BIN LADEN AND THE DEBT BOMB

IMPERIAL QUESTS OF YESTERYEAR
- BIN LADEN AND THE DEBT BOMB
Andrew McKillop

We are confronted by a mystery, at the heart of the evil lost cause our media calls “War on Terror”. How
and more importantly why it started will never be really known; what its aims might have been when it
started probably changed in the course of its always-denied existence. Those initial aims were secret
and not for public consumption, but whatever the how and why, the debt bomb is far more powerful
than any IED or car bomb used in the leftover, pathetically downsized terror war of today.

The symbol of this war – Bin Laden – is himself now officially dead. His existence was in any case
fragile, fuzzy and mysterious at the best or worst of times. His ideology and doctrine were bizarre, at
least to western ears and eyes, and his goals seemed absurd. Bin Laden was at most a “leftover” from
another great imperial and geopolitical quest – to expel the Soviet occupant from Afghanistan.
We are permitted to know that Bin Laden was a freedom fighter against Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
Although no public aid, arms and logistic support was supplied to him directly by the West, large
spending and support was channelled through intermediaries, notably Pakistan’s ISI security and
intelligence services as well as other non-western secret services, including Indian. Public information
about this support to Bin Laden remains cloudy, semi-secret and with the passage of time since the final
retreat of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1988, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, any
information can be contradicted or denied with increasing ease. The same increasing easiness of hiding
reality in a time-thickened fog of half-truths and pure propaganda applies to the founding event for the
War on Terror, the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.

SOVIET INVASION AND IRAN-IRAQ WAR
In a very clear, unambiguous historical sense the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war both
started and finished at the same time, to within a few months either way. The obvious question is were
they related ? The obvious answer is yes but we will probably never know exactly how and why.
The Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan through 1980-88 was at least as mysterious – and
useless – as the War on Terror is since it started, officially, with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
To be sure, the Soviet regime, in 1980, had no need at all to give detailed and coherent, plausible and
persuasive reasons for why the Red Army had to march on Kabul. Public opinion was as unimportant to
Soviet leaders in 1980, as it is today for the political elites of the west who maintain the macabre and
bloody farce of the War on Terror. Exactly like the failed Soviet imperial lunge into Afghanistan, the
west will abandon this hopeless and sterile “adventure”, but this in no way explains why it happened, in
the first place.
Western media, today as in the past, goes out of its way to downplay and exclude news about the
Afghan war and strictly avoids anything concerning the cause or causes of this war, which is reduced to
the village idiot equation: the Taliban terror regime plotted with Bin Laden to commit the false flag
9/11 attacks, so we must invade and occupy Afghanistan. Concerning the Iran-Iraq however, western
media was almost loquacious. It gave considerable coverage to the “good war” of Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq against the Devil incarnate, Khomeini’s Iran. Hussein was protecting the Gulf petromonarchies and
their anti-democratic, autocratic and repressive regimes from being overthrown, maintaining oil
supplies to the west, and protecting the investments of western oil corporations. Hussein was showered
with massive amounts of military supplies, and loans which he did not repay, helping trigger the Kuwait
crisis of 1991. Why the Iran-Iraq war petered out, and was finally abandoned in 1988 again has many
explanations, including the costs of this war to each side, but we do know that almost to the end,
Hussein was encouraged to keep fighting by all western governments, at the highest possible
ambassadorial level.
Arguing for “strategic oil reasons” for war is easy, to some, but has no sense at all in either the Soviet
Afghan war or the western Afghan war. The Soviet Union had nothing to win, and everything to lose by
invading Afghanistan, exactly like the west today – again explaining why this war will soon be
completely abandoned, and is winding down right now. The debt bomb ticks on !
Claims that potential future oil or gas pipeline routes could or might explain everything are even more
ridiculous for explaning the Soviet invasion of 1980, than the western invasion of 2001. Whether or not
Khomeini’s Iran could or might have overthrown the oil kings and gas princes of the GCC countries is
for the least unsure and – time aiding – this subject, even in Iran today, is massively disputed and
contested. What we know is that neither Iran nor Iraq profited from the war, excluding the short-term
gains of Hussein’s military junta in the shape of big loans, for which they paid dearly in 1991, and were
later totally destroyed, in 2003.

TRIPLE LOSS
In fact this is quadruple loss. The Soviets lost, the Iranians lost and the Iraqis lost – and so will the
western Last Players in this geopolitical and imperial quest, described by the originator of geopolitical
studies, Halford Mackinder, as “occupying the Central Asian Heartland”. The net benefits are zero, the
costs are open-ended. When the costs are funded by loans, the end can only come sooner.
Even in 1980 when the Soviet Union launched its war on Afghanistan, the USSR was in poor economic
shape, despite high oil and gas prices and revenue inflows from their export. It was already heavily in
debt, and repayment was taking a higher and higher share of all state revenues. The USSR’s imperial
lunge into Afghanistan, an 8-year campaign that at its peak needed full logistic support for 350 000
soldiers is in fact hard to cost in today’s terms, and Soviet-era data on it is very variable, but estimates
range around the equivalent of $ 1000 billion, or about $ 125 billion-a-year. To this hit, we can note, the
Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe costing at least another $ 250 billion in 1986 was another body blow to
the Soviet Empire and its illusions.
Likewise we can never really know the real costs of the Iran-Iraq war to each side. The claim of
Saddam Hussein, demanding that GCC countries make a call with him for higher oil prices, to get more
revenues, was that his regime had spent and borrowed at least $ 500 billion, in today’s equivalent, for
this 8-year war. Iran’s spending was likely at least as much.
For the last and present western imperial adventure in Afghanistan and related War on Terror, however,
we have some better and recent spending estimates, at least for US spending. These estimates place
total US federal spending on the War on Terror, from 2001 to date, at around $ 2100 – $2800 billion, in
dollars of 2011 value. Much less publicly available data on spending by the USA’s allies in this imperial
quest, mosly European but also including “symbolic” spending by Japan, South Korea, Taiwant,
Australia and others, suggests total spending of around $ 750 billion to date.

IMPERIAL FOLLY
As we say all through this article, there were and are no cut-and-dried rational economic motives for
imperial quests, they are a pure leadership folly. Only afterwards, when they appear to succeed, or more
rapidly fail, will we get an idea of how much it all cost. One thing is however very clear: all these lost
wars wre fought using loans and credit, running up massive debts which themselves helped terminate
the folly.
This is no clearer than the present debt-wracked context for the USA, Europe and Japan. The relatively
well estimated costs of the USA’s war on terror, about 2.1 – 2.8 trillion dollars from 2001 to date, are
around two-thirds of the increase of total US Federal debt for the period December 2008-May 2011,
estimated at about $ 3600 billion. While nothing of course beats debt and its growth, due to complete
and total mismanagement by present political leaders, imperial follies are expensive, or very expensive.
The upturned debt pyramid is now threatening to topple at any moment and if for no other reason – for
example the convenient and final disappearance of Bin Laden – debt itself will ensure the abandonment
of the present imperial folly of the now completely ruined west.

Surprisingly enough, no western leader yet has the courage to simply point out the truth: the Soviet
Union was ruined by its imperial quest in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq were ruined by their 8-year war,
the west must learn from this simple fact, act on it, and quit. There is literally no alternativee.
At that point in time, which is surely approaching, we can expect at least a little information to filter on
why and how this imperial folly was launched, and the reasons why Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were first
our allies and then our enemies. Predictably, the non-American losers in this failed adventure will
blame the American and biggest loser, possibly even to the extent of demanding reparations and
payment for losses incurred, as the USSR’s central Asian muslim republics have tried, and failed,
regarding their support to Soviet forces through 1980-88. To be sure Russia, as the succeeding state to
the dissolved USSR claims it has no responsibility for Soviet-era actions, but this will be more difficult
for the USA, unless it collapses with its own unpayable debts.
****