The real reason behind war with Iraq is simple. Seeing the writing on the wall that the United States was no longer welcome in Saudi Arabia, the rest of the industrialized world needed a semi-stable oasis in the mid-east to set up shop and provide influence and hopefully, political and economic pressures to keep the oil flowing without interruption.
Like it or not, the sheer ugly truth is that every nation on Earth is dependent on oil, can't function without it and requires that oil is made available at a manageable and predictable rate. Any large and powerful country simply will not allow their infrastructure and society to be threatened by exterior market forces.
It is also true that the average citizen is unable to comprehend or accept the need behind such maneuvering, so unfortunately the Bush Administration had to make up a bunch of stuff about WMD's so the public could accept the need for a righteous and just war. There is no way America would have been able to announce their plan to invade a foreign country simply because every nation in the middle east region is hostile to the world at large, politically and socially unstable and that for their purposes, Iraq was the easiest place to set up a beachhead for Western interests. Deposing a Dictator who is a clear danger to innocent people is an excuse that might have actually worked, found WMD's or not, or at least been somewhat tolerable in the end and to history if not for the entire crew of corrupt Government, Military and civilian scumbags squandering the goodwill of the citizens by lining their pockets and mishandling every crisis to come their way over the course of the past several years.
America has proven time and again that when they don't mess around and get distracted they are quite capable of accomplishing a mission, even an unpopular one, capably and humanely. But as story after story broke about media malfeasance, negligence, hubris, Constitutional shenanigans, incompetence and fraud on the part of those running the war any support swiftly eroded and many people changed their opinion against those in charge. Sadly, the current administration can never, ever take steps to actually repair their mistakes. To do so would be to admit that thousands of people were pushed to participate in a war built on distractions and spin.
Tags: Iraq
Matza Pizza and Other ABBA Songs for Passover
4 hours ago
You're missing one side of this equation. We often hear about how much the industrialized world needs oil, and is thus willing to go to any lengths to get it. You're forgetting the need the oil producing countries have for selling their oil. It's all they have. In forty years, only a couple small emirates have bothered to invest their oil proceeds into diversification - Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc all have a desperate need to sell their oil. It is their sole source of income. This is why the US doesn't need to invade Iraq to keep the oil flowing. All we need to keep the oil flowing is a willingness to buy it - and as alternative fuels are developed, our need for buying oil will decrease while their need for selling it will increase. Sorry, but your narrative just doesn't jibe with reality.
ReplyDeleteI do like your musings on comic books, though, and agree wholeheartedly with your analysis of why the golden age was so golden.
- Matt Stater
I don't know. If we were the slave to the sellers you think then there would have been no need to be in the middle east at all. We would just pay. I agree on that part. Yet we are there and have been in some form or another since the 1920s, if not earlier.
ReplyDeleteI still see us as a 'stabilizing' influence, since we are no longer welcome in Saudi Arabia. Greater atrocities are going on right now in other countries and America has no interest or involvement so I will never buy that we were there for democracy and to remove a tyrant.
And alternative fuels? If gas is $4 a gallon then we will certainly pay the equivalent for a $4 an electrical unit.