alt Hacker News"in the past the government wouldn't have been so honest"
I'm 37, so I was young at the time of Afghanistan/Iraq, about 14. I recall thinking the adults who said it was "for the oil" were dangerously naive: neither had significant oil resources that would alter supply dramatically, gas prices weren't high, the administration had 0 to say on that front, and it wasn't even close to a focus once fighting settled.
This leaves me curious about conclusions drawn from that.
Replies
And the us became a oil net exporter, which makes you more interested in a constricted supply. The whole story just never checked out, if you move it around just a little bit.
It was about giving US companies control over the profits from the oil industry and crushing an unaligned country in the region to turn it into a US puppet state, not just to carry barrels of crude oil home.
Those who think the US is evil were not affected by these predictions not coming true.
It's typically not an empirically based conviction.
Iraq has huge oil reserves. Afghanistan, not, but Iraq yes.
I find a lot of that type of thinking is born of conspiracy theory motivations: they want the world to make sense so there has to be "a plan". It leads to people chronically overvaluing money and chronically underestimating ideology.
Control of the poppy trade (opium/heroin) and suppression of some of Israel's neighborhood enemies. And a lot of profits for military contractors.
Remember Dick Chaney had huge conflicts of interest. It was also about oil but not only oil.