RE: RE: RE: Energy policy, wherefore art thou?
Steve Brenneis responds to Behethland B. Clark:
Do you have any evidence to support the theory that Bush's "big business oil-cronies" had this in mind, or are you just going on the paranoid rantings of people like Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich? And who are these big business oil-cronies? Do they have names, or are they just the same "someones" who seem to form the basis of every conspiracy theory?
Let me point out just a couple of the concrete facts that make most of that theory go up in a puff of smoke. In order for an American business to get control of those oil fields, one of two things would be necessary. Either we would have to colonize Iraq and make it part of US soil or we would have to impose some kind of puppet government to turn a blind eye to the presence of an American corporation operating with impunity on their sovereign soil. Obviously, we have not annexed Iraq, so the first possibility is out. I hardly think holding free elections, especially when the outcome was completely in doubt, is the best way to go about installing a puppet government. Once again, I think the Bush political team is a little smarter than that. On top of all this is the fact that the Administration knew going in that Hussein's people would destroy the oil fields right off the bat. Part of the infrastructure repair estimates made before Iraq was even invaded included three to eight years of work to restore the oil fields. The overall plan had Iraq regaining its sovereignty well before that ever happened. Finally, proponents of this somewhat crackpot theory also neglect to account for the fact that if we took direct control of the Iraqi oil fields, the entire rest of OPEC would quit selling us oil immediately. Given that we obtain less oil in a month from Iraq than we burn in a day, the economies of the theory just don't hold water.
You say it was all about the money. What money? The $180 billion we had to spend in the endeavor? The same $180 billion expenditure that has Bush's current approval ratings in the crapper? That seems to be a favorite saying of leftists, but the sayer never quite makes it clear what money it is all about. I'm not really sure what you folks from the left find so evil about money that you would make it a motive for everything with which you disagree, but I guess that's for another thread.
As for assuring a GOP victory in 2004, two entities can claim nearly complete credit for that: Al Qaida and the Democrat Party. After 9/11, if Bush had done nothing more than some Clinton-esque posturing, maybe bomb a baby food factory in Afghanistan, a GOP victory in 2004 was almost assured. Americans will not change the CinC when our security is threatened. The fact that the Democrats selected John Kerry to run was just icing on the cake. Whatever possessed the Democrats to run a pompous, condescending, hypocritical political chameleon at a time when people were looking for a modicum of honesty and integrity it beyond me. John Kerry was a caricature of himself. Throw in Hollyweird, the lunatics from MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and Dan Rather and I'm surprised Kerry did as well as he did. The only thing they could have done to seal their fate more permanently was to nominate Howard Dean. Of course they seem to be on the verge of rectifying that oversight any day. As a matter of fact, one of the worst moves Bush could have made politically was to march into the swamp that was Iraq. I suspect the only reason Bush didn't top Reagan's landslide was the war in Iraq. Sorry, the line of thinking that the Iraq war was for political gain is nearly as silly as the theory that it was to make a profit on oil.
Of all the things the invasion of Iraq was about, money and oil are not among them. Now if you had said it was about nation-building, pride, and power and that it was hypocritical, I would have agreed. Of course we would have had to apply those brush strokes to Bush's predecessor so I doubt you would go there. If you had opposed it on the grounds that it was a rank violation of constitutional federalism, I would have agreed as well, but I doubt you'll be going there.
posted by Andy W. Rogers | 5:14 PM
1 Comments:
I guess that's why I'm not a liberal. My opinions usually have to be based on evidence, even if somewhat circumstantial. I'm not comfortable with forming opinions in a vaccuum based on my feelings. They don't generally stand up to scrutiny very well.
If a puppet government is what we're after, this has to be one of the most hilariously inept attempts at such in the history of the world. Let's see. We held free elections in which our man was ousted. We put no restrictions on candidates, knowing full well that the Shiites and Kurds would loggerhead. By the way, the answer to why there is no government is right there. If you got your news from somewhere besides ABCCBSNBCCNNNYTWAP, you would know that the Shiites and the Kurds are at a temporary impasse, something eerily familiar to anyone who observes the US Senate, by the way. They have adopted a Parliamentary form of government, one which will be largely resistant to outside intervention given the triumvirate of factions. Yep, if I wanted to write a treatise on how to fail at setting up a puppet government, those are some of the steps I would include.
With Regard to Clinton's nation-building attempts, have you ever heard of Somalia? As well, nation-building is exactly what he was after in Serbo-Croatia. Just because he failed miserably doesn't mean he didn't make the attempt. In fact, no attempt at nation-building undertaken by us has ever been completely successful and most are dismal failures. Be aware as well that the most disastrous of our nation-building forays were all but one initiated by Democrats. This is what makes Bush's foray into Iraq so hypocritical: during the 2000 election he took Clinton to task repeatedly for his use of US troops in nation-building efforts, specifically with regard to Somalia. He said using troops for humanitarian efforts was fine (which is wrong, by the way), but using them for nation-building was something he didn't approve of.
We don't really agree. We are both opposed to the war, but my opposition is based on the fact that it is a violation of the constitutional separation of powers, that it is undertaken for nation-building, and that it was unnecessary. In my opinion, if we had evidence that Hussein was a serious threat, we should have bombed Iraq into the stone age and taken whatever means necessary to separate his molecules from one another permanently. We should have let the power vacccuum fill as it would and if there was a further threat, deal with it similarly. We should have, at the same time, done the same thing with North Korea. Failing our ability to produce sound evidence that Hussein was an immediate or near future threat to us, we should have left him alone or removed him using clandestine means. That doesn't mean we needed to convince the Washington Post or the New York Times, they can burn to the ground for all I care. That means we needed enough evidence to convince the Congress that a declaration of War was necessary. After that, the executive would have carte blanche to conduct the war as necessary.
Post a Comment
<< Home