[ARCHIVED THREAD] - WAR for OIL (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 4/21/2009 9:00:49 PM EDT
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I watched "W" tonight...and thought about Oliver Stone's suggestion that the Iraq war was all about oil. The liberals, I think, are pretty short-sighted about oil. They don't think about what would happen to our economy without it. They think that they can just buy a Prius and everything will be okay, I guess. We would be in the DARK AGES without oil. Agriculture and industry would grind to a halt. Imagine, for instance, how many people world-wide would starve to death without American grain. We are the bread basket of the WORLD. Am I the only one who thinks that war for oil is justified? Poll incoming. |
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Quoted:
If we invade a county for their natural resources, while at the same time sitting on BILLIONS of barrels of our own that we refuse to harvest, then yes, it's bullshit. But Iraq wasn't about oil (if so, not entirely). +1 Need to get our own oil. Alberta has a shit ton of oil sitting in sand. Yes its pretty expencive to process, but there is a SHITLOAD of it. But liberals are too busy whining about "dirty oil" 
Iraq and Afghanistan were about stabilizing the area, and removing tyrannical dictators from power. |
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Of course, the next 20-30 years will be remembered for the Energy Wars. Russian have the first victory in Georgia, when the seized control of the last pipeline from the oil-rich Caspian Basin, thereby establishing absolute dominance over the European oil supply.
It will not end well. |
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Of course, the next 20-30 years will be remembered for the Energy Wars. Russian have the first victory in Georgia, when the seized control of the last pipeline from the oil-rich Caspian Basin, thereby establishing absolute dominance over the European oil supply. It will not end well. I was thinking about that myself. Kinda like that one game for the 360, "Frontlines: Fuel of war" |
| Let's put it this way, the nations that control the supply of oil win. Oil rich nations have an advantage, but nations that seize control of distribution are strong players as well. Look at what the Chinese and Russians are doing. The US us screwed with odumbo in power now. |
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Quoted:
If we invade a county for their natural resources, while at the same time sitting on BILLIONS of barrels of our own that we refuse to harvest, then yes, it's bullshit. But Iraq wasn't about oil (if so, not entirely). Actually over a couple TRILLION barrels if you count coal liquefaction and shale oil 
And exactly how much Iraqi oil do we get? |
What the dumb fuck liberals dont realize (and maybe some fine, upstanding folks here do too  ) is that we didn't have to invade Iraq to get the oil.
They have these things called multinational corporations. And they can sign contracts with the host country to go in and pump out the oil and sell it, with a cut going to the host government. I know it sounds fuckin' crazy, but we can actually buy oil from these organizations. Who'da thunk? |
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If we invade a county for their natural resources, while at the same time sitting on BILLIONS of barrels of our own that we refuse to harvest, then yes, it's bullshit. But Iraq wasn't about oil (if so, not entirely). Actually over a couple TRILLION barrels if you count coal liquefaction and shale oil
And exactly how much Iraqi oil do we get? Not much. Most of the contracts went to China and India, at least thats what the deal was a few years ago. |
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I would if we had pulled a single drop of oil out of that country without paying full and above full price for it. War for oil is nothing more than propaganda. This ^ While that's true, I don't think it matters. And FWIW, we should STILL be raping their fucking oil... I'd say it's well deserved. |
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I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I feel the only justification for war is in the physical defense of our country. If it is absolutely essential to our survival, then maybe, but only after we exhaust all other means. Yep. War to take another nation's resources is just armed robbery on a grand scale. |
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Quoted: That game has a great back story. While fiction, I think that it predicts an accurate representation of the future. The time line may, or may not, be off, who knows. I thoroughly enjoyed their thoughts on what would happen in the future. Quoted: Of course, the next 20-30 years will be remembered for the Energy Wars. Russian have the first victory in Georgia, when the seized control of the last pipeline from the oil-rich Caspian Basin, thereby establishing absolute dominance over the European oil supply. It will not end well. I was thinking about that myself. Kinda like that one game for the 360, "Frontlines: Fuel of war" |
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Quoted:
Of course, the next 20-30 years will be remembered for the Energy Wars. Russian have the first victory in Georgia, when the seized control of the last pipeline from the oil-rich Caspian Basin, thereby establishing absolute dominance over the European oil supply. It will not end well. Not quite correct . Very little oil comes from Russia but they do supply around 25% of the gas to Europe. Not exactly dominance but it would hurt if they cut it off. My own country now supplies about the same percentage and is the prefered customer politically. Which is lucky for me because I'm in the pipeline business 
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| We've had the technology to completely rid our dependence on fuels all together for quite some time. But our maturity as a civilization was not at t he point where we could benefit from this technology. We're slowly getting to that point. The fact that so many voted yes shows we still have some work to do. |
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Nations, areas, people, have fought for natural resources for thousands of years. Why would the 21st century be any different? We're "civilized" now. 
At least till we need something bad enough, or someone else does. I missed that memo. And to the people saying we have "alternatives" out there... Do we even have enough ethanol/bio-diesel production to sufficiently power all of our military's engines? |
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Personally I think we should have simply flooded both sides (Sunni and Shia) to the point where they are up to their ears in guns & ammo (trade weapons and ammo for oil) and then let them shoot it out between themselves and kill each other off.
Then we walk in and take over the place largely unopposed... 
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Why yes thank you. There was a time not long ago where most wars of history were about religion. More and more it's about money and power, have to fight for that stuff. I think you have it flipped. Wars were fought for natural resources (territory) long before religious wars...the old testament will confirm this. Anyway that is not what the OP is asking. |
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Quoted:
I watched "W" tonight...and thought about Oliver Stone's suggestion that the Iraq war was all about oil. The liberals, I think, are pretty short-sighted about oil. They don't think about what would happen to our economy without it. They think that they can just buy a Prius and everything will be okay, I guess. We would be in the DARK AGES without oil. Agriculture and industry would grind to a halt. Imagine, for instance, how many people world-wide would starve to death without American grain. We are the bread basket of the WORLD. Am I the only one who thinks that war for oil is justified? Poll incoming. Absolutely not! I do however believe war is justified in the case of solar and/or wind energy. 
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Why yes thank you. There was a time not long ago where most wars of history were about religion. More and more it's about money and power, have to fight for that stuff. I'd say any conflict using religion as a reason is simply propaganda masking the true motivation: desire for more resources or power over another. I wonder if we went to Iraq b/c we saw what happened to the Soviets in A-stan. Vietnam = US fail (damn hippies) Afghanistan = Soviet fail (Congressman Wilson WOOT!) Afghanistan = US... to hell with this, we've seen where it ends up. Iraq's got a lot more open terrain, they can meet us there. Oh and there's oil there too? That may come in handy in 10-20 years or so... Of course resources are worth being fought over, "we should only go to war if we are attacked" is naive. Iif you would fight to feed yourself or put a roof over your children's head then you accept that "if we are attacked" is not the single allowable reason to inflict violence on another. Work is simply using labor as an item you trade to meet your basic needs of food/water/shelter (and stuff you don't need, like interwebz). Work is preferred to war as a way to use labor to obtain resources, because using your labor to fight for something can get you dead (which is why most of us don't rob people or do MMA for a living). But if you can't get it another way, so be it, either you'll suffer/die without the resource or you do a risk assessment and deem the violence a justified risk. Same thing at the nation-state level, just bigger. Should we go to war for oil while reserving our own? At some point, when it takes more than the average American's entire income to provide food/water/shelter and ENERGY, we won't have a choice. I would think long term, gather energy resources as best we can using all methods available to us while figuring out how to find an alternative that would preclude a need to fight others for it (unless they wanted our alternative and brought the fight to our door, which you really can't help w/o sharing/trading). Even if we do manage to replace gasoline for automobiles, we will always need oil for other products, like this keyboard I'm typing on, and having it in reserve within our borders at that time makes sense. Has anyone ever been out to eat, filled up on apps and salad, and taken the majority of their entree home for lunch the next day? Something like that. |
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Why war - and burn through American lives - when we have oil here? That's where I think it's immoral.
Use our domestic oil as we maintain our strategic military strength and wean ourselves off of oil altogether. (edit: or as much as possible, we'll still need lubricants etc.) Win/win. But to directly answer the OP's question, yes, historically, resources have been considered valid reasons to go to war. |