Anti-War Speech Sent Eugene V. Debs to Prison, 1918
There's a huge taboo in the United States against explicitly pointing out the economic agendas behind foreign wars.  You can go up on a soapbox and talk about 'humanitarian concerns and defending democracy abroad' (typical neoliberal-Democratic drivel) or 'patriotism, national security and fighting terror' (typical neocon-Republican drivel), but noting that war is a huge profit center for various interests, that's not really allowed.<p>For example, the Iraq War really was related to oil - Saddam had no WMDs, no ties with Al Qaeda, but he was moving his oil money out of the petrodollar recycling system, which was a huge threat to global dollar hegemony and the balance-of-payements issue (see capital accounts vs. current accounts).  Plus, it was a huge cash cow for government contracts and the military procurement system, which always gets hungry during peacetime.  GW Bush and the neocons of course sold this in their preferred manner.<p>The same thing happened with Libya and Syria, only now it was the other set of talking points - although again, Qaddafi was promoting pan-African unity, an alternative currency, independence from Europe and the USA on oil sales, closer ties to Russia and China, etc.  Assad backed out of a Saudi-USA-Israeli pipeline deal in 2009 and went for the Russia-Iran pipeline instead (plus lots of electricity integration with Iran), so Obama signed off on the CIA overthrow/regime change directive.  If you want more strong evidence that their 'humanitarian democractic' rhetoric was nonsense, look at how they treated the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain (crushed by Saudi tanks) or the Saudi assault on Yemen.<p>It's all pretty farcical.  Just admit that maintaining a global financial empire is pretty difficult without engaging in covert regime change and military dominance, already.  Stop pretending it's about self-defense or good works - I mean Ukraine is all about control of natural gas sales to Europe, plus another multi-billion injection into the domestic weapons manufacturing complex.