People will be talking and arguing for years about why "we" went to war in Iraq. Lots of us, especially most of us on Daily Kos, went to war only because our country went to war, dragging us along with it despite everything we could do to stop it. But lots of us Americans went to war as hard as they could, each for their own reasons. I put out there a whole bunch of reasons now clear, even though at least most of them were clear to many of us even before we raced into this greatest error in American history. Let's kick them around, and add more, to the list. Because I don't see how anything has changed, despite all we've now seen, that would make it any less likely we'll do it again, as soon as we have another chance. Or maybe you can tell us why we won't...
(I posted the first draft of this diary replying to a comment "No we did not go to Iraq for their oil, we went", in my comment "That and More", in the diary "Mutiny and Insubordination from Petreaus-Odierno-Keane, WTF?". A couple commenters encouraged me to post it as a diary. I hope it's useful.)
Yes, shutting down Iraq for a decade, after it was shut down for the 1990s, shortened oil supplies, which made the rest that was flowing more expensive, compounded by the "uncertainty premiums" that are pure profit when no further supplies are actually interrupted. So that got some people to get behind it.
But others got behind it because it forced $TRILLIONS in military spending through their cronies.
Others got behind it because hundreds of thousands of military and contractors were taken off the job market, making "unemployment" figures go down. Which made those people buying in look better, giving them more power (to spend more money on their cronies).
Others got behind it because it was a way to do something concrete militarily after the 9/11/2001 planebombings, rather than the largely silent and small-scale counterterrorism (and counter-intuitive diplomacy, like investing in growth in Afghanistan and other "enemies") that actually works.
Others got behind it because it was a way to keep the fear going, which protects their political and military jobs. Still others got behind it because their similar jobs are protected by the distraction from their own areas and flooding of the public debate with something not actually their job.
Others got behind it because they're bloodthirsty nuts who want America killing people because we can - especially if they look different from "us".
And then there are others who got behind it because they would eventually get in on the next phase, the dispensing of Iraq's oil in the aftermath, at the highest prices.
America is a badly screwed up place when it comes to war. There are far too many reasons for those in power to go to war, and far too few reasons to do something else. Even though the many reasons for war are all bad reasons for America's overall interests, especially after the initial blast. But try telling that to any substance abuser until they bottom out, and all you'll get is more war.
I don't know if I have any deeper thoughts than in that post. It's not that complicated, except to say there's lots of overlap among those different warmonger groups. And that those in power all 8 years probably were in all of those groups, along with others like "finishing the Bush/Iraq story" and "Christian Crusaders".
Maybe that's a diary. You think so?