One very simple explanation for the invasion of Irak, Iran, libia etc is :
They have oil, the oil is peaking and with the years will be very expensive and vital por the civilization.
What do you prefer, the oil for the chinese and japanese or the oil for we the USA, and europeans.
If we do not catch the oil today, tomorrow, the chinese will do.
It is survival question.
The same of oil is for minerals, food , coltan, . And the new war in next 10 years for the control of phosphates rock of Western Sahara . See http://www.wsrw.org/lEN

Posted by: anonymous42 | Oct 20 2013 20:00 utc | 4

Speaking off Afghanistan, news just out that the US is cutting/running from Kyrgyzstan’s Manas airbase, its main logistics hub for Afghanistan.
The new logistics hub will be located in Romania… I’m just going to assume the US is aware that Romania is in Europe and not bordering Afghanistan.

Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Oct 20 2013 20:20 utc | 6

‘Were they really all just braindead primitives like
‘primitives’ dont indulge in this sort of behaviour…thats the work of more sophisticated cultures: civilisations have engaged in chronic warfare since their inceptions

Posted by: brian | Oct 20 2013 20:41 utc | 8

Lysander – c9
You mean November 2001, I guess (hope?) 🙂
But, yeah, that is what the media of all – well most – types had us believe. One thing the US is really good at is to run PR operations. Never mind that behind the facade was a completely dysfunctional bureaucracy and truckloads of hubris. And that they (the US) are rather inclined to believe their own PR.
Colm O’ Toole – c 6
Lol. Looks like running away in the night…
Are you sure Romania is still in Europe? Maybe it was moved overnight and Googlemaps still needs updating :-p ? Thanks for that link, btw.

Posted by: Philippe | Oct 21 2013 1:04 utc | 10

The PTB saw Iraq as the key move in establishing permanent US world hegemony, which they see as being threatened by China in the long run. But for the American in the street, and this includes my highly educated colleagues as well as the Time’s Moustache of Misunderstanding, it was as you suggest, a reflexive payback for humiliations that go back to the Iranian student takeover of the American Embassy in Teheran. If one were to single out one event that altered the American psyche (the Vietnam War was too drawn out), that was it.
Nothing illustrates the incurable insecurity of Americans as their headlong support of the Invadion of Iraq. That insecurity has made the US, as it made Germany three generations ago, the greatest threat to world piece.

Posted by: Knut | Oct 21 2013 1:56 utc | 12

It is too simply to attribute a single reason for the war in Iraq. To be sure the psychic trauma of 911 was a major and probably indispensable factor in that we had to do something even if it was totally irrational. There were other pieces that came into play to name just a few.
We had the world’s most powerful military and many power brokers felt we had to show the world just how powerful we were. They had the enthusiastic backing of the military and our arms industry.
Oil is always a factor though in this case there seems little evidence that our energy industry supported this war and in fact some indications that they even opposed.
Of course Israel and it’s American lobby used their considerable influence to push things in the direction of war.
On another issue. #6 Colm moving an entire army and all of its supplies via a base in Rumania sounds like one major logistical problem. That means an airlift that is more than 2,400 miles. (Less if Iran allows US military overflight, ha ha). This is going to be very expensive and who is going to defend those last flights out? I suspect that it will be much cheaper simply blowing up any remaining armor than trying to fly it that far. That will be America’s legacy in Afghanistan — rusting ruins of tanks, apv’s, bull dozers, etc scattered across the landscape. They will join the ruins of all that Soviet armor from the earlier war. It should make for some great photo opportunities.

Posted by: ToivoS | Oct 21 2013 6:56 utc | 14

Somebody, whoever wrote that hadn’t read Keynes. Keynes argued that there is nothing wrong with paying the workforce to dig holes and then fill them up again. The supply of money is not fixed as your reasoner appears to think. The govt can just print enough extra money to pay the hole operatives and this will expand aggregate demand, so actually wages for the remaining workforce who feed clothe and house the hole operatives will actually go up. All this is perfect, especially because you can turn it on and off like a tap, to maintain full employment exactly. As long as you don’t mind inflation.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Oct 21 2013 10:16 utc | 16

By the way this is what 1 Trillion dollars looks like, http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

Posted by: harrylaw | Oct 21 2013 11:28 utc | 18

“Actually that was what I thought at the time too: that US was just looking for an ass to kick. Just so that they would make a point with Iraq and then Libya/Syria/Iran folding their hands even perhaps without a fight and that the US could achieve an absolute hegemony in ME and then move on to suffocate Russia and China.”
Pirouz_2 is right.
The aim of the war and the explanation of its course, which was full of contemptuous gestures towards the UN and international law, was to demonstrate to the world the omnipotence of the US and its military.
This has to be seen in the context of the “Vietnam syndrome”- the need to re-assert US hegemony after humiliating defeats- and the sense of euphoric liberation that overtook the neo-cons after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yeltsin’s surrender to the bankers.
Governor Ann Richards of Texas famously said of George Bush that “he was born on third base and he thought that he had hit a triple.” The neo-cons were even more deluded, as renegade Trotskyists, employed as mercenaries for imperialism, they convinced themselves that they had defeated the Red Army, the Warsaw Pact and all other opponents everywhere, forever. Fukushima wrote a book about it.
At any rate the White House and its media were convinced that when mankind had seen, on TV, what America could do to mighty Saddam and the all conquering Iraqi army, it would line up to kow-tow, bringing tribute to Wall St and falling, blinded by US glory,to its knees.
In fact what the world has seen is twelve years of incompetence, sordid bullying, word twisting, cowardice and stupidity. It has glimpsed the rot at the heart of US domestic life- the reality of irreparable racial and caste divisions behind the thin cloth of the star spangled banner- and the treachery of the US capitalist class which, suicidally, discards the defence of patriotism for a few dollars saved on cheaper labour.
What was intended as a demonstration of imperial power has turned out to be proof of decline, signalling the beginning of the end of an era of domination which began in the fifteenth century.
Its good to have a student of Keynes aboard, Rowan:
“The govt can just print enough extra money to pay the hole operatives and this will expand aggregate demand, so actually wages for the remaining workforce who feed clothe and house the hole operatives will actually go up. All this is perfect, especially because you can turn it on and off like a tap, to maintain full employment exactly. As long as you don’t mind inflation.”
Perhaps you could tell us how this works when there is international competition?

Posted by: bevin | Oct 21 2013 13:00 utc | 20

Ass-kicking is only a part of it. Many valid reasons above, but this plan, I believe, although an old one, is still operative.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017141887

Posted by: ben | Oct 21 2013 14:10 utc | 22

“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,” – Michael Ledeen
These people are all Psychopaths.

Posted by: Dan | Oct 21 2013 15:05 utc | 24

With regard to bevin‘s post @ 20, even Homer sometimes nods: you are probably referring to the 1989 essay “The End of History?” by Francis Fukuyama, or perhaps to its expanded form “The End of History and the Last Man” which appeared in 1992. Also, the delectable “born on third base” quote was used by Texas pol Jim Hightower with regard to George H.W. Bush, considerably before Ann Richards used it, with even greater appropriateness, in reference to his son, and it might well have been a popular Texas put-down of the uppity rich well before that.
These are minor points and I apologize for the pedantry. In substance, I fully agree with bevin‘s views.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 21 2013 15:35 utc | 26

(and even now, Iraqi Kurdistan is trying hard to muster the western support necessary to secede).
That is not the reason for the failure of Kurdistan to secede; it is that they are dependent on their 17% of southern Iraqi oil. Though the Turks also say no.

Posted by: alexno | Oct 21 2013 16:12 utc | 28

“No, armament is not advantageous to the economy of a country.”
It is if that country’s economy depends on looting others. The British Empire’s economy was based on ships of the line, not fish and chips.

Posted by: ruralito | Oct 21 2013 17:34 utc | 30

“I apologize for the pedantry.’
Not on my account, I hope: I thank you for the correction.
“The British masses still bought British cars. ‘Made in Japan’ became a popular dirge in the 1960s, but the Japanese currency was itself kept artificially cheap for export reasons, wasn’t it? But the Labour govts of the 1960s were forced into repeated devaluations. This in the end undermined the Keynesian orthodoxy, as you say…”
Those were the days.. of Commonwealth preference, protective tariffs and the Sterling area. Also of Mike (father of Baroness) Kidron’s Western Capitalism since the War which sought to explain the Permanent Arms Economy, which would interest “somebody.”
What is the origin of the long quotation @15? It sounds familiar.

Posted by: bevin | Oct 21 2013 18:44 utc | 32

@Somebody (#15);
There are two points which are not mentioned in your quotation. The “hundred thousand men” are not doing “nothing”. True, their labour is an “unproductive” one, indeed let alone being “unproductive” it is downright destructive. But:
1)It is through destruction that the next cycle of *capitalist* production starts. If you don’t destroy the buildings, roads and dams, how are the construction companies are supposed to make a profit, my friend? In fact as wealth (what I mean here is capital) accumulates, it becomes a barrier to its own accumulation, and it has to be destroyed. I will never forget a compulsory course that I had to take from the humanities when I was in the university. The professor was trying to explain how WWII had led to “prosperity”. My field had nothing to do with economics, so my common sense was still intact, and therefore I could not fathom how destruction of entire countries and killing millions upon millions of people could result in economic “prosperity”. I kept raising my hand in objection so many time that the poor professor got finally frustrated and told me that perhaps he should try to explain the thing to me after the lecture. He never succeeded in doing that even after the lecture, I just couldn’t fucking get it! I was too ignorant(!) to see how destruction could actually be “profitable” and indeed indispensable for the recovery of the rate of profit!
It took me three volumes of “Das Kapital” to finally solve the mystery and get my answer!
You see, the quotation that you made seems to see economy (as I did at the time) as the endeavor to make “people” prosperous. But that is not what bourgeois economy is about. Bourgeois economy is about the rate of profit and accumulation of capital. Any increase in the livelihood of people as a consequence of an increase in wages, is a secondary and most importantly a temporary (and indeed unintended) side-effect of it.
2) Global capital needs a global enforcer. Capital has to enforce its discipline on the global masses. How is capital supposed to do that without those “unproductive” labourers called “soldiers”? Aren’t we being a bit ungrateful to those who fight for the freedom of capital (I know somewhere along the line I got confused, actually I meant to write “for our freedom”)?
There is an ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT quotation from that “brain-dead primitive” called Thomas Friedman:
“McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15.” So “the hidden hand” would never work freely without the enforcement of the “hidden fist”.

Posted by: Pirouz_2 | Oct 21 2013 23:37 utc | 34

‘In one of his latest addresses, Russia’s most-wanted terrorist Doku Umarov claimed that jihad would be waged in every region and country where even a single “real Muslim” lives, Ataev reminded, adding that the expansion of a “social base” for terrorism is a worrying and dangerous sign.’
http://rt.com/news/volgograd-blast-militant-wife-518/
so that means US and UK and EU can expect a taste of what they have unleashed on syria…and ensuring muslims everywhere are now seen as potential terrorists…its time they took action against the radicals in their midst

Posted by: brian | Oct 22 2013 7:00 utc | 36

during the screening of *black hawk down*,
there were reports that many muricuns barge out of the cinemas after the
show, declaring that *today i feel like kicking some black ass* !
murica, the kickass country.

Posted by: denk | Oct 22 2013 7:43 utc | 38

Facebook allows beheading videos http://gu.com/p/3jm8n/fb
Facebook has quietly resumed allowing decapitation videos to be posted on its website, lifting a temporary ban it had placed earlier this year on content featuring graphic violence. The social network said after a report on the BBC on Monday that gory photos and videos were permitted on its site so long as the content was posted in a manner intended for its users to “condemn” the acts rather than celebrate them.
==================
now the issue is will Guardian condemn the beheading jihadis rampaging thru syria? or will it back them>

Posted by: brian | Oct 22 2013 8:59 utc | 40

Denk
Not “many” Americans are enthused about the obvious quagmire in Afghanistan, they’re just too apathetic to protest against the waste of taxpayer dollars and lives.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175763/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_what_planet_are_we_on/#more

Posted by: amspirnational | Oct 22 2013 22:19 utc | 42

In the wake of the Iraq invasion the Saudis took a more aggressive stance against Al Qaida and ‘unfriendly’ countries such as Iran… Posted by: SMN | Oct 23, 2013 11:13:30 AM | 43

I don’t recall seeing the Saudis taking a more aggressive stance against al-Qaida. Of course, they’re agin it in their own country, they always have been. Or, on second thoughts, that isn’t exactly true. It seems they actually got AQ to stage a couple of bombings in KSA so that they could frame Iran for them. I have a long multi-part analysis of this somewhere: yes, here it is.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Oct 23 2013 15:29 utc | 44

let’s rewrite history.
forget pnac, israel, yinon, perle, wolfowitz.

Posted by: delta | Oct 23 2013 17:32 utc | 46

no..the war on iraq was conceived in israel….only the illinformed think otherwise
‘In a lengthy article in The American Conservative criticizing the rationale for the projected U.S. attack on Iraq, the veteran diplomatic historian Paul W. Schroeder noted (only in passing) “what is possibly the unacknowledged real reason and motive behind the policy — security for Israel.” If Israel’s security were indeed the real American motive for war, Schroeder wrote,
It would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state. [1]
Is there any evidence that Israel and her supporters have managed to get the United States to fight for their interests?
To unearth the real motives for the projected war on Iraq, one must ask the critical question: How did the 9/11 terrorist attack lead to the planned war on Iraq, even though there is no real evidence that Iraq was involved in 9/11? From the time of the 9/11 attack, neoconservatives, of primarily (though not exclusively) Jewish ethnicity and right-wing Zionist persuasion, have tried to make use of 9/11 to foment a broad war against Islamic terrorism, the targets of which would coincide with the enemies of Israel.’
etc
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_conc1.htm

Posted by: brian | Oct 28 2013 10:39 utc | 48