War Weariness

[Delta4Embassy]

Looks like we're gonna have another war for oil in the middle east. Politics of that aside, if we recognize oil's bad for the planet and we need to find alternatives, isn't fighting over it like fighting to protect your crack dealer? And isn't it even more insane if after you make your crack dealer safe they don't give you free crack but continue to sell it to you? How does that make any sense?

 

[whitehall]

It doesn't make sense to compare oil to cocaine and it's a bit hypocritical to pretend that oil is evil while you fill your gas tank and enjoy being warm on a cold winter day. Someday we may find alternatives to fossil fuel but for now we have to acknowledge the fact that the world runs on oil and oil equals political power.

 

[kiwiman127]

It doesn't make sense to compare oil to cocaine and it's a bit hypocritical to pretend that oil is evil while you fill your gas tank and enjoy being warm on a cold winter day. Someday we may find alternatives to fossil fuel but for now we have to acknowledge the fact that the world runs on oil and oil equals political power.

The above is a truism.
However, the resistance to alternative energy seems to be ideological at times. How many threads have we had here on USMB that have celebrated a bump in the road for the development of alternative energy by ideologues?
Fossil fuels aren't a healthy for the planet and human beings at all.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

It doesn't make sense to compare oil to cocaine and it's a bit hypocritical to pretend that oil is evil while you fill your gas tank and enjoy being warm on a cold winter day. Someday we may find alternatives to fossil fuel but for now we have to acknowledge the fact that the world runs on oil and oil equals political power.

Would be hypocritical indeed. But of course I don't have a vehicle. As to it not making sense, drugs cause all kinds of harm to both the enviroment (to make cocaine involves using some decidely toxic chemicals turning the plant coca into the base form of the drug,) to the users, to communities in which it's widely available, social unrest etc. Just like oil does. It's a perfect comparison you just don't like the analogy because you know it's right.

Sure, the world runs on oil. But it shouldn't. And going to war to secure more of what we know is bad all around is just like going to war to save our dealers.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

World got on just fine long before we started using oil. Oil for fuel I should say.

 

[shart_attack]

I guess it wouldn't be so bad if they were fighting the war naked.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

I guess it wouldn't be so bad if they were fighting the war naked.

I'd certainly re-enlist.

 

[longknife]

Why do the leftists always have to equate war in the Middle East with oil?

Tens of thousands of non-Muslims are being slaughtered in the name of Allah and millions of Arabs are kept ignorant and in poverty. That these jihadists want to kill Americans and destroy this country isn't enough for this nation to stand up and fight back?

 

[Care4all]

Why do the leftists always have to equate war in the Middle East with oil?

Tens of thousands of non-Muslims are being slaughtered in the name of Allah and millions of Arabs are kept ignorant and in poverty. That these jihadists want to kill Americans and destroy this country isn't enough for this nation to stand up and fight back?

Give us 2/3's vote yea in the House and 2/3's vote yea in the Senate, and the President signing it, for us to engage in a war, then we will know if this is what the American people want and think is necessary when it comes to sending their children to DIE for it.....

 

[Moonglow]

Where is this war for oil???

 

[Care4all]

Where is this war for oil???

We've been involved in the Middleeast since world war II, (we as in westernized countries) when we found out it was necessary to have fuel in order to fight wars....we've been meddling ever since.....imo.

edit;

Our allegiance and creation of Saudi Arabia for us and Kuwait for the Brits fuel source etc.....

 

[Moonglow]

Since WWI? When it was a British protectorate zone? 1908 was the first successful well drilled for oil in Persia...

 

[Care4all]

Since WWI? When it was a British protectorate zone? 1908 was the first successful well drilled for oil in Persia...

should have said wwII, I guess...

 

[Mad Scientist]

World got on just fine long before we started using oil. Oil for fuel I should say.

Yeah it was all just peaches and creme wasn't it?

No fighting, no Wars, no Disagreements at all.

 

[Moonglow]

Since WWI? When it was a British protectorate zone? 1908 was the first successful well drilled for oil in Persia...

should have said wwII, I guess...

It was during the Turks and the Ottoman empire, a British drilling company....Money and religion, the two things wars are usually fought about in the violent history of the human race...nothing new....

 

[gipper]

There have been reports that the USA is about to become energy independent and even export it.

So why would we go to war for oil?

 

[Moonglow]

Just depends on the price. The oil industry is starting to make a comeback after the disastrous financial hit it took after deregulation in the 1980's..Exploratory funds are making a comeback to the American Oil industry...but the price has to stay in a range where it is now, if it falls then new drilling will cease. Right now the companies are in heavy debt..

 

[OldUSAFSniper]

Looks like we're gonna have another war for oil in the middle east. Politics of that aside, if we recognize oil's bad for the planet and we need to find alternatives, isn't fighting over it like fighting to protect your crack dealer? And isn't it even more insane if after you make your crack dealer safe they don't give you free crack but continue to sell it to you? How does that make any sense?

Well first, if we go back to the Middle East (which is, always has been, and always will be a shit hole) I do not see any correlation between our involvement there and oil. And quite frankly, I have no idea how the mind of someone who watches the Foley video makes the jump to equate conflict there with the need for oil? Especially since we have just recently passed all but Saudi Arabia (and we will pass them soon) in the production of oil. Some barbaric douchebag who wants to live in the 7th century, just cut the head off of an American journalist. And they are advertising the fact that they will do the same to any American they can capture AND they will bring the fight to us, on our soil. I don't know about you, but I was horrified at the scene of people jumping from the towers to escape the flames. I don't want to see it again.

Is there EVIL in this world? Was Adolph Hitler and the Nazi's EVIL? Was our fight in WWII worthy of our involvement or not? These maggots are anti-civilization and in my opinion, from what I can find out, as big a threat to everyone as Adolph and his bunch of idiots. I am not prepared as of yet to say that we march the 1st and 3rd Infantry Divisions up their ass, but I am close. For now, I am satisfied that air power will help the situation and that they may be contained with that. But that may change and it may change radically.

Your assumption in the OP was a leap of imagination...

 

[Delta4Embassy]

In order for the USA to remain the defacto world superpower we need oil. Need it for our economy and our vehicles, need it for our military, need it for the host of products made from oil (tires for example.) Thus any significant source of oil must be maintained or the cost of the remaining oil will be effected.

If you don't believe Iraq is about oil you need to do some research into who we get oil from and how much it costs, and how much it'd cost minus a given source of it.

Iraq is only about oil. America isn't some white hat goodguy from the movies who does things solely because it's good and right to do. If there's no money or other incentive to doing things, we don't do those things. We never intervened in the genocide in Darfur. So trying to convince the American public we suddenly care about Iraqis is nonsense. We killed hundreds of thousands of them with economic sanctions alone (300,000 by conservative estimates.) Yet when one American gets killed we suddenly use it as a justification for war?

I'd have less of a problem with wars for oil if we actually won them once ina while. But since WWII we don't seem interested in decisively victories any more. Reason I think is war has become a business. And if you never go to war, that's bad for business. Megacorporations now provide everything top to bottom our military uses. No private peels potatos any more, some corporation sells them to the military now. And bullets, bombs, missiles all cost money. But if we never fire them at anybody there's no reason to buy new ones. Thus the motive behind these half-baked wars - deplete stocks, buy more. And if we can get some oil in the process, all the better.

 

[Katzndogz]

There are two reasons to fight over oil. One is that we need it. The other is to keep someone else from getting it. America was so overwhelmed with "no blood for oil" "Don't make Exxon rich" that we failed to defend the Iraq oil fields from the advancing terrorists. Now they have that oil. They are making 3 million dollars a day from that oil. Now they don't need funding. There's no chance of cutting off their finances. They can buy weapons, recruit from around the world and pay fighters very well. Before they were vicious. Now they are vicious and rich.

No blood for oil indeed.