Bad oil

It appears that the casual and unthinking consumers of broadcast media are being softened up for an Australian commitment of troops to Iraq. 

The last time troops went into Iraq it was on the evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction that turned out not to exist.

And that effort probably led to the current situation which we apparently ‘cannot not sit back and just watch happen’.

The odd thing is, there have plenty of cases of genocide in the last few decades where we, Australia, have just sat back and watched – Rwanda, Sudan and Cambodia come to mind (ignoring the after-the-fact peace keeping efforts).

The Guardian, in 2004, claimed that the true cause of the West’s military interest in Iraq was of course oil, what the Iraqis might do with it, and the impact of this on the value of the dollar, and its impact on US debt and economy and then also on all Western economies.

I suspect not much has changed. The uncertainty related to ISIS controlling large slabs of the middle east and the oil supplies must be scaring the bejesus out of Western policy makers. 

This simply won’t end until the oil runs out, whereupon I predict that the fighting will go on and on but we will hardly hear about it. Israel will then be on its own.

But before the oil runs out, and as it gets more valuable as a diminishing resource, the middle east is going to get even uglier.