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Well yes, as long as stupid europeans kep buying iPods % iPhones and essentially financing the enormous deficit the war machine is creating. ;)
No really, this is not sustainable, I quite agree
The biggest US base outside of the USA is Ramstein, Germany. It's there because Germany was the closest US ally to Russia. Now where is the action? It's in the Middle East. The USA wanted to establish a friendly, pro-western democracy out there, and that's why they invaded Iraq. Eventually once everything settles down, the Iraqis will agree to allow the US to establish a permanent military base there. Iraq will replace Ramstein as the biggest overseas US base. Just watch.
Thats absurd, Iraq has huge unexploited reserves. They're #2 or 3 in the world.
Anyway, Chomsky has explained this whole "rationale" issue ad infinitum. The US goal is hegemony over the Middle East and has been since the end of WWII when FDR met the Saudi King on a battleship and did a deal. The US picked up where the British empire left off. The goal of all imperial operations is control first, then the spoils. the Middle East and North Asia are the world's richest energy-bearing region and its a big fight for control of those supplies. Its not about getting oil for our own consumption (theres plenty in Canada for us) - its about control of the oil spigot as strategic lever over the other great nations of the world.
I like Dimitri Orlov's attitude. Just ignore all of them. In fact I prefer my acupuncturist's attitude: famine, war, environmental disaster - they come and they go. Don't worry about it.
As has already been pointed out in this thread, invading Iraq for oil doesn't make sense-- for anyone. And it didn't make sense in 2003. Big Oil would have been far happier had the United States merely lifted sanctions and economic restrictions on Iraq instead of using military force. They'd be better off, too, even than they are today-- after all, one thing that wouldn't change would be the soaring demand for oil in countries like China and India, which would have push prices higher even if no U.S. troops had ever set foot in Iraq. Keeping the comparatively smaller amount of oil (115 billion barrels in Iraq versus the 138 billion in Iran, the 101 billion in tiny Kuwait or the 264 billion in Saudi Arabia) flowing from Iraq is much easier simply through buying it. The Iraq war is about many things, but oil doesn't really seem to be one of them. (Indeed, reconstruction efforts in Iraq, though deplorably managed by incompetent individuals, have gone almost exclusively to reconstruction).
Outside the U.S., no one wants "to call our bullshit" not because of our military, but because instability in any region, be it dispute territories in Israel, Afghanistan Chechnya, or even the Sudan has proven to be a breeding ground for very dangerous movements. These areas exist outside the globalized world for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with cultural differences that are at once understandable and vastly incompatible with many core Western values. (A good discussion on this can be found at this link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=d3xlb6_0OEs). In any case, military action by Western powers (usually via the United States) are inevitably in such regions-- and for reasons completely unrelated to oil at all.
Opposing the Iraq war isn't wrong in and of itself. I disagree with this sort of opinion, but I certainly respect those that have it. Opposing it based on terrible and frankly ignorant ideas regarding it really is.
You're also a mile off-base with the idea that Iran and Iraq would "merge". Iraq is 75% Arab, whereas Iran is majority Persian (and only about 3% Arab). Iran is 90% Shi'a Islam, where 40% of Iraq's population are Sunni.
Saying the two countries will merge is about as silly as someone looking at Britain and France, saying "Oh, you're both mostly white and Christian", and deciding on that basis they're going to become one country.
I think the secret is in the original Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Who orchestrated that? Saddam knew he didn't have a chance to keep the country. Did someone promise him something? Did he renig on the deal that was made and is that why we went in during 2003? Is that why we didn't go all the way to Baghdad? I think the answers begin there.
Saddam had interpreted some statements by the US ambassador as meaning the US wouldn't intervene if he invaded - wrongly, of course. He gambled and lost, and that's really all there is to it.
Before I get slammed here, France is majority Catholic, Germany majority (and birthplace of ) Protestant. This may seem trivial today, but these people slaughtered each other just a few centuries ago over that minor difference. Like Iraq's position in the old days of the Claiphate, Germany was once the center of the Holy Roman empire (holy roman empire, batman!) , and there was considerable rivalry and hostility with France in those days over that privilege too.
See, looking at the past won't help you much in predicting the future here. What we're witnessing is possibly the dawning of a a new arab age. Perhaps historians a couple hundreds years from now will look back on the Iraq war as the impetus that finally united the arab world in a broad based coalition to fight the western barbarian's invasion, and ushered in a post-fundamentalist world in which the old divisions between sunni and shiite paled in the face of the common foe.
Ironically, Bush claimed he wanted to drag the middle east into the 21st century, and he may well have succeeded.
Just my thoughts.
But that's kind of irrelevant to Iran and Iraq, because - and this is worth saying again - Iranians aren't Arabs, they're Persian. They speak Farsi, not Arabic. They're Indo-European Aryans rather than Semitic. And so on. They share a common alphabet, which is why most Westerners look at Farsi writing and assume it's Arabic - but the Arabic alphabet was actually imposed upon Persians after conquest.
Likewise, European unionism is as old as the hills, from Napoleon to the League of Nations, to Adolph Hitler, a united Europe has been a recurring theme. So, again, my analogy holds.
As Augustus said,"Quintili Vare legiones redde!"
I remember the incredible degree of inter-ethnic hostility in NYC in the late '80's, early 90's. What finally brought an end to this was that we all learned to hate Rudolph Giuliani instead of each other.
This is an amazing comment. Upon what basis do you think that the Arabs of Iraq want a political union with the Persians of Iran?
Remember how well the United Arab Republic worked out?
Of course the US couldn't have just *bought* the oil from Saddam Hussain. It would have a) given Saddam rivers of cash, b) let him spend that cash rearming, and so c) put US interests (and military presence) in Kuwait and Saudi at risk again. After 9/11 and two years of FAIL against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, at least the Neocons (crazy as they were) were smart enough to realize that the US was caught in a trap : they couldn't stay in Saudi indefinitely (that was a pressure cooker) nor could they leave, giving up the no-fly zones and punative attacks and containment of Iraq; and so allowing Saddam to regather his strength.
Straight larceny wasn't a strategic goal, though it was probably a useful sweetener ("Won't cost much, pay for itself really, once we start pumping the oil. Think of it as a big tax-cut " : (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/13/10449... ))
But why this part of the world is so strategically *interesting* to the US? With a voracious China and Russia both round the corner? Of course, it's about the oil.
Saddam, no matter how well-armed, wouldn't have tried the Kuwaiti gambit again - the first time nearly cost him his rulership, and he knew it. After Gulf War I, Saddam knew his regional ambitions were all over. No matter how well armed he would have got, he would have known that the US could and would tear his country to bits if he threatened the region.
Remember the prime reasons for Gulf War 1: Iraq desperately needed money, and it believed (falsely) that America would do nothing if he invaded Kuwait. Had Iraq had more oil money, he would never have invaded Kuwait.
The only US interest in the region is that it's stable - no matter who's in charge. The only time that Saddam was a real threat to US interests was when he was broke.
Are you really telling me that *NO-ONE* believed that there was the slightest danger of Hussain acquiring them and using them to threaten his neighbours had he been allowed to rebuild his country and army with oil money?
Yes, the US wanted stability, but not at the cost of strong, wealthy, anti-American powers in the area. Especially when any of them might be secretly funding anti-Israeli terrorist networks which could then feed those weapons to al-qaeda and hence into the US.
Look, I'm trying to give the Neocons and US government *some* benefit of the doubt here ... sure they were stupid and venal, but they weren't totally random.
2) In 100 yars, there will be no more oil, so (by your argument) why would the US be in the middle east in 100 years ??
3) Nuclear energy at current levels of technology is only a stop-gap - Uranium (and therefore plutonium) will run out.
The 'Western Worlds' economy runs on cheap energy. We nned to find renewable, non carbon-based energy sources ASAP, before the non-renewable or carbon-based sources run out.
Plus of course the fact that you can easily use them to make lots of nice weapons-grade plutonium makes them a less-than-ideal solution, unless you want every country in the world to be nuclear-armed.
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/now_hard_part_ir...
It's not about oil and never has been.
You officially are off your Rocker. You wrote a couple days ago you were off the Obama bandwagon, at least on the donation front, and now you are noting he will keep the status quo...yet are still voting for him. Early on in the election cycle you showed some admiration for Ron Paul, and also even noted the media gave him a raw deal while giving Obama a free pass.
I challenge you to take a real stand with all of your readership and back Ron Paul and/or Bob Barr! Both would immediately pull out and fix the screwed up "pay to play" politics of the country. The RepuliCrat 2 party system is broken and now so is the country's monetary system.