How many nation-nation wars right now AREN'T about resources?

[yurbud]

stealing oil, water, land, and the like?

Any?

Even when Saddam invaded his neighbors, most of Iran's oil is right near the border (the same reason Bush thinks his invasion will succeed), and he was pissed that Kuwait was slant drilling under his border.

Can't we make it treason for a business to lobby for war? In the same way, it should be treason to call for the overthrow of at least democratically elected governments by those who stand to profit.

Likewise, with any trade agreements, there should be an analysis done as insulated as possible from business and government pressure to determine:

• if it will hurt or harm the democratic participation of average people in all countries involved.
  
  
• if it will hurt or harm the economic welfare of the average people in all countries involved, including their ability to organize unions to fight for better compensation and working conditions.

Doesn't the CBO do something like this for Congress, at least in terms of objective, independent analysis?

I doubt that any of this will be done, but as in Nazi Germany, where the loud-mouths in uniform were hung and the Geppetto industrialists that pulled their strings got off, the GOP might be punished or at least turned out of office, but the puppet maker will be free to return to his workbench and start carving a new Pinocchio.

It's like a cop on the beat seeing a ventriloquist's dummy lifting women's skirts, so he takes the dummy and maybe even tears it apart, but ignores the ventriloquist himself. How long would it be until the crime is repeated?

[sarge43]

1. Name any war

that fundamentally wasn't about resourses, getting them or keeping them.

[yurbud]

2. hmmm...the card game war?

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

3. None of them are.

They're all simply about insane people playing with too much power.

[yurbud]

5. Read Hitler's Hossbach memorandum--ever hear of Lebensraum?

Before he started attacking his neighbors, he layed out the strategic bind Germany was in: growing population, limited resources, and limited options for colonizing outside of Europe. He mentioned particular natural resources that they didn't have and wanted, and most importantly, the idea of Lebensraum, literally living room for his growing population. Just like us and the "empty" Western United States.

The same is true of Japan, except there, their desire to expand in the Pacific directly overlapped where we had already staked out our turf in the Philippines and South Pacific.

Even the leaders we consider nuts like Saddam make careful calculations on this stuff. Kuwait was sucking his oil at an angle under the sand. He told them to stop, threatened, and then before he attacked, ask us what we would do if he did it. We essentially said we would do nothing.


The "insane" argument is like a magic wand to wave over things so you don't have to look at real causes.

[sarge43]

6. Yes that certainly explains the Revolutionary War

I wish it were that simple; however, history doesn't support that view. Organized warfare can be precisely dated from the beginnings of surplus agriculture in the Middle East. The moment one group of people had something another group needed or used, but didn't have and couldn't produce themselves, it began. Another way of stating it, war is grand theft.

I am not saying resources are why people fight. The reasons can be anything from an ugly need to kill people and break things to an altruistic desire to defend one's home.

Nor am I saying resources are the only reasons for warfare; just they are the fundamental one.

[The2ndWheel]

4. Is there any other reason

for a nation to exist?