Excellent point. However, when George Bush laid out the plan to liberate Iraq, a number of factors must have crossed the collective French, German and Russian minds:
... America could be expected to prevail
... the sanctions would be lifted in shortly after a US victory, as opposed to who-knows-when otherwise
... the billions of dollars available for reconstruction and rebuilding would make the oil for food money look like pocket change.
... if America was going to topple Saddam, why fight it? Why not help and ensure a place at the table after the fighting?
... Saddam was profitable, but a pain in the butt. Removing him would open up far more lucrative deals with a new, western leaning government.
... why tick off the world's sole remaining superpower?
I find it hard to fathom that money was the sole reason. The French, Russians and Germans would have done as well or better financially by supporting the United States rather than Saddam?
Perhaps there were other reasons? Turkey turned down a $20 billion aid and assistance package that required them to do little more than allow American forces to transit Turkish territory.
George H.W. Bush, in "A World Transformed," written before his son took office:
"Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different, and perhaps barren, outcome."
I suspect that W's plan was that the US would invade, troops would be welcomed as liberators, a new govt would be installed and troops would begin withdrawing within a year. Oil would be flowing, Iraq would be prosperous and America would be rid of Saddam and his games.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. One wonders if the French, Germans and Russians has a better sense of the ethnic rivalries that the elder Bush alluded to in his writings and simply didn't want to get involved in a civil war? Perhaps they better understood that Ahmad Chalabi was a fraud, not to be trusted?
Money might have been an incentive for some to object to the US invasion of Iraq, but I suspect it would have been equally lucrative to support Bush. Therefore, one must not exclude other factors, including the ones that caused many to think along the lines of the elder Bush. |
