The Last Taboo
Greenspan shocker, Iraq war all about oil. Times of London:
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.
Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.
Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.
Actually, they had a lot of reasons that were widely supported, including the threat Saddam posed to the security of the entire Middle East. The world’s prime oil-producing region.
The lefty line was that the Bush-Cheney junta wanted to take over the Mideast’s oil supplies, a line they maintain to this day. “No blood for oil” is a protest line that goes back nearly 30 years. I fell for that line back then. Before I figured out that oil is our economy’s blood. Peaceniks and warmongers alike can’t live without it. There is this false notion that if the United States went to wind power, solar power, etc., and eliminated its dependence on foreign oil, we wouldn’t have to worry about the Middle East anymore. Our troubles there would evaporate. This view ignores the fact that the oil would remain incredibly valuable, a source of financing for jihad and terrorism, and that it would be sold to and very possibly controlled by other parties we are already at odds with, may soon be more seriously at odds with, parties that will be empowered by our withdrawal from a position of world leadership. China and Russia. Maintaining the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf has been the policy of the United States and has occupied the United States Navy for decades. A dirty secret the anti-war faction doesn’t like to acknowledge. Why did some leading nations resist the war to liberate Iraq? Oil.
Publicly acknowledging that oil is worth fighting for has been considered the ultimate taboo. I don’t know why. Maybe its the fact that oil is also a commodity, in addition to being a critical strategic asset and the life’s blood of our economy. Popularly, Americans are only allowed to fight for mom and Apple Pie.
But Greenspan is wrong. Bush has discussed this. At least as early as August 2005, if not earlier.
”If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks,” Bush said. ”They’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition.”
That old geezer … Greenspan, not Bush … needs to have a chat with his researchers. In any case, I don’t see what the problem is. If the world’s single most important stragetic resource isn’t worth fighting for, in addition to peace, truth, justice, the American way, and slightly less abstract threats to U.S. national interests and security, then what is?
The American anti-war left has already demonstrated it doesn’t believe “Good War” rationales, freeing oppressed peoples, are sufficient. They’ve attempted to debunk Saddam/WMD as a canard, despite the evidence of his track record and ongoing interest in WMD, and his demonstrated desire to dominate the entire region. They claim he was not a terrorist threat, despite his involvement with terrorists of many stripes, including al-Qaeda. They claim terrorists, if left alone, will leave us alone, or at least may be dealt with by cops. They claim a lot of ridiculous, patently false things.
The Times article, as it appears online, doesn’t tell us how Greenspan feels about war for oil. An accompanying commentary notes that some conservatives thought oil was the only thing worth fighting for in Iraq.
The fact is, there are a lot of reasons why invading Iraq made sense in 2003. Much has changed since then, but some of them are the same reasons why, in 2007, it makes sense to stay there. Keeping terrorists and the tyrants who support them from controlling the world’s oil supply is one of them.
H/t Gateway, Greenspan provides the clarity Times failed to:
Clarifying a controversial comment in his new memoir, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he told the White House before the Iraq war that removing Saddam Hussein was “essential” to secure world oil supplies, according to an interview published on Monday.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:56 am on Sunday, September 16, 2007
7 Responses to “The Last Taboo”
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September 16th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan Admits The Iraq War Was Waged For Oil
With the exception of that 34% (as of today - source: RealClearPolitics) who approve of President Bush’s job performance, Alan Greenspan has confirmed what the other 66% of us had already figured out a few years ago — we “Surged”…
September 16th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
I’m surprised an idiot like Greenspan is smart enough to understand that one of the reasons the Baathists invaded Kuwait was to get their hands on Kuwaiti’s oil.
The man amazes me.
September 16th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
If it were really first about oil and all the other concerns were minor, we would never have gone to war. The craven and self-serving route was to continue to prop up Hussein and milk the food for oil scam with the rest of the UN. And that’s why many countries like Russia, China and France were so opposed. Iraq was a source of cheap oil and a market for their military goods.
September 17th, 2007 at 12:18 am
One thing the anti-war folks never talk about is the other side of the equation–those we will leave the oil to if they get their way. They may not talk about it, but it certainly fits with the rest of their agenda–being on the other side the way they are.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Hi,
This came out today:
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According to this, Greenspan admits the entire “war for oil” notion was not only not the President’s, but his own.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Clarifying a controversial comment in his new memoir, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he told the White House before the Iraq war that removing Saddam Hussein was “essential” to secure world oil supplies, according to an interview published on Monday.
Greenspan, who wrote in his memoir that “the Iraq War is largely about oil,” said in a Washington Post interview that while securing global oil supplies was “not the administration’s motive,” he had presented the White House before the 2003 invasion with the case for why removing the then-Iraqi leader was important for the global economy.
“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan said in the interview conducted on Saturday. “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”
In his new book “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Greenspan wrote: “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday rejected the comment, which echoed long-held complaints of many critics that a key motivating force in the war was to maintain U.S. access to the rich oil supplies in Iraq.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Gates said, “I have a lot of respect for Mr. Greenspan.” But he disagreed with his comment about oil being a leading motivating factor in the war.
“I know the same allegation was made about the Gulf War in 1991, and I just don’t believe it’s true,” Gates said.
“I think that it’s really about stability in the Gulf. It’s about rogue regimes trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. It’s about aggressive dictators,” Gates said.
Greenspan retired in January 2006 after more than 18 years as chairman of the Fed, the U.S. central bank, which regulates monetary policy.
He has been conducting a round of interviews coinciding with the release of his book, which goes on sale on Monday.
In The Washington Post interview, Greenspan said at the time of the invasion he believed like President George W. Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction “because Saddam was acting so guiltily trying to protect something.”
But Greenspan’s main support for Saddam’s ouster was economically motivated, the Post reported.
“My view is that Saddam, looking over his 30-year history, very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day” passing through,” Greenspan said.
Even a small disruption could drive oil prices as high as $120 a barrel and would mean “chaos” to the global economy, Greenspan told the newspaper.
Given that, “I’m saying taking Saddam out was essential,” he said. But he added he was not implying the war was an oil grab, the Post said.
DISMAY WITH DEMOCRATS
Greenspan, who in his memoir criticized Bush and congressional Republicans for abandoning fiscal discipline and putting politics ahead of sound economics, also expressed dismay with the Democratic Party in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published on Monday.
Greenspan told the Journal he was “fairly close” to former President Bill Clinton’s economic advisers, but added, “The next administration may have the Clinton administration name, but the Democratic Party … has moved … very significantly in the wrong direction.” He cited its populist bent, especially its skepticism of free trade. Clinton’s wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, is the Democratic presidential front-runner.
Greenspan, a self-described libertarian Republican, told the Journal he was not sure how he would vote in the 2008 election.
“I just may not vote,” he was quoted as saying, adding, “I’m saddened by the whole political process.”
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Peace!
Dan
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http://iraqsinconvenienttruth.com
http://davidbetrayus.com/
September 17th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Hi Jules,
Great points. Have linked you in this post on the Greenspan non-affair
http://monkeytenniscentre.blogspot.com/2007/09/greenspan-smoking-gun-that-didnt.html
September 17th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Building on salty’s theme a bit, one of the jobs of the leader of the free world is to ensure that the free people continue to have access to the resources that sustain their free lives. Much as the Left is loathe to admit, oil is one of those resources. And I can assure you that no US President, left or right, is going to do anything to prevent that school, or hospital, or (blub) homeless shelter from going without heat this winter or that ambulance or firetruck or food carrying semi or rescue helicopter from making its appointed rounds. So in that sense, yes, everything we do in the Middle East is probably about oil at some level. Its just not the sinister agenda that the Left insinuates, because no pol is going to get caught out in January before an election cocking up the world’s fuel supply. The world needs it, and to leave it in the hands of what amounts to either a desert survival cult or an MuslimThird Reich would be a true criminal act affecting the lives of billions of people.