Why I Don\’t Think We Invaded Iraq Just For Oil

15 June, 2006. 776 words.

Someone recently asked me how I could possibly believe we didn’t invade Iraq just for their oil. (You know who you are!) At the time I didn’t have a ready answer, but here’s some reasons.

No Compelling Evidence

Mainly, I haven’t seen any compelling evidence to back up the premise that we invaded Iraq just for oil. The arguments are circumstantial at best. In my mind, this makes it a logically fallacious “argumentum ad ignorantiam” — meaning I think most proponents believe it’s true because it hasn’t been proven false. (It could also fall under the category of an “argument from personal belief” — meaning it’s believed to be true simply because proponents want to believe it, or refuse to disbelieve it.)

On the other hand, there is at least corroborative evidence to refute the premise that we invaded Iraq solely for its oil (see below.)

Let me be clear that I do not dispute that oil was a factor in the decision — stable access to Iraqi oil is certainly in America’s best interest, and not something we would or should turn down — what I’m suggesting is that it was not the only reason, and possibly not even a primary reason.

Iraqi Liberation Act

In 1998, under President Clinton, Congress passed the Iraqi Liberation Act, which essentially made it American policy to remove Sadaam from power, “to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” This challenges the notion that Bush instigated the Iraqi invasion just for oil. It implies that the invasion was merely the logical conclusion of the Iraqi Liberation Act. In other words, Congress had already put America on the path to an invasion two years before Bush took office.

Iraq’s Oil Was Already Available

We didn’t have to invade to get Iraqi oil — we started buying oil from them in 1996 as part of the UN Oil-For-Food program.

Imports From Iraq Remain Unchanged

The amount of oil we import from Iraq has not significantly changed since the war began (source). It’s actually dropped from 620k barrels per day in 2000 to 522k barrels per day in 2005 (source).

We Don’t Need Iraqi Oil

We import a big chunk of our oil from Canada and Mexico, with Saudi Arabia third. Iraq is currently a distant sixth (source), so I wouldn’t call it a primary source of our oil. Based on those Energy Information Administration statistics, in April 2006, we only got about 5.5% of our oil from Iraq. And we didn’t even start importing any oil from Iraq until 1996 (source), so we had been surviving just fine without it.

If we were going to invade a nuisance country based solely on the goal of obtaining their oil, I would argue that we should have gone after Venezuela, whose president spouts anti-American rhetoric on a daily basis, and from which we got 12.5% of our oil in April 2006. Plus it’s much closer.

Why Iraq and Not Darfur?

One of the often-forgotten initial justifications for the Iraq war was the growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq due to economic sanctions. Critics argue that if we really were concerned about humanitarian situations and not oil, we should have also invaded the Sudan in response to the massacres in Darfur. They argue that this supports the notion that we invaded Iraq only for its oil.

I don’t know a lot about the Darfur situation, but I see a few differences: 1) The Darfur massacres began in 2003, whereas the Iraq humanitarian situation basically began in 1980. One could argue that it’s “too soon” for the U.S. to intervene militarily in Sudan. Remember that we didn’t invade Iraq until after years and years of UN actions failed (10 years worth), and the UN only passed a resolution to take action in Sudan this year. 2) Operations in Sudan would probably be more difficult than operations in Iraq — I don’t see where we could put a base of operations. 3) The Sudanese government is at least giving the appearance of trying to negotiate a peace with the Darfur militias. Sadaam wasn’t even pretending to help his people. 4) Since Clinton’s disastrous mismanagement of Somalia, the U.S. may have been reluctant to risk a repeat situation in nearby Sudan. 5) Iraq was part of the infamous “Axis of Evil,” but Sudan wasn’t. 6) It appears that none of the parties involved in Sudan are on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, and we’re allegedly fighting a War on Terror. 7) The U.S. would be fighting against Arab militias in Darfur, which would not be good for winning the “hearts and minds” of Muslims.

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