Actually I do agree, absolutely. I am not a nation-builder. I can handle a motive like "over-throw a bad guy because he has evil intentions and may have bad weapons" and I can handle a motive like "if we don't do it the oil will get cut off and the economy will tank". I don't believe in bringing democracy to places that would vote for public beheadings, genocide or clitorectomy in a free election.

That is one of the reasons I don't pay much attention to concepts like "the opinion of the world-community" since anything said to assuage that is probably hypocritical and mendacious.

Iraq was probably a war for oil in the long-game, not the short game. Cutting a deal with Saddam would have been more in our interests in the short-game. Replacing him with a puppet of some sort would have served our interests better at least for the mid-range game. I'm not sure about the long game now, since the post-war was botched so badly and done by people who misunderstood the place so completely.

Nation building is even more misguided in a place like Afghanistan. I still think the goal there is a land-air-base close to Pakistan for when that all goes pear-shaped - and I think the Paks know that too and that is a polarizing factor there as some definitely see that as a plus and others as a definite minus.

My own travels in that area were many many years ago but the memories still scare hell out of me.

But you are right about my facetious remark about the war for oil. It's just that the slogan chanting always seemed to imply that the whole thing was about grabbing oil when in fact it's a lot more complicated than that. A war "for oil" would be much simpler - and profitable.

A humanitarian war would have been cultural imperialism in Rwanda. Humanitarians have to be insensitive to local "custom". That is very out of fashion.


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>>But having troops fighting in Afghanistan for geopolitical reasons and overthrowing the Iraqi regime for somewhat more muddled geopolitics is still not a very good way to define an empire. If we *controlled* Iraqi oil and Iraq was a profit center for our government, I might agree ( wars for oil only make sense if you take the damn oil)
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>Charles, I think the ending sentence above confuses two issues; (1) what the war in Iraq is about, and (2) whether the oil is being taken or stolen. I think these are two entirely different issues.
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>There is no doubt that that entire global economy, not just the US or Europe, depends on oil. Any significant interruption to that oil supply will bring disastrous consequences to most economies and our way of life. Whether the oil is being misappropriated or not is not really the issue, although certainly there will be favouritism and corruption in the handling of that oil supply. That’s business as usual.
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>The truth is we, the world, you, me, everyone need oil in order to maintain and ensure the continuation of our life style. Let us not pretend it is not so, that we are instead bringing freedom and democracy or whatever the PR spin is. We want to live the way we do, I know I do, so measures are taken to ensure that, to ensure the survival and continuation of our economies and thus our way of life.
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>Let’s call a spade a spade – this is a war about resources, not about humanitarian motives or democracy or freedom. If we want humanitarian war, war for freedom or democracy then let us invade Tibet – over 1.5 million dead under decade of Chinese occupation and an entire way of life being eliminated. Zimbabwe under that madman. Congo under many madmen. But they don’t have what we want or it would upset those we want to please. Mainly they have no oil.