You're right on Oil

Submitted by Gary Cochran (United States), Oct 23, 2006 at 00:14

I'm very aware of eventualities in the world but my comment of "invading to finish the job" refers ONLY to completing the destruction of whatever tools of war a nation has to attack us. I was not referring to Bush's "mission accomplished", since I'm not sure what that mission was. I'm also not concerned about the creation of new enemies as a result of this destruction. Frankly, they are already our enemies and I believe in Caligula's motto for effective foreign policy - ODERINT DUM METUANT - "let them hate us, as long as they fear us."

My suggestion is to reconsider the mission of modern war, not to subjugate a nation and "make it a friend", but solely to destroy any capability of that nation from directly causing us harm with modern weapons or armies. What anyone does after that with respect to the conquered nation-state is no longer to be a concern of this nation. I never mentioned NATO, and I certainly have no confidence in the UN. Whether they agree with this concept or not is of no concern to me.

I'm not proposing this to the present situations in either Afghanistan or Iraq since we've already committed our reputation to new governments and leaders. I don't see how we can leave them in the lurch but we may not be able to save the situations without a major rethinking of our objectives.

My thought is to consider a new form of warfare to protect our nation and people without the commitment to rehabilitate or democratize the conquered people. No carrots, only sticks?

Vietnam had the objective of keeping North Vietnam from taking over the south; the old domino theory. Clearly this was a failure.

I agree that oil provides the basic source of funds for the majority of our enemies, but there is no reason to mix this issue with arms sales. That's just another problem humanity will never be able to solve. If we suddenly had an infinite supply of energy without oil, we wouldn't change a single Islamic teacher's religious viewpoint and that's the source of our danger; the religion of Islam.

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