Friday, April 20, 2018

Iraq: No 'War for Oil'

I watched George Galloway's fine 2017 doco The Killing$ of Tony Blair last night. If you haven't already seen it, I can assure you it's well worth it.

Should you do so, I have only one, albeit rather large, caution: the film has footage of Noam Chomsky parroting his nonsense about the US invasion and destruction of Iraq being a 'war for oil', a line unfortunately repeated by Galloway at the conclusion of the film.

Just to clarify, here are my top authorities, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, on this furphy:

"Saddam was eager to sell his oil to any customer willing to pay for it. Moreover, if the United States wanted to conquer another country to gain control of its oil, Saudi Arabia - with larger reserves and a smaller population - would have been a much more attractive target. Plus, bin Laden was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, and fifteen of the nineteen terrorists who struck the United States on September 11 were Saudis (none were from Iraq). If control of oil were Bush's real objective, 9/11 would have been an ideal pretext to act... There is also hardly any evidence that oil interests were actively pushing the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2002-03." (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, 2007, p 254)

1 comment:

Grappler said...

As I think I have said here before, the numbers do not add up. It would have cost the US far far less to buy Saddam's oil than to go to war against him for it. No, I agree with you, MERC, the only reason for the war with Iraq was Israel.