I love the allegations that the invasion of Iraq was for control of Middle Eastern oil fields, and American control of those fields.
What I want to know is, since we invaded, won and now pulled out. Why the hell is the price of gas STILL so high?
Just trying to follow that logic.
We were already at war with Afghanistan at the time. Going to Iraq meant that war got less attention, money, and so forth. So the idea that it was to fight those "evil extremist Muslims" doesn't work.
Saddam is far from the only bad guy in the world, and in fact the US gave money to Islam Karimov, another brutal dictator, on our "war on terror," so the idea that it was a moral war or about getting rid of a bad guy is wrong.
Saddam posed no real threat to us. If he ever did attack us then we woulda destroyed him, but if you're gonna go with the preemptive strike psychology, we should be at war with North Korea right now which has done far more to antagonize the West than Saddam did in 2002-2003. So it wasn't about keeping America safe. You could argue the war made us less safe and gave extremists in the region fodder so they could blame America for all of the world's problems. We made ourselves an even easier scapegoat.
The Iraq war wasn't about responding to 9/11, as I said, we already were at war with Afghanistan, so that doesn't work. If you make some broader point about the entire Middle East and 9/11, Iraq still shouldn't been #2 on the list.
Iraq is worse off now than it was before. Pretty much anyone who knows what they're talking about agrees with that, including Iraqis. This is the problem with getting rid of a brutal dictator with no backup plan, then you just create anarchy until the next brutal dictator takes over. Al-Maliki is already considered a dictator in the making, and this is after thousands of American soldier deaths and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizen deaths. The financial toll to America also was billions and billions of dollars, with some estimates even ranging from 1-3 tril (a lot of this is politicized, and it's hard to get exact numbers since our military budget is often charged to other things as a way to get around certain laws regarding limits to the defense budget).
In short, the war was a tragedy. Too many lost their lives. Saddam was brutal, and his sons even worse, but we live in a world of dictators. The sad thing is, it's very likely Iraq may have gone to civil war all on their own after the Arab Spring. Changes in power are never easy, but at least when it happens within a country, that is that country deciding its own fate. I do think we should help our fellow humans on this planet as a country, but just invading a place, pretending to take it over and give them our "ideals", and then putting a puppet in power is wrong, wrong, wrong and will only do more harm.
Also remember a lot of these guys, like Saddam and bin Laden, were our allies in the 80s when we were fighting communism. As far as motive, you guys do realize the US government gives out billions in subsidies to private businesses in defense contracts during these wars? Eisenhower wasn't warning of the "Military-Industrial Complex" for nothing. When those elected into power use the government as a way to hire their own former companies and companies of friends, that's corruption, and there's a lot of $$$ to be made and a lot of power to take. Not too far off from what dictators do, actually.
Anyone who still supports the Iraq war as a "good" war is a fool, plain and simple. It's so sad, so sad really how many died in that war, both American and Iraqi, and how America as a country supports certain dictators while condemning others. Morally it makes no sense.
The war pushes prices up because of claimed shortages and security issues protecting more dangerous sites.
shareBecause of Afghanistan and Iraq war oil prices quickly doubled where they continue to stay because too much profit will be lost if they reduce the price, simple as that.
shareThe war was never about increasing the supply of oil; it was about DECREASING the supply of oil in order to drive gas prices up. Oil has an inelastic demand curve, so this is the most logical thing to do if you want to manipulate its price.
It's also about controlling as many oil extraction points as possible as part of a resource denial strategy.
This is in response to the OP.
the war was for oil,, Dick Cheney ,, head of HaliBurton,, is an oil company. it's too long and hard to explain it all you just have to connect the dots,, as far as the gas still being to high,, i feel we are hoarding our reserves.
are you going to bark all day little doggie,, or are you going to bite
[deleted]
War for control and influence. They are playing the long game.
shareBecause Cheney, his puppet president, and company thought they could pull it off... But their thinking power was low grade and their plans never got started beyond the "start a war using lies" phase.
shareI saw a lot of arguments but I figured I would give you the real answer as no one else seems capable.
There were four reasons to go into Iraq.
- Iraq is evil
- Iraq is protecting Terrorist Groups
- Long-term plans for Mid-East region
- WMD's
1. Iraq is evil
We knew how rough the country was, but Washington did not have the will to do anything about it. After 'Black Hawk Down' in the 90's, the US is not interested in being world police unless they can get something out of it, or if there is enough of a threat to justify it.
2. Iraq is protecting Terrorist Groups
Bill Clinton tried, with the CIA, to get special forces into the region to take out terrorist threats during his time in office. CIA didn't believe these terror-groups were a threat, and even if they were, they couldn't get access to fly troops in to these locations. After 9/11 the general reasoning was that because we now know these terrorists are capable, it doesn't justify invading a country just to take them out.
3. Long-Term Plans for Mid-East Region
The oil contracts, the friendly relations etc, it's all business, none of it is personal. US does not consider these 'allies' to be any more than business partners and have been constantly searching for a way to place US forces into the region. Israel, while a strong US-Ally is not a puppet, and have their own ideas of how to run things. America doesn't like leaving this in Israeli hands.
Iraq, terrorist filled, a prior enemy during the gulf war, it was a prime target to invade. - This argument didn't go far in Washington either because a lot of Americans do not want a Middle-East foothold to begin with.
4. WMD's
Everyone in Washington agreed on only one thing, if there were confirmed WMD's they would invade. UN searched for these, they couldn't find any. HOWEVER the UN could not disprove that no WMD threat existed, there was a possiblity that there were WMD's or weapons programs in existance.
The possibility of this threat was enough to get everyone on board for the invasion, and what did we find? A planned nuclear weapons program that was decades away from getting anywhere, the old missile stock-piles and chemical weapons were gone.
Doesn't matter. US now has it's foot-hold. The 'long-term' planners of US security are pleased, and the oil? It's ignorance. Water and Electricity are contracted to companies as well, people may as well argue that we invaded to send people water and gas bills in Iraq.
Corporations will always profit in war, the entire media focus and backlash on Iraq for Oil is just a plot to ignore the reality that the US intends to get involed in regional conflicts around the world for long-term security and superiority as they believe this is the method to maintain being a world-super power.
As we speak, US are shifting forces in the Pacific as China grows. This will never end.
"HOWEVER the UN could not disprove that no WMD threat existed"
It's impossible to prove a negative. That's why the 'founding fathers' tried to include 'innocent until proven guilty' in our constitution (the way it works is, innocent until accused, then guilty unless you can afford a lawyer to 'prove' your innocence).
If the US wanted to be the only nation with WMD, they should invade Canada, Briton, France, China, Israel, (well, you get the idea without my listing all the other nations with WMD...). If they weren't afraid of them, they probably would.
Note that I don't say 'us', as even with the propaganda machine, the people weren't ALL in favor of invasion, that was the corporations that run the government.