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Originally Posted by Higher Logic Here's why, from a business standpoint, it makes no sense to invade Saudi Arabia: they, unlike Iraq, don't have a 6% stake in our economy. Invading a country like Saudi Arabia would be the equivalent of causing a great depression here in the States. |
I'm not at all convinced that it'd cause another Great Depression, but the temporary loss of Saudi oil would sting a bit. But think of what would happen after the relatively short period of economic difficulty: those greedy bastards would own even more oil than what's in Iraq! And it'd probably be a much more difficult war than the invasion of Iraq, thus more equipment needed = more profits for the warmongers!
I just don't think there's in any way enough evidence to support your claim, dude.
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I was thinking about this earlier, from the two different viewpoints, and how our "viewpoints" somehow get misunderstood. I'm all for fighting terrorism, and somehow it went from that, to liberating a people, which in my eyes has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. The administration themselves came out and said there are no WMDs in Iraq, but this war in Iraq has turned into more of a liberation project if anything, to which a lot of people are making tremendous amounts (over $1.4 billion a year) of money by continuing it.
If we were to really fight terrorism, and go after the terrorists, we would be in the country where a majority of the terrorists were from: Saudi Arabia. That would seem feasible to me. However, when a country of that magnitude in terms of economical influence is the target, you cannot simply invade a country like that for the previous reasons stated.
I'm trying to understand this as much as possible, so please bear with me on this. I don't see how fighting a war in Iraq has jack crap to do with fighting terrorism. It seems to me that we (the US) were pissed that certain countries were making money off of Iraq, and instead of invading the country that actually has links to 9/11, we went off to Iraq as more of a side diversion, to eliminate their profits and in turn make profit for ourselves.
You would have to be pretty naive to think that this isn't a business issue, and that money is having a huge influence on where we go and why. If I, as a stock investor, can make large sums of money from a continued war to liberate a group of people, verse fighting a real war on terrorism in a country that should be invaded but cannot for monetary reasons, I will stick to fighting the side diversion.
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The very, very short answer is: the entire Mideast is broken. It's not just al-Qaeda that's the problem, nor even just Islamists. It's a putrid combination of the lack of liberty and human rights under these oppressive regimes, rampant anti-Western bias in Arab media and the lack of
alternative media (not much freedom of speech or political thought, eh), and a whole lot of other crap. In almost every measurable quantifiable way, the Middle East lags the West, and this stirs resentment. If you want, we can get into this a lot deeper, I'm just getting tired of having the same ol' arguments over and over. (Although this is one that doesn't get as much attention as it really should, so if you want, shoot!)
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At the end of the day it boils down to this: do you honestly think the President, or anyone that is making huge profits (e.g. the 1%) give a damn about the liberation of Iraq? Or do you think they care more about the extra money they are going to make off of this. It seems more logical to me that way, if anything.
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I think that certainly, to a certain extent, there are some greedy bastards in government and the private sector who realize that a war means, to be extremely simplistic, more money for them. And they like that.
But, this does not mean that these people were the driving force behind the war. I think the driving force behind the war came about around 1979 with the first real American brush with Mideast fanaticism. We've been on this collision course ever since, and it all blew up on 9/11. That's what I think.
I realize that there are some who will make money off the war (just like every other war since the beginning of civilization), but I don't think that that simple fact takes away the legitimacy of what we're trying to do.
Marijuana
11-23-2004, 02:49 AM
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