The Dirty Hippies Were Right

by digby

I just love watching Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman and the rest of these Village gasbags blithely discussing Alan Greenspan's pronouncement that the Iraq war was all about oil as if it's always been just so obvious. It's not even controversial except that it's Alan Greenspan who said it, which they seem to find tittilating. But now they go on and on about how America runs on oil and that wars are fought over resources (even though it's a "Marxist" argument *shudder*.)

Well, no shit. It was always obvious and there were a whole bunch of people who told the truth about that from the very beginning and were vilified as traitors, naifs, terrorist sympathizers and worse by these oh-so-jaded commentators who are discussing it now with all the emotion they used when they ordered their lunch today.

I'm sure you'll all recall how everyone with any sense of decorum ran as fast as they could from the disgusting hippies who had the nerve to say this:

The denizens of the Village are just unbelievable. If we could have had a real debate in the beginning perhaps this "democracy" could have decided for itself if the trillion dollars we would spend on the Iraq invasion and occupation might have been better spent on alternative energy and conservation so we didn't have to fight any useless wars over oil. We had a right to make that choice for ourselves not be mowed down by a bunch of oilmen and over-excited teenage media whores who wanted to run around in a military costume and pretend they were Ernie Pyle for a week or two.

Instead, Alan Greenspan says from on high that the war in Iraq is about oil and even after five years of shoving shrill neocon sanctimony and intimidation about WMD and terrorism and "Demaaahcracy" down our throats, the whole goddamned town nods its head and says, "of course, everyone knows that." Arrrgh.


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