I just read this tweet by Dave Winer:
I’m sure President Bush is smart, in some ways, but invading Iraq was crazy-ass stupid. And the economy! Oy
This was in reaction to this blog post by a former Bush adviser, who writes that actually Bush is much smarter than usually assumed.
I recall having opposed the American invasion of Iraq, mostly because it was clearly illegal.
But maybe that blog article is right. Maybe there was some hidden merit to that war that I didn’t understand at the time, but former President Bush, being very smart, did.
And yes, there is one point I didn’t consider at the time.
One consequence of the Iraq war was decreasing oil production. Look at this chart at Indexmundi, and the impact of the two wars against Iraq on oil production becomes rather clear. Wikipedia has some more detail. War does not help developing oil production and transport infrastructure.
That in turn helped raising oil prices. Maybe the oil companies liked that fact. It may have increased their profits. Oil has gone up by about a factor of five in those twenty years. That’s good. That is exactly what we need to happen.
Maybe Bill McKibben and 350.org can give former President Bush some kind of medal for this great contribution to the fight against global warming.
