Leave No Oil Reserves Behind, Including Iraq’s: The Geopolitics of American Imperialism

Radical Philosophy Today 2006:39-54 (2006)
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Abstract

Just war theory needs to become a real-time critique of government war propaganda in order to facilitate peace advocacy ante bellum. This involves countering asserted justificatory reasons with demonstrable facts that reveal other motives, thereby yielding reflective understanding which can be collectivized via electronic media. As a case in point, I compare here the publicly declared reasons for the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq in 2003 with reasons discussed internally months and even years before in government and think-tank documents. These sources show that control of oil rather than regime change or a WMD threat was theunderlying motive. Neo-conservatives in the Bush Administration justified such deception by citing an exoteric/esoteric distinction traceable to Plato via Leo Strauss. As with the Iraq invasion, so in general such propaganda and its rationalizations can be undermined by investigative journalism understood as ranging from fact gathering to rhetorical analysis and critique

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Edmund Byrne
Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis

Citations of this work

Assessing arms makers' corporate social responsibility.Edmund F. Byrne - 2007 - Journal of Business Ethics 74 (3):201 - 217.
Assessing Arms Makers’ Corporate Social Responsibility.Edmund F. Byrne - 2007 - Journal of Business Ethics 74 (3):201-217.
The planned obsolescence of the humanities: Is it unethical?Edmund Byrne - 2007 - Journal of Academic Ethics 5 (2-4):141-152.

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