Conspiracy Theory

One of the enduring puzzles of the Iraq War is why. The fake reasons for the war have been utterly discredited. The most popular conspiracy theories are that we invaded Iraq to grab its oil or to protect Israel. The best arguments against these are the stunning incompetence with which those objectives have been pursued.

A dinner companion offered a contrary theory. What if the whole idea was to take a bunch of oil production off the market? That has in fact happened, and look who is raking in the dough. Exxon Mobil had the greatest corporate profit ever, by anybody, last year. Other oil interests have done similarly well. Maybe, he suggested, that is why Cheney has fought so hard to keep the deliberations and even the composition of his "energy panel" so secret.

My first instinct is to think such a theory is crazy. Are these guys really that depraved?

Consider the first Gulf War. As Saddam escalated border tensions, US officials six times told the world that the border dispute with Kuwait was not a US concern. To understand why, recall that oil prices were low and dropping, partially because Kuwait was pumping so much oil. Saddam didn't like this, but more importantly, big oil didn't like this, and when they spoke, Bush I and Cheney listened. It is thought that they encouraged Saddam in the expectation that he would just bite off a small piece of Kuwait, drive up oil prices, and cause no further trouble.

Saddam apparently missed this part of the script and grabbed the whole country. Margaret Thatcher convinced Bush that growing a pair might help him politically, and the status quo was restored, minus a couple of hundred dead allied soldiers, thousands of slaughtered Kuwaitis, and a hundred thousand or so dead Iraqis.

So my friend from dinner's theory is crazy. But, as they say in physics, maybe it's crazy enough to be right.

Comments

  1. Anonymous12:56 AM

    "Blood for no oil" is so last year.

    ReplyDelete

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