I'm not a smart guy. I think I had a 2.8 GPA in high school, and I went to a shitty college down near LA. UC Riverside, basically Little Somolia with worse food. I was an English major then (again, I'm not a smart guy) and I lived there for two years before leaving because my family had run out of money and I was basically starving to death to get a useless degree from a mediocre school.
So bear in mind that I'm a fucking moron, yet even I know more than 90% of the American public about why we were in Iraq in 2004.
Here's the brief explanation for those who don't know. Alright, so in the early 70s, OPEC, a bunch of countries that produce oil, agreed to only sell oil for US Dollars. This meant that if anyone on the planet wanted to buy oil from someone other than themselves, they had to get US dollars to do it. This meant that they had to come to America and exchange currency with America to do it. This meant that all oil was priced in dollars. And this, finally, meant that the dollar was inextricably tied to the value of oil.
Now this is important. Our entire economy, literally the entire US economy, hinges on the fact that our dollar has value in the oil market regardless of anything we do to it. We print money like there's no tomorrow? Too bad, you still need it to buy oil. We decide our money isn't backed by anything? Too bad, you still need it to buy oil. Our economy crashes? Too bad you still need it to buy oil.
If this sounds like an unfair system to you, that's because it is. It gives us an enormous advantage in international markets that has allowed us to make repeated mistakes economically without actually suffering the consequences for them. Our economy depends on this wiggle room, because our government has become used to being able to do whatever the fuck it wants without consequence.
Okay, now you're probably wondering "why the fuck would anybody agree to this?"
The answer is that we fucking kill anyone who doesn't go along with it. Once you understand that everything we do in the Middle East is about perpetuating this monopoly on oil sales, everything will come into stark, terrible contrast.
We invaded Iraq for its oil alright, but not because we wanted it for ourselves. That's retarded, the oil isn't worth that much, we could've made more money by doing literally nothing. No, it was about how Hussein wanted to SELL his oil. Saddam Hussein was part of a movement to abandon the petrodollar.
So we killed his kids and hanged him.
Understand this, nobody on the political map except maybe Ron Paul was seriously against that war. Bernie Sanders is a liar. He was perfectly happy to sanction Iraq and starve a million of its people to death, and he was perfectly happy to clamor for regime change--when a Democrat was in charge. His only problem, realistically speaking, with the 2004 invasion was that a Republican was in charge.
That war was going to happen no matter what. People say they lied about WMDs--sure they did. But now you know why. Because admitting that we invaded Iraq because our entire economy is predicated on our control of how oil is sold is something nobody, Right or Left wing, is willing to admit. Bernie Sanders will NEVER tell you about the petrodollar. Neither will Ron Paul. If those two won't talk about it, there's a less than zero chance of any mainstream politician talking about it.
But it's true. And it's the key to understanding what's happening in the Middle East.
