Obviously, but we're comparing apples and oranges here.
- Iraq was never a major oil concern for the US. Perhaps maybe stabilizing global oil prices - but the primary beneficiaries were actually our European and Asian allies.
- We never just "took" the oil for our domestic market (which is what we are basically doing in Venezuela)
- Even policymakers who have publicly admitted that Iraq was a massive intelligence and political failure all agree that regional stability was always the main goal.
Similarly we were in Afghanistan for-freaking-ever which had no clear resource benefit or even clear goal.
I would even go so far as to say that for most of the 20th century, America's foreign policy interventions are more easily attributed to our failed role as "World Police". We were brought into Iran because of the British, we were in Vietnam because of the French. Kuwait because of Saudi Arabia. Korea and Lebanon directly.
So while yes you could paint a broad brush and say all of this indirectly was to expand America's "empire", but as an international alliance where America carries the big stick, the US actually carried out a lot more on behalf of the overall alliance than one would realize.
That alliance that the US is now trying to dissolve.
> - Even policymakers who have publicly admitted that Iraq was a massive intelligence and political failure all agree that regional stability was always the main goal.
And in their spare time they pretend to sell bridges to people? Nobody sane would believe that invading a country promotes regional stability. The idea is absurdist, the point of invading a country is destabilising it and disrupting any power that the locals might have. Forcefully toppling governments and killing large numbers of people has never been a credible path to stability.
The Assad dictatorships in Syria and the Hussein regime in Iraq were proponents of Baathism. The former had occupied Lebanon and invaded Israel while the latter had invaded Iran in 1980 and annexed Kuwait in 1990.
> Nobody sane would believe that invading a country promotes regional stability.
Then you should read about some of the biggest influencers in US foreign policy since WW2. There’s one guy whose entire career was spent essentially trying to convince the president / military brass to bomb enemies into submission: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay
I’m sure you’ve also heard of Henry Kissinger.
Anyway, pretty strong history of US political figures dehumanizing foreign populations, justified by some western moral superiority. Direct through line to the Bush presidency (last of the neoconservatives).
Are you suggesting that LeMay or Kissinger believed that invasions promoted regional stability? On what basis? When Kissenger wanted stability he famously promoted détente with Russia and negotiating with the Chinese.
Kissinger did a lot of evil stuff, but a big part of his thinking was when he wanted an area wrecked he sent in an army, and when he wanted stability he negotiated.
Nah more that there’s plenty of history of influential American policymakers being convinced of a certain strategy’s effectiveness only to be proven wrong by history and in the process completely obliterating peoples and countries.
- Iraq was never a major oil concern for the US. Perhaps maybe stabilizing global oil prices - but the primary beneficiaries were actually our European and Asian allies.
- We never just "took" the oil for our domestic market (which is what we are basically doing in Venezuela)
- Even policymakers who have publicly admitted that Iraq was a massive intelligence and political failure all agree that regional stability was always the main goal.
Similarly we were in Afghanistan for-freaking-ever which had no clear resource benefit or even clear goal.
I would even go so far as to say that for most of the 20th century, America's foreign policy interventions are more easily attributed to our failed role as "World Police". We were brought into Iran because of the British, we were in Vietnam because of the French. Kuwait because of Saudi Arabia. Korea and Lebanon directly.
So while yes you could paint a broad brush and say all of this indirectly was to expand America's "empire", but as an international alliance where America carries the big stick, the US actually carried out a lot more on behalf of the overall alliance than one would realize.
That alliance that the US is now trying to dissolve.