Leftists Still Pushing the War for Oil Conspiracy Theory

Elements of the anti-American left are still convinced that the U.S. went to war in Iraq to seize its oil, despite all evidence to the contrary, and the many other reasons for war. But that's what happens when your entire outlook is colored by a crude version of Marxist economic determinism, your overall knowledge of history is minimal, your familiarity with military history is non-existent, and you reflexively look for reasons why any exertion of U.S. power must be based on evil motives.

The British newspaper, The Independent, revealed that BP held secret talks with the UK government before the war. BP asked the government to lobby the U.S. in favor of British oil interests, regarding post-war division of oil contracts. Now to most people, this might be normal behavior for any large company worried about protecting its economic opportunities in the face of the dramatic changes that a war would cause, and against fierce foreign competition. But to some on the left, this reinforces their grand conspiracy theory.

The Independent reveals what we’ve always known: the Iraq War was about oil. Or rather, there were significant discussions in Fall 2002–the period when the US and UK were busy lying us into war–about who would get Iraq’s oil. ... it wouldn’t take a smarty pants to worry about Americans seizing Iraq’s fields. Only very naive people believed the Iraq War was not about oil.

You have to laugh at this level of ideological blindness -- it recalls Ronald Reagan's great quote about liberals. Consider this passage from the Independent article,

Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day – seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.

We sure are getting all kinds of cheap and plentiful oil from Iraq aren't we? As of this moment, oil prices stand at over $108 a barrel. Don't worry, anti-American leftists can easily give you another conspiracy theory about why we went to war for oil but somehow didn't get it.