Gasp! What will Andrea Mitchell think?
AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.
I’m not sure that I agree with Greenspan. Well…I agree with him, but I’m not sure that oil explains the entirety of true rationale for war with Iraq.
What I am sure of is that we are now in a war of attrition and we are not only losing but there is no prospect that we won’t lose. And the real damage is financial. Yes, there is loss of life and the military is now fully committed in an unsustainable posture. But the true damage…the irreversible damage, is fiscal. We are going broke. And the only way to stop the bleeding is to stop paying for these operations.
