They can get filthy stinking rich doing nothing, though. They’re basically all insider trading and getting richer ever day no matter what, with or without a war. I’m sure there are some hungry ghosts who just yearn for an ever greater “more” and are not satisfied with just getting richer if they aren’t also getting richer faster, but they don’t have any plans bigger than that. Just more, forever.
If their goal was to expand US influence and dominance over the world, they failed. If their goal was to acquire cheap resources, they failed. If their goal was to assert US hegemony, they failed. If their goal was to stabilize trade and resource extraction, they failed.
I just don’t think they planned any of this out. They just bumbled from event to event and tried to opportunistically profit on a case-by-case basis, in turn being unable to build a long-lasting project, and that’s why it eventually became a debacle and had to be abandoned.
That also doesn’t really answer my original question: why did they start with Afghanistan? If the goal was Iraq, why bother? Just start there!