “fully understand” how walk erect, or tie his shoelaces. I’m not surprised that the nuances of international politics and terrorism are beyond him.
Maybe we could put the two of them in charge of the first wave of troops in the amphibious invasion force, send their boats off and let them try to find those “deep ocean seaports.” That should keep them busy for a while.
Wait. What’s this on the ground? It looks like the plug stopper for an amphibious landing craft. Darn.
Going back to the 1800s, Russia and Britain engaged in a long drawn out cold war over India and central asia. The Russians attempted to expand their colonial empire south at the expense of the British, while the British attempted to expand to the north.
The Central Asian colonies that Russia got were pretty much useless deserts, but they did have a goal in mind…to reach the Indian Ocean. If Russia could work down to the Indian Ocean, and establish a railway back up to Moscow, it would have greatly increased Russia’s ability to trade and project power around the world. Just like the establishment of Vladivostok and the trans-siberian railway allowed Russia to project power into the Pacific. The United State’s “manifest destiny” of expansion across the west to the Pacific Ocean stems from similar impulses.
Rudyard Kipling’s classic book “Kim” depicts a young boy’s involvement in the “Great Game” of colonial struggles between Russia and Britain.
So, it is not entirely crazy to believe that part of the reason the Soviets invaded Afghanistan was to continue the colonial expansion of the Czars. After all, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Taijikistan, Kyrgizistan and Turkmenistan were allready part of the Soviet Union. Adding Afghanistan to the list wouldn’t seem like such a stretch. And then they would only have to take over Pakistan and they would finally have their long-coveted dream of a link to the Indian Ocean.
Now, I don’t know if the Soviet politburo actually sat down and decided that Afghanistan was the first step to the Indian Ocean. But central asian expansionism has a long history in Russia, so perhaps it was seen as a possibility.