/lit/ - Literature

>>4945291
>>4945520
>>4945528
>>4945539
>>4945831
So what, we still would have invaded if Iraq was the world's largest exporter of pickles and lettuce?

The Middle East is home to the largest resource of easily-accessible oil on Earth, and this is the primary reason why it has been so violently sought after by imperial powers. Lord Curzon was forthright about the need for the "Arab Facade" when Britain was the hegemonic power in the region, and George Kennan was equally open about the need to keep the US's hand on the lever to "the world's most stupendous source of strategic power." This is not to say the invasion of Iraq was solely about oil, but you're kidding yourself if you think it was not far and away the primary motivation.

The fact that Russia and China have gained from the invasion is merely evidence of how incompetent the neoconservatives are at foreign policy, as they thought they could instate the kind of imperial control America exerts on Colombia or Indonesia, but the anti-imperialist sentiment - particularly that of the jihadist movement the neocons are responsible for growing during Reagan - in Iraq along with unprecedented domestic opposition in the states left a void that China and Russia quickly sought to fill.

In fact, NATO's intervention in Libya's Civil War was actually largely motivated by a desire to kick Chinese energy corporations out of the oil-rich country, which was completely successful seeing as how virtually all of the Chinese nationals evacuated when the NATO bombing began, and now Libya is a tribal cesspool like Somalia