"Ever friendly with the oil-hungry USA, the Saudis had no reason to fear Saddam which would come to its rescue were Saddam to make such a move.
SA obviously did not share your confidence that Hussein would not come knocking on the door. Their fear landed the US a base in SA. I believe this is generally accepted by both the left and the right.
Your points on Hussein's interest in Kuwait are succinctly pointed out & I am in full agreement. I would only add that you underestimate his quest for power and infer that his only aims were the preservation of Iraqi territorial rights. I believe he wanted more money & more power. The merciless way he treats his opponents is testament.
"Iraq at war enabled the Saudis a primetime posture for exporting US-friendly oil, and keeping Iraq's oil off the market, due to the war, was very helpful for the Saudis."
Huh? How was Iraqi oil any less friendly than Saudi oil in 1990? I agree on why we were behind Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war(Shah, hostage crisis). But why did we like SA more than Iraq at that time? We wanted stable, cheap oil & did not care where it came from. The essence of Realpolitik. If the Saudis had attacked Kuwait, I believe the response would have been the same. We defended Kuwait for regional stability to keep the oil flowing. There was no covert adoration of the Saudis over the Iraqis.
Glaspie was not acting on Bush1's authority & in Congressional testimony, she has greatly disputed the appeasement angle that many label her with.
"But the fact of the matter is that those military forces in Saudi Arabia helped beef up Al Qaeda. The overall situation will worsen once a US military occupation becomes prevalent in Iraq."
Sure, recruiting for AQ was easier, but the cauldron was beginning to boil anyway. SA uses the US as the fallguy for all of it's own pathetic defieciencies. Poverty & brainwashing caused AQ, not the US presence in SA.
I kind of misstated my point earlier. I do not believe oil is a good enough reason to go to war. Rather, radical Islamic control of oil & wealth is totally unacceptable. This war is justified in my mind because Arab lands must change. We have tolerated SA et al for far too long. Iraq is the launching ground to change the Arab world. Islamic extremists who are created by the poverty & brainwashing their regimes brandish must stop now.
I don't believe Bush is going to war to win in '04. However much I hate him, I believe him to be a patriot. I think he really believes this war is just and he would not kill Americans to win the next election. Condi, Wolf, Rumsfeld really believe that they can change the Arab world. It is the same with the war in Vietnam: A horrid war, but our leaders really believed in the domino theory.
I agree on energy policy all around. Our focus should be on a new Manhattan project to build an alternate source of fuel to oil. Republicans will never go for this, of course. In the shadow of 9-11, I believe Gore would have had that vision.
I hate being associated with some of the far right nuts here, but the Arab world has to change. |
