> * I can't think of a moral position, unless this is the start of
> removing undemocratic leaders all over the world. Clearly, the oil
> supplies will fall under US control when Saddam falls. The puppet
> government would clearly be directly appointed by the US to ensure
> that US oil policy becomes world oil policy.
>
> The 1973 (and subsequent) oil price hikes created inflation
> throughout the world, but the US with its large indigenous supply was
> less badly affected than her main competitor, Europe. The massive
> rise in inflation also helped several right-wing governments take
> power in Europe with promises of Monetarism and low inflation.
>
> So what we see here is the only Superpower gaining control over the
> economies of the rest of the world. I must say the future does not
> look bright for France, Germany and Japan - all large oil importers.
>
> Moral case? Only if your morals are that America should rule the
> world and rich people should get richer.
>
> Martin

The real problem is with America's internal economy. I suppose it's a
legacy of setting up a free market in the midst of a civil war, but
unless there's a war every year or two, large sections of their
industrial base stagnate. A war frees up billions of dollars of
treasury reserve that would otherwise accrue baseline-plus-1-percent
to no effect. You can actually plot it back - Kosovo (1997), Zaire
(1996), Croatia (1995)... spotting a pattern here?

America has an artificially propped-up defence budget of somewhere
along the lines of US$350bn. If they spent that year-on-year then
America would have so much military hardware that it would attract too
much attention from the rest of the world. By using a certain amount
of it, preferably on weak targets that offer no resistance, America
can justify to itself the massive expenditure.

Strategically, Iraq's useful to America. In conquering Iraq, the US
effectively gets 11% of the world's oil supply for free. I've read the
argument that the value of the oil doesn't justify the cost of the war
- that forgets a prime rule of economics: this war spends *last*
year's budget and the cost has already been written off. The Iraqi
assets are all profit. It also gives them a nice staging post in the
Middle East should they wish to bomb Libya or Palestine again. The
risk of terrorism in Iraq means nothing to the US - they can secure
military targets, but the people are just "collateral".

Politically, the spin doctors have worked their magic on the American
people. I've just left a rather bloody flame war on another BBS with a
number of Americans, who, in the face of all evidence, will not
believe that this is not a humanitarian war, and that Iraq did not
organise the attacks on the World Trade Center. While a fair
percentage of the people will not accept the war is just unless a
cache of chemical weapons are found, most of them are caught in a
duality of opinion; if there are weapons, the world is safer, if there
are none, at least the people are "liberated".

Finally what the Bush administration has done is quite clever. If bin
Laden figures out the service he's done America, he'll cry. Bush has
been able to start a "rolling war" - it never starts, never finishes,
moves from place to place fuelled only by paranoia and supposition,
and drives the American military economy forward. America will grow
rich, acquire lands and power under the banner of "liberation", and
seize control of the world economy.

There's no morally justifiable reason for this war because there's no
morality involved. It's economics: the executive arm of hard
capitalism. Nothing more.