Email of the Day

A reader writes:

I agree with your posting re Iraq about 99.44%. However, I think you are
(slightly) too kind to the Bush Administration when you say that the invasion
was “not about oil or empire.” Certainly, it wasn’t about empire. But I do think
that the Cheney/Rumsfeld folks very much want to use Iraqi oil as a
counterweight to the Saudis, much as the Shah of Iran was used in the old days.
It’s smart business to have more than one supplier, right? I really don’t see
Dick and Don as being in the compassion business. If Saddam had been willing to
play the game as the Shah did, I don’t they would have complained. (After all,
they didn’t have a problem with him before he invaded Kuwait.)

This is a good point. My previous post was a bit too monolithic re: the intentions of those within the Bush administration. I don't see Cheney or Rumsfeld as the idealistic types, either, and I suspect that, to the extent they advised in favor of invasion, they highlighted the potential upside of freeing-up Iraq's vast oil reserves. I suspect, however, that the real push to invade Iraq came from people like Wolfowitz, people who saw in Iraq an opportunity to remake the Middle East from the inside out, and by doing so, undercut the root causes of terrorism. And while we'll never know, I suspect that it is this grandiose vision that appealed most to President Bush, and ultimately sold him on the war. I happen to think this neoconservative belief in the transformative power of unilateral force is dangerously naive. But it isn't sinister. There may well have been some cynical motives behind our charge to war, but I think it is fair to say that at least some of the architects of this war were idealists, not cynical warmongers. Thanks for the emails, and please keep them coming.