You wouldn’t happen to have any credible sources for this assertion, would you? Of course not. It’s just a ridiculous CT.
I don’t think people are denying that oil is a factor. But if that was our primary concern we would have been better off just supporting that guy with the name nobody can spell.
At the risk of giving credit where it may not properly be due (I’m not entirely sure where Try2B Comprehensive is coming from on this), US protection of the flow and free trade of oil within the Persian Gulf region, using military means if necessary, is not a tinfoil-hat conspiracy. Jimmy Carter was the first POTUS to articulate this policy, and it hasn’t been fundamentally abandoned by subsequent administrations. Whether the Carter Doctrine can reasonably be applied to the North Africa theater, the mere availability of oil is absolutely a strategic concern for developed nations.
That certainly doesn’t mean the US military is controlling the oil.
Sure, which is why I’m not sure what the OP actually means. Could be shorthand for “the US uses its military to protect oil commerce” or it could be an Illuminati thing. From context, it seemed like the former to me.
And as you note in a later post, a key ally in buttressing Israel and maintaining a peace treaty between the two that helped to spare a lot of other conflicts between the two of them as well as maintaining a fragile stability within the rest of the region. Also control of the Suez canal. And encouraging trade between the two countries. Take the good with the bad.
Maybe in terms of overall lives lost, but not in terms of total amount of troops and equipment deployed and now almost not even in terms of actual years of deployment (if you discount the Vietnam “advisory” years) nor in dollars spent I don’t think. Of course that doesn’t discount the fact that at least in the case of Vietnam and the Iraq wars, they were murkily idealogical in nature and generally not considered a worthwhile expenditure of blood and treasure.
Unless of course history reverses itself on the Iraq war and credits it and the Bush admin for starting the “domino effect” of democracy across the Middle East. That would be interesting.
It wasn’t much of a “try”, militarily speaking, not by a long shot.
As you note later in your post, we are capable of humanitarian military missions (possibly a contradiction in terms), but as to “ignoring” other crises…we don’t. American people amongst many others in the world give generously of their money, time, and even effort to try to make those places better. But we cannot intervene militarily everywhere.
If by “key supplier” you mean roughly 17th on the global oil production list, then…um, yeah. And as I noted before, perhaps we should have intervened in Somalia ages ago, but not with a token force and a limp-wristed effort…
It isn’t about oil in terms of supply for the EU (especially Italy and Spain), its about proven reserves that Italian and Spanish corporations have contracts to unearth for future profits.
None, but its a worthwhile gamble that the outcome will be better for the world at large than the status quo.
Security first of all. There is a war going on. Who knows what could happen to disrupt oil exports? Exports have already been disrupted, but who knows if things may get to a point where one side or the other decides to blow up some key bits of infrastructure such that oil exports from Libya are guaranteed to be on hold for a long time. What happens then?
Well, for this argument to have any force you need to accept that we are currently in the peak-plateau period of the oil age. That is, global oil production has more or less peaked and ~86 million bbd/day is the most anyone will ever see out of this world. Is this premise the Gospel Truth or an unassailable conviction? Of course not, it is debatable. Time will tell.
But if it is the case, look at the effects of a mid- to long-term disruption of Libya’s oil exports. Libya accounts for only ~2% of global supply, yes, but considering that there isn’t much, if any, spare capacity to be had, taking Libyan oil off the market means shrinking the total world oil supply by ~2% indefinitely. That’s really bad for everyone. Bad enough to be cause for war.
How bad? Frankly I can’t say for sure, there isn’t much with which to compare it. I can cite the 1979 energy crisis:
The world has changed since 1979, and we’re talking about the whole world instead of just the US. AND Libya only has the power to contract supply by about half of what was lost during the '79 crisis. All the same, such an event could cause widespread economic problems around the world, not just for the US. A doubling of oil prices at this time would be a major concern, to put it mildly.
So. A military presence, viewed through the oil lens, lowers the probability of a total disruption of oil supply from Libya. Saddam Hussein actively tried to sabotage his own country’s oil production facilities; I’d say he had some success. The world doesn’t want that to happen again. Also, the whole world is on the hook where energy prices are concerned, and so is willing to intervene rather than let one crazy leader make the call for everybody.
Also, the US military dominance of much of the Middle East means that if the shit really hits the fan militarily (ie WW III), the US has the military ability to disrupt a significant proportion of the world’s (or an aggressor’s) oil supply. It is a decent argument for everyone else to not bother with WW III, as it’s arguably better than a nuke to starve an army of their go-juice.
That said, I want to thank everyone who has responded so far. I’m glad I started this thread- it has broadened my perspective on the issue. Thanks, 'dope!
No, no. Afghanistan was never about a natural gas pipeline. Iraq was never about extracting and shipping oil to the US. You’re putting words in my mouth. What did I ever do to you? 
I clearly stated in the OP that I wanted to debate the motive and not impose a morality on the conflict.
Could be more inconvenient. Depends on what happens when one fleshes out the situation.
Until order is established in that excuse for a country, there’s no way to determine how much, if any, of their oil reserves we might exploit.
/King George III
I don’t appreciate being personally attacked like this by mods. Do you deny that we have a military presence in some major Middle Easter oil regions? And that now there is a new one in the collection?
In case you’re kidding, both of those were put forward as the “real” motive for those wars. Seeing as how those were false…
Fallacious reasoning.
Ok, so you don’t think oil is a factor. To which of the various theories offered do you subscribe?
It’s not fallacious. It’s the historical record.
I thought I explained in post 34.
[ol][li]I am not a mod.[/li][li]I did not personally attack you.[/li][li]I asked for some kind of proof of your assertion, instead of you simply announcing it as fact and expecting it to be accepted as such.[/li][li]I characterized your assertion, not you.[/li][li]I said nothing about our military presence. Heck, the US has a large military presence in South Korea. If we’re controlling this country, then the dictionary definition of control is very far off the mark.[/li][*]And you still haven’t posted any kind of proof at all for your assertion.[/ol]
I was surprised that someone like you said this.
Oil is a world commodity. It doesn’t matter who sells to who. It only matter that it flows. The wild spikes at the pump show this. The Libyan war is affecting the market bidding for future deliveries. We don’t get first rights from our suppliers because we’re a golly group of buyers. He who pays the most gets the oil.
If Iran stopped pumping oil tomorrow the price of oil would rise around the world regardless of who bought their oil. The mere threat of a lack of Iran’s oil would raise the price of oil.
She didn’t resign over this specific issue but she resigned over our Middle Eastern policy in general. But here she’s definitely saying oil is our major interest over there.
As far as what you said earlier about us not getting any oil goes, we’ve done fairly well as regards getting oil over the years, or at least getting access to ME oil for US oil companies who are the people who run US energy policy. Recently we haven’t done all that well, ever since the OPEC crisis, the Iranian revolution etc. and the whole Iraq thing* backfired pretty badly. But historically we’ve done a heckuva job. Here’s a very anodyne apolitical look at the history of US involvement in the region and the evolution of the oil industry in general :
http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115CH13oil.html
- If you remember we wenr into Iraq determined to convert the entire country into a free market paradise, including total privatisation of all Iraq’s government-run industries including the oil industry. Our plan was to have had a US-appointed governing council write a constitution which would have privatised all of Iraq’s oil and then an Iraqi government kept in power and protected by the US military and advised by American advisors with Iraqi leaders who’d been on the US payroll for decades would have been in charge of deciding which oil companies got the rights to Iraq’s newly-privatised oil. Yeah.
Other than stuff relating to Israe, pretty much everything we’ve done there over the last sixty years is about oil. There are much worse atrocities going on in Africa right now, far more people being denied freedom. And we don’t give a shit, except for arming/supporting various groups in resource-rich countries. But if a country has no resources we couldn’t care less if they all hack each other to death with machetes. We really aren’t interested. You might get a few words of concern at a White House presser if things are approaching genocide somewhere but otherwise radio silence from the government and the media.
That’s what They want you to think. :mad::smack: