Topic: War On Terror
Why we can't take the easy road out of Iraq We can't just pull out of Iraq because of one big reason: OIL!by Locke
(Conservative)
Thursday, May 15, 2008
We can't pull out of Iraq immediately, even though the call to do so is gaining in strength. To do so would possibly doom the world's economy.
I do not support the reasons for our invasion of Iraq and I look to the day when we can bring our forces home. We also face the realization that we cannot disengage their until the country is able to protect itself from external threats. The main threat that I see is the subjugation of Iraq by Iran.
If Iran came to control Iraq, then Iran would control most of the world's oil. That is the only thing that is keeping so many of our forces engaged their. If Iraq was just another country, not an oil giant, then we would have drawn down our forces long ago. We cannot let Iran have control of a majority of the world's oil. Iran could then manipulate already high oil prices send the world economy crashing down unless the world follows Iran's demands.
Oil. The fuel that runs the world. We need it but we also hate how vulnerable it makes us. We need to protect our supply sources and to make sure they aren't dispruptd because our economy runs on oil. We will be engaged in Iraq at some level for a long time unless Iraq can defend itself or if we find a new source of energy for our economy to run on. Both are looking to be increasingly unlikely.
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2008 Locke, all rights reserved.
Published: Thursday, May 15, 2008
Last modified: Thursday, May 15, 2008
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You do realise that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have much more oil than Iraq and are not going to sit still for Iranian control? Further do you understand that Iraq and Iran are two completely different cultures, speak two different languages, and have a history of conflict? If Iran does attempt to exert overt control, then the Iraqis would likely turn on them as quickly as they turned on us.
The UN has put oil embargos on Iraq before with little international effect, I doubt that the "loss" of control of Iraqi oil would cause the world economy to spiral out of control. Take a step back and think about it for a moment, if the Iranians did manage to gain a stable control of Iraq it would do nothing but facilitate the flow of oil to the world (even if not to us) thereby putting more stew in the pot for all and lowering prices. Best of all if we left we would stabilize our own currency and economy and stop throwing fiat money away on wasteful and unneccessary military spending...which would do far more to buoy up the world economy than Iranian control of Iraq could ever destroy.
The U.S., unfortunately has come to the belief that just because another country has certain resources that it entitles us to invade, occupy and ruin that country. I have to wonder just how we would react if the Chinese felt as though they needed some of our resources, such as the wide open spaces of the Western U.S. and decided that they had the right to invade, occupy and ruin our country in pursuit of that resource? I dare say that everyone of us would be fighting, ing and trying to kill every single Chinese invader if that were the case.
There will come a time when this country will no longer be able to afford such an arrogant position...I wonder how we will handle the fall of this empire?
It is not within our right nor should it be within our attitude to simply take what belongs to others. For years we have condemned the very thing that we now do. We condemned , the Soviets and every other aggressor in history, yet now we have sunk to those levels of violation of the sovereignty of other nations.
Locke there is a term for the policy you are endorsing. Its called plunder, i.e. stealing the resources of another country by force. That doesn't square well with Bush's claim that we are in Iraq to create democracy there. It also doesn't exactly make us look like the good guys.
BTW 40% of our oil is produced domestically. Among the countries we import oil from, Iraq ranks #10. Canada is number one, followed by Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
Maybe we should have invaded Canada instead of Iraq? After all they have more oil and just like Iraq they didn't do anything to us either.
BTW2 Now that polar bears have been added to the endangered species list we cannot drill for oil in areas they inhabit. So our own government is preventing us from getting oil on own territory. Brilliant!
The Imperialist Americans are attempting to steal the Arab lands for oil. The American Soldiers are killing Iraqis for oil. They all need to be charged for war crimes. America is the Satanic worshiping Muslim Murderer and they are the backers of the Jewish Imperialists. Americans should convert to Islam and pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Your soldiers are evil and have bloodlust for Arab oil.
Locke is, by his own account, an interventionist. The one thing that such interventionists utterly fail to grasp is that this country has followed the failed policy of interventionism for the last 110 years to absolutely no avail; in fact, our interventionism has caused far more troubles for this and other countries then it has ever benefited us.
The thing that surprises most interventionist is when they are informed that the United States, in one way or another, has intervened in the affairs of Iraq for the last 87 years.
You would think that if such a policy was successful then we would see far better results around the world than we have through the years. The facts are that interventionism never works, it may provide the conqueror with some resources, some power, but usually as such costs that the ratios are extremely skewed.
We also rarely count the consequences of such actions. Take for instance the fact that during WWI both sides of the conflict were drained of resources and were ready to sue for peace, but the United States, for very questionable reasons, entered the war and turned the tables completely. With the victory came the heavy-handed Treaty of Versailles which was later instrumental to the rise of Hitler. Hitler would have never had a stage on which to propagate his vile interventionism and hatred. Imagine, the lives of millions of people, including millions of Jews would have been spared the horrors of Hitler and war. Imagine no United Nations, no UN Resolution 181. Had WWI been resolved by a suit of peace between the parties then everything that we now know about the world would be very different. The victory of the allies in WWI changed the entire makeup of Eurasia, allowing for the creation of artificial countries, such as Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and most of the countries in the region. These were concocted borders that encompassed a mixture of tribal and ethnic peoples into forced unifications. Much of the trouble in the region can be directly traced back to the outcome of WWI and the policies of Great Britain in particular.
The point is that there is not enough wisdom in the world and especially not enough in Washington, DC to foresee the effects or the consequences of such interventions. The main problem is that it takes decades for those consequences to present, thus the actions and reactions ultimately reach beyond our ability to remedy the problems created through the decades by such near-sighted policies.
Perhaps one day we will learn, I just hope the price we pay for such lessons are not too steep, especially in the price of blood.
Arsef, I have to say that your attitude is no better than those of the interventionist. To use religion, any religion as a basis of argument is just as vacant now as it has always been. Jews and Muslims should get over themselves and realize that their collective actions do little to solve the problems and only serve to enflame their own demise.
I hold very little value in any religion since, from what I see, there is very little reason behind them. For the most part I consider the so-called "religious" little more than hinderances to human progress. I do however, believe that each man has the right to those beliefs as long as they maintain them without interference or trespass on the liberty and rights of others.
The only thing, in my opinion, that will reign in both war and interventionism is reason, not religion. I certainly am not willing to put one iota of faith in any "god" of which "his" followers are eager to shed blood. I think it is the utmost form of vile hypocrisy to proclaim and uplift the "divine" while acting like the most base animal full of hatred and contempt. It is beyond rational behavior to bear witness to a higher being while acting like savages. It literally makes me sick.
Hold the phone there Asref. I'm for getting our troops out of Iraq, because Iraq was not involved in 911, but the Muslims who had anything to do with 911 should be hung for it.
Ask yourself this, Locke: we are actually one of the largest petroleum nations on Earth. So why aren't we using the oil we have HERE?
Answer? Half to the reserves. Half to China and India. Those numbers might be a little off- for instance, it might be a third instead of a half, with a third actually being used here... but the fact remains.
We also have large reserves of oil shale, tar oil, and petroleum oil in Alaska, and still more in California, Texas, etc. WHY aren't we harvesting THOSE sources?
Let's put aside the great renewable energy debate for a second and assumed that we were trying to protect our environment here. What gives US the right to go in and ravage another country for oil just cause we don't want to do this to ours? That's called socialism.
So would you advocate invading Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Mexico, etc. etc. as well in order to "save" the world economy? The world wouldn't need saving if we were allowed to shift away from oil right now, but as it stands, this black gold happens to make a certain few men in key positions even wealthier.
Posted By: patrick henry
Date: 2008-05-21 07:06:28
Find out the correlation between OPEC and the USD, Sadam as well as Chavez and Aburdinajad have all openly started accepting EUROs vs USD. Why do you think "Mission Accomplished" was declared so early? It was to put the purchase of Iraqi oil back to USD as per OPEC trade deals.
Locke,
Easy for you to say stay in Iraq when you in fact have not toted a rifle in that country.
Yusef,
Get over it, our soldiers go where they are told to go. Convert to Islam? That subjigative religion has held that region of the world in suspended animation from 538 until the Treaty of Vesaille, why would we want to go backwards? All religion screws this world up most notably the tift between Judaism and Islam.
War criminals? Try the officers apointed over them (The Bush Administration).
Imagine if we put as much time effort and resources into renewable fuel sources as we spent making the Manhattan Project.
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2008 Locke, all rights reserved.