The rusting hulks of Soviet tanks massed in their graveyard outside of Kabul since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan after a long (9-year), bitter and pointless war are slowly being sold off as scrap metal to the Chinese.
Now, American tanks are whistling past the Soviet tank graveyard.
The Chinese have already re-cycled the metal columns from the World Trade Center towers and sold it back to us as affordable consumer goods. Now they are re-purposing the Soviet tanks. What happens when their raw materials supply chain from the imperial scrap heaps breaks? We can’t let that happen to our creditors. Our Abrams M1 tanks weigh 72 tons each. Fifteen tanks represent a thousand tons of steel once they hit the scrap heap in Helmand Province. That’s an imposing signal of our commitment to Chinese demand for scrap metal.
Col. John King remarked, “The M1 tank is a formidable machine, it’s a formidable message. It signifies commitment, that we’re committed.”
Besides, if the Soviets could have a pointless nine-year war in Afghanistan prior to their collapse, why can’t we?