Reasons for a war
Recently, a friend and I tried to catalog the reasons why US President George W. Bush and nearly all his hawkish aides are so determined to go ahead with planned strikes and a «regime change» in Iraq. We came up with the following list: 1) to clinch US control over the largest oil reserves on the planet; 2) to warn all would-be destabilizing factors on the international stage that America – in its role as modern hegemon – will not allow its predominance to be challenged; 3) to once again successfully flaunt US power (after Yugoslavia and Afghanistan) and gain the desired boost for presidential elections in November 2004; 4) to boost the hubris of George Junior, who wants revenge against Saddam Hussein for surviving despite the efforts of George Senior in the 1991 Gulf War; and 5) to shift the balance in the Middle East conflict beyond the narrow limits of the Israeli-Palestinian clash to a broader showdown between the West and the Arab world (an example of the decisive influence of the Jewish-American lobby in shaping America’s strategic choices). The above list doesn’t include the official reason for the planned war – the eradication of weapons of mass destruction Iraq may or may not be harboring. And the reason for this omission is the US’s disproportionate foreign policy toward North Korea which presses on with its nuclear arms program, unhindered, while America displays extreme tolerance, insisting on a peaceful solution to this «disagreement.»
