3 ms·
The US doesn't invade people for natural resources, especially oil. The US is the world's largest oil exporter. It might have in the 70s, but that was a while
by astrange 3y ago
The US doesn't invade people for natural resources, especially oil. The US is the world's largest oil exporter.
It might have in the 70s, but that was a while ago.
Funny enough we don't get any of Iraq's oil, which is managed by a European company and sold to China.
- beebeepka 3y agoSure thing. They reduced Iraq to rubble for democracy
- astrange 3y agoInvading Iraq was very bad but it's not rubble. It's, like, still there. Deaths in the war were less than you'd think. GWB actually comes out net positive in his presidency because he started PEPFAR (AIDS prevention in Africa) which was really, really good and saved millions of lives.
- mongol 3y agoWith that type of accounting, a father of two can get away with murder since he has been a net positive to the world.
- beebeepka 3y agoDamn it, man. I don't think I've seen worse defense in the last decade. The Iraqis must be relieved to hear that yes, their country was destroyed but the person who started it did some random good thing in Africa.
- astrange 3y agoThe randomness is exactly why it's so good. You'd get bad wars from other presidents, but you wouldn't have gotten PEPFAR. Gives him a good value over replacement president.
- t-3 3y agoThe purported reason for invading Iraq wasn't to steal the oil, but to maintain the petrodollar (it's claimed that Saddam was preparing to begin trading oil in Euros).
- astrange 3y agoThe purported reason was WMDs wasn't it? The actual reason was that Dick Cheney felt like it. There really isn't any kind of actual reason beyond that, and we didn't gain a single thing from the invasion. Petrodollars (the foreign US dollar oil trade) are a leftover 1970s concept; they simply aren't important or a large part of support for the dollar's value. OPEC oil exports are about $300 billion a year, which isn't a lot.
- t-3 3y agoThe purported conspiracy theory reason. The official reasoning of WMDs were generally believed to be a nonsense casus belli presented as legal justification. More people thought it had something to do with 9/11 than WMDs.
- wharvle 3y agoIn this case, much of the real purpose was laid out in articles and papers written just a few years earlier by a bunch of the same people crafting and implementing the policy. There may have been more reasons than that, but some were frankly stated in public documents. Their publications (including an open letter addressed to Clinton) lay out a case for preventative (as distinct from preemptive—what we in fact did was preventative, with some bullshit to sell it as preemptive) war over concern that Saddam might do some of the stuff we lied about to claim he was already doing it. Pure realpolitik damn-the-legality chess-playing stuff. He seems risky (to our interests in the region—who cares about his own people?) so we better depose him, that kind of thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American...
- Sabinus 3y ago
- paganel 3y agoThe US is still extracting and controlling oil resources in a foreign country via its military, just look at their current presence in North-Eastern Syria.
- astrange 3y agoThe US does not need to extract oil anywhere. We're an oil exporter.
- paganel 3y agoOne would think so, and yet, the US does exactly that in North-Eastern Syria. Also, see the US President asking the Saudis for some extra pumping of oil last summer (summer of 2022, that is), supposedly that was meant to help with the gasoline prices in the US and hence with said President’s greater chances of electoral success.