I think you are being absolute. So we agree that oil falls into a national security category? Why is that only national security and not economic? I think the two are inseparable.
You are implying that I (and others who agree that there can be economic reasons to go to war) advocate starting several wars a year with different countries over the price of shoes or automobiles? Do you really think that, or are you being rhetorical?
I don’t see anyone advocating going to war with China over something like intellectual property, and most people including me would think it would be silly to do so, so I don’t think it applies, as do not local issues along a narrow corridor along the Rio Grande where both countries have legitimate rights to their side. Those kind of things can be handled with tarriffs and such.
But if you are a desert country, and your main and perhaps only source of water happens to be a river that flows to you through a hostile country, that wouldn’t be an act of war?
If someone like Saddam Hussein, with the fourth largest military in the world at the time had kept Kuwait and gone into Saudi Arabia (which I have no doubt they would had squashed like a bug, Saudi F-15s not withstanding) and decided to cut off oil shipments, that sure seems like an economic and national security issue right there.
If you don’t think oil is as vital to our lives as food and water, I think you aren’t paying attention. Without oil, we don’t have jobs, money food or even potable water.
Because we had a vested, selfish interest in this situation does not diminish the fact that we didn’t approach it with a total war and destruction objective.
Iraq is not the same as Germany and Japan, and I never said that it was with respect to the environment. But I do maintain, and history has recorded that there were many who thought that the occupation of Japan was doomed to failure, that they were a feudal society that would not change. And I also maintain that we have not yet proven that it cannot be done, since there has never been an effort like that in Iraq, and to say it cannot be done is baseless.
Many people advocate the use of nuclear weapons, none of this silly screwing around with the lives or our men. The life of one American soldier is not an even trade for 200 million of those Arabs. Just turn it all into glass, they say.
Well, I disagree.
There are many of us who think it is right to back up our principles with our blood and our treasure (even if our overriding concern is self-interest) and our principles don’t include simply loading up a fleet of B-52’s with MK84s and carpet bombing the country from one end to the other unless we are forced to.
I think advocating that approach or none at all is hypocrital.