I'm neither a psychologist nor a mind reader, so it's impossible for me (or any one else for that matter) to divine the motives behind the Bush Administration's ill-advised and illegal invasion of Iraq. We can, however, after considering the evidence, exclude the putative motives for the war --weapons of mass destruction, removing an imminent threat to America, Saddam's support for the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, and, probably, establishing a "democracy" in the Middle East. I include the last based on America's ongoing support of other authoritarian and anti-democratic regimes in the region.
So what does that leave? I wrote in my original post that a number of whiste-blowing Bush insiders have suggested that the war was conceived and fought "for oil and for the benefit of Bush's big corporate backers." What I should have said is that it was suggested, most recently by Scott McClellan, that the war was fought for political purposes. An easy victory would have secured for Bush both a second term --it did-- and the popularity (and "political capital") to allow the thus far lack-luster Bush to push through his conservative domestic agenda, like privatizing Social Security. Fortunately, it didn't.
The other possibilities include revenge --Saddam tried to kill George H.W. Bush-- or, as Susan Faludi proposes in her fascinating book, The Terror Dream, an attempt to assuage the guilt and shame felt by Americans for their impotence in dealing with the terrorist attack. America needed to strike back at someone or something --anything-- in order to reclaim its heroic --and mythic--"manhood."
And of course we can't leave out the influence of the authors of the war and of the Project for the New American Century --the neocons-- who argued that America had the obligation to impose its will through military force on the countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
All of the above are plausible motives for the decision to go to war. But I'm convinced that politics played the decisive role. And that's not at all incompatible with the need to secure Iraq's oil resources --"blood for oil", in other words.
Look at it this way. In order for the Iraq War to be considered a political success, it had to avoid bankrupting the invading country. It would have to pay for itself. That's precisely what neocon and outspoken war proponent Paul Wolfowitz predicted:
"We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
He was referring to Iraqi oil. According to Wolfowitz, this Bush insider and former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Iraq was targeted two days after 9-11 because it was "floating on a sea of oil." The war would pay for itself.
Of course he was dead wrong. As was the New York Times, according to Tom Engelhardt, for dismissing the simplistic accusations of the early war protesters:
'You'd think the Times might have slapped some kind of 'we wuz wrong' label on the piece [the revelation that American oil companies had been awarded Iraqi oil contracts.] I mean, remember when the mainstream media, the Times included, seconded the idea that Bush's invasion, whatever it was about -- weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or liberation or democracy or bad dictators or… well, no matter -- you could be sure of one thing: it wasn't about oil."
Well, the New York Times and other war boosters were badly mistaken. The cost of the war could end up costing the United States $3 trillion dollars. The perpetrator of 9-11 is still on the loose. And George W. Bush is likely to go down as one of the worst U.S. presidents in history. So much for political capital.
Not all of the early prognostications have failed to materialize, however. American Big Oil, as planned, is back in Iraq eager to reap the riches of the "sea of oil " beneath the killing fields of Iraq.
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