Why the decision to go to war with Iraq should be a campaign issue

I wouldn’t necessarily say that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was all about the oil other than it is obvious that our interest in the Middle East in general is because of the oil. I think it was a perfect storm of bad ideology in thinking that we could start a wave of fledgling democracies in the region by forcing it down the Iraqis throats; of bad intelligence used badly - everyone thought that they had WMDs (bad intel) and Bush was ignorant enough to use it to start a war (bad intel used badly); bad culture in the US - we were reeling from 9-11 and Americans were angry enough about that to let Bush whip the country into a war fever; and finally the oil - we wouldn’t be there without it and our government has a very strange view of what democracy is - they seem to think that democracy means a country that allows our corporations to extract the wealth from a country for very little in return for anyone other than the people running the government. I don’t think we have gotten involved in any war for a singular reason but for anyone to say it’s not about the oil is just not true. No oil = no war.

We are essentially turning Iraq into an oil colony to make sure our corporations have access to cheap oil to make billions selling it back to the people who have paid for it already in tax money and in the blood of our troops. In addition, we have put Iraq back on the same course they were on before Saddam Hussein took over the country 30+ years ago. They were not reaping the real benefits of their natural resources - American oil companies were really the ones profiting and apparently soon will be again and the cycle repeats itself.

Why I think that the reason we got into this war should be such an important issue for the November election isn’t whether or not Obama or McCain have drastically different policies about what to do with Iraq and our army occupying the country. To be honest, I don’t know what the answer is - pulling out immediately might start a civil war and more death and misery for a people who have had more than their share in the last 5 years; it might give the Iraqi gov’t the impetus to start figuring things out for themselves. We do owe something to the Iraqi people after breaking their country and maybe that means staying, I don’t know. But what makes this such a vital politic issue and hasn’t really been used effectively by the Democrats is that a decision like that should never ever be made again. McCain seems to be defending Bush’s decision to go to war even though he has been critical about the way it was done. Obama should be hammering this point that America should never again start a war of choice. There are way too many unintended and unexpected consequences and our history has shown it never turns out well. Preemptive warfare is among the worst foreign policy decisions that you can possibly make and this is what needs to be discredited and abandoned as a course of action.