And you want to pretend it’s worse. C’est la vie. At any rate, I’ve given my own answers to the OP and I’m not up for round after round of this same, tired old argument with you Der. There is no way you will ever be convinced…and no way you will convince me (at least not without more proofs than you’ve shown) that your view point is anything more than a comic book view of the world.
-XT
Comic book villains are typically less incompetent.
And I won’t convince you because you have always been an apologist for America.
No doubt…I’m certainly your faulty logic has nothing to do with it at all.
shrug
-XT
I figure Bush thought winning a war would cause him to be remembered as a great president. Iraq just happaned to be a handy opportunity. I think he got a lot of support for the idea from people around him who knew a war would be good for business.
I think Bush honestly believed that the mission would be a cakewalk, that we’d be welcomed with open arms by Iraqis, That Iraq would become a American style democracy with pee-wee soccer and a League of Women Voters, and that the Iraqis would serve as a shining example to other Arab nations and inspire revolution in Iran, which we would aid militarily, bringing an end to terrorism and a Pax Americana that would last centuries. I really think he believed this. Certainly the ideologs at PNAC did.
I don’t think he’s a monster, just not very bright. Unfortunately stupid often causes as much damage as evil.
If it was wall about the oil–so what? Is that such a bad thing? Countries compete for resources all the time, that’s how it works.
It works?
“Mass murder for profit is bad” is a fairly basic ethical concept.
But didn’t he already have one on the go?
Fun and profit and getting them terrorists and oh, yeah, war profits.
And I believe this was due to a failure of empathy. The right wing has consistently mocked others for trying to figure out the motivations of others. “You don’t eliminate terrorism by finding out why someone is a terrorist.”
Yet not understanding what makes people fight invaders is why we failed to anticipate the insurgency. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, et. al, all had chances to fight for their country, and had other priorities. They weren’t able to put themselves into the mind set of people that would.
I truly believe Dick Cheney thought the Iraqis would regard the invasion as no more than a corporate takeover. Just like if you were working for Brown and Root one day and Halliburton the next. You had a different boss, but it was just a new name on one of those organizational charts. Nothing to get worked up about.
These guys wanted “Regime Change” in Iraq since 1998, when they wrote Clinton a letter.
Among the people sending that letter were, surprise surprise, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, two guys you may have heard of.
The names ring a knell.
Considering that we have spent almost $3 trillion on this war (and lost over 4000 lives), none of these reasons make any sense!
It’s something I’ve seen before: Americans don’t understand nationalism. They have a hard time grasping the concept. That’s why, while other people fight for their countries, Americans fight for “freedom” and “democracy,” and can’t understand people who consider these things less important than not being invaded by foreigners.
I think that it’s more that Americans have trouble understand ***other people’s ***nationalism; we certainly have plenty of it outselves. We’ve told ourselves that we are the champions of all that is good so long that we’ve come to believe our own propaganda - and to assume that everyone else agrees with us. Remember “They hate us for our freedoms” ? Not that they hate us for being infidels, or looking funny, or invading Iraq, or anything like that; they have to hate us for our moral superiority.
Just as simplistic sloganeering for one position is silly and absurd, so is its mirror opposite.
Pretending that Jihadis don’t, in part, hate us precisely because of the freedoms that we enjoy in the west is, simply, silly.
[
](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/presence-feb06.html)
Every war of aggression was aimed at stealing whatever the other guys had: land, food, women, whatever. But most of the time people know stealing is wrong so they dress up the aggression in terms of propagating good things like religion, democracy, or whatever shit they can think of at that moment. So the war, rather than being about beneffitting themselves at the expense of the attacked, turns into a favor to the attacked and so is morally good.
Today “democracy” has replaced Christianity and “civilization” which were used a century or two ago but the idea is the same: “we are better than those backwards peoples and we deserve to have their stuff which they do not deserve”.
Every thief has convinced himself that he is not a bad person but is just taking what he deserves and which the unfairness of society are witholding from him.
IMHO Iraq was not only about oil but about making America dominant in that part of the world.
Certainly America had plans to control Iraq and its oil which have not worked out but they were there. From the very beginning things did not go according to plan, expectations were gradually lowered until here we are where we are. But the intentions were clearly there. The military bases were not going to be “permanent” but “enduring” and they were all hush hush. America was saying one thing but doing another.
America envisioned an American protectorate where the ruling class was tightly controlled by the American friends. Viceroy Paul Bremer did not want to hold elections but was forced to by Sistani’s pressure and threats to mobilise the people. From the beginning it has all been a slow chipping away of American expectations.
The first contracts awarded by America for oil, for rebuilding the infrastructure. They were all going to go to America and its friendly allies. Bush threatened that those countries which did not help with the war would be left out. I remember on this very board the apologists saying how France would be punished by not being allowed into Iraqi reconstruction contracts. Which would all be paid by Iraqi oil. Of course. And controlled by America. Of course.
It was going to be the plundering of Iraq and it was defended as good and legal by many on this board. How easy we forget.
The first contracts were indeed controlled by America and were rife with corruption. I remember the first oil contracts, the cell phone contracts as an example. No Iraqis were hired. All contracts went to American companies. But then reality set in. Americans were being killed. This was not just building cell towers or water plants, it was doing that under fire and with “contractors” fighting back. Four “contractors” (mercenaries) were killed and their bodies hung from a bridge. Gradually reality began to sink in. This was not what America had envisioned. The infamy of the razing of Fallujah followed. The Iraqi government gradually demanded more and more autonomy and America was in no position to deny it. Even today the situation continues where the Iraqi government demnds more power and the USA gives some reluctantly. It is not what America had planned for but it was how things turned out.
It is highly disingenuous to claim now that America never intended to control Iraq. It most certainly did as was evident from all actions. It is just that the bank robbery did not work out as planned.
The soldiers who are being sent there are patriotically told they are fighting for America and democracy. Because they are young and gullible and more ready to die for some noble ideal than to defend the interests of the moneyed classes. Just like the jihadists on the other side. There is little difference bettween both sides.
I am amazed how little people know and how much we have forgotten. It was just a few short years ago and it was all in the press for everybody to read,
Not about oil so much as about hegemony. Afghanistan & Iraq are on opposite sides of Iran, Iran dared to drive out the British & the Americans & rule themselves, which towelheads are not supposed to do, so we were to set up a pincer & invade them. Also provide cover for the Likud in Israel somehow.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it was planned by a bunch of Jews in DC & NY who grew up believing in the romantic just necessity of fighting Communism[sup]TM[/sup].
It was when Saddam Hussain did it to Kuwait.