[Rhodes22-list] WAR

[Steve Alm]

This looks to me to be a no-win situation.  We're damned if we do and damned
if we don't.  If we go after the oil, it'll look like greedy, 19th
century-style resource-grabbing.  If we're just trying to stabilize the
region, i.e., going after the menacing anti-American regime, it'll look like
colonization/culturalization--one of the main reasons the Arab world hates
us in the first place.  Doing nothing at all doesn't really seem very
acceptable either.  If our battle cry is going to be to avenge 9/11, and we
go in there without much proof of WMD, it'll just look like an old fashioned
lynching.  We're not really fighting for OUR oil--we get most of ours
elsewhere.  But we are fighting on behalf of oil for our European allies.
But they don't seem to support us so I guess Bush'll just do whatever he
thinks is best for them.

America is the big dog on the block and that makes us everybody's problem
AND solution.  The big dog has the biggest bark and bite, but also leaves
the biggest, stinky messes to clean up.

Like it or not, and I don't, it looks like we're going to invade.  I can't
think of any circumstances under which Bush would say, "Oh, OK.  Never
mind."  The Iraqi army will fall like a house of cards, but no doubt Saddam
has some dirty tricks up his sleeve.  There's speculation now that he might
torch his own oil wells.

Slim