Quote Originally Posted by SA Friday View Post
We are in Iraq and Afghanistan because of oil. We are in the rest of the middle east because of oil.

No political and geographical stability in the middle east, less or no oil exported. The less oil, the higher the prices of everything petroleum based. The higher the gas, the tighter the economy. Got pretty fricken tight right after the oil companies decided to play the "let's see what the market can take as a price" game, didn't it. Still reeling from it too.

We are there because of oil, period. Does Rowanda or any of the other shit hole countries in Africa that have had a mass genocide within the last couple of years have oil? No. Are we there in-mass stopping the genocides? No.

If you don't think we are so heavily involved in SWA primarily because of oil, you are completely lost. In comparison, ethanol fuel is inefficient. But, some day, we might find it efficient enough for us to stop giving a shit about the middle east and we can stop paying money to the middle east and watch them de-evolve back into a beduin camel riding based society. Sooner would be better IMO.
Forgive me for disagreeing with you on this. As Ronin has pointed out, Afghanistan does not have any oil. Iraq has oil, but since the time we've been actively involved there, the oil we are supposed to be there for, isn't coming here. The cost per barrel continues to fluxuate higher and higher from the time of our invasion. If it was for oil, wouldn't some of that oil be coming here and the price of oil would decrease. In fact, most of the contracts the Iraqi government has gone into regarding oil aren't American companies.

So, using that premise that we invaded for oil, where the hell is the oil?

I truly think we invaded Iraq due to a vendetta on the part of Bush. Call it a personal vendetta if you will, as Saddam had issue with his dad. He was a small dictator in a small country who didn't have WMD's, who couldn't win a war with Iran, who was afraid to fight any other of their neighbors except Kuwait. Once we ousted him, we didn't stop. We ousted the military, who then became the insurgents and we've been trying to fix that mistake ever since.

I disagreed with our invasion, but once we were there and screwed things up, I felt and still feel it was our responsibility to fix what we screwed up. If you wish to call that nation building, then so be it. I call it American values. As Americans, we have a history of fixing, helping, assisting people we were involved in conflict with. Europe, Japan, Korea come to mind. Add Iraq to that list as well.

Just my $.02.