Ed, A cynical realist that takes the truth head on??? I like that! <LOL>
This war wasn't about liberation. That's what you sell the public to win the hearts and minds. You know the routine. This war was about Sadamn undermining the economic way of life of Americans. Oil was merely a part of that scheme.
Every country in the world knows you can't defeat us militarily. The way to destroy us is economically. If you go back and study how we won the Cold War, Russia supported their economy through crude and precious metals. The US convinced Kuwait to flood the market with oil. If my memory is correct, other OPEC countries followed suit. The central banks took care of bringing the price of PM's down. Without this source of income, Russia couldn't keep pace with the Cold War spending. We outspent them at a time when we manipulated their economic system.
Iraq was in the process of trying to duplicate that feat. They signed huge oil contracts with Russia and France. Russia has the third largest oil reserves in the world and they would have had access to the second largest oil reserves. Do you think they wouldn't have used that to their own advantage? In looking at the long term view, we couldn't allow that to happen. It wasn't in our best interest or the interests of our allies. The Russians are our friends only as long as they need us.
Currently, all oil bought worldwide is bought with US dollars. Other countries have to convert their currencies to dollars to purchase oil. Sadamn was leading the charge to accept nothing but Euro dollars. Experts have declared that if we had to convert dollars to euros, we would have to pay about $5 per gallon for gas at the pumps. What do you think that would do to our economy?
We have never had a period of growth and expansion in this country with oil over $30 per barrel. Sadamn was leading the charge to destroy our economic way of life. That may not mean much to the purists but, it's those same purists that are complaining about the economy.
We couldn't garner world support for this war because the world had their own best interests at heart. Chirac was backed financially by Sadamn on his rise to power. He and France stood to gain financially if Sadamn stayed in power.
Russia was going to have access to Iraqi oil. Did you expect them to back us? Germany sold their technology to Iraq and had other financial ties as well. The UN was pissed off because Bush was awarding most of the post Iraq contracts to US companies, and why not? We took most of the risks.
The Euro was gaining tremendous strength as the dollar was plunging, prior to the war. The risk that billions of investment dollars leaving this country to invest in European countries was another risk we couldn't afford to take. We had to put a stop to it. Since the war started, the currencies have come more into balance.
This was a war about currency and our economic way of life. Those are the realities. We can debate the moral issues but they truly don't mean anything in the big picture. (Sadly!)
Wars are fought for political or economic gain. If one were to follow the money trail, they would have a better understanding of why this war needed to be fought.
This administration is no different than the Johnson, Kennedy, Roosevelt, Lincoln or Julius Ceasar administration. There's the reasons you sell to the public and then there's the real reasons. I choose to focus on the real reasons and then expect the results to justify the risks.
dabum |
