And just who or what are "our interests"? If you haven't already figured it out, "our interests" are embodied in the same group that buys and sells our politicians, the same group that helped Saddam Hussein seize control of the Iraqi government in a 1963 coup and backed him with money and weapons until the Persian Gulf War. It is the same group that helped overthrow the democratically elected president of Iran and replace him with the Shah, the same group that is best friends with the royal Saudi family (and the bin Ladin family), the same group that has been bilking the Middle East (and the American people) out of trillions of dollars for over 100 years, the same group that has polluted our environment and called global warming a hoax, and the same group that has prevented the United States from establishing a sweeping national renewable energy program so that we can become truly independent of foreign oil.
Simply put, "our interests" in the Middle East are the interests of Big Oil-- and their allies in Congress and the CIA, who do their dirty work. If the Middle East goes up in flames, so does their business. And if the price of oil gets too high and Americans convert to renewable energy en masse, the oil companies lose their power and control over the U.S. and the world.
Therefore, according to conventional wisdom, the U.S. can't pull our troops out of Iraq until we make it secure for the oil companies to carry out their business, because their interests are supposed to be the same as the interests of the American people. But they're not. In fact, they're antithetical to our interests. But as long as Americans continue to believe this lie, we will continue to keep our troops in the Middle East, U.S. soldiers will continue to die needlessly, and a sweeping national renewable energy program will always be just out reach.
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