> Thos rather reductionistically asked, what the US's
> PRIMARY motive, and I am tempted to say, why thing
> there is just one? But if I had to say, I'd say oil,
> as described.
I'd say it has a lot more to do with reaffirming American dominance on the world stage. Read this bit by Tomasky if you haven't already:
"This history does not start with September 11. It starts in the spring of 1992, when Dick Cheney was the Secretary of Defense, a job that, at that point, he fully expected to hold for another four years. That March, a document called the Defense Planning Guidance (read about it here and here, among other places) was leaked. The document described for the first time the Cheneyite vision for America's role in the post-Cold War world. It spelled out a policy toward the rest of the world, even our allies, that was far more unilateral and belligerent than anything that any postwar American president, Ronald Reagan included, had ever envisioned.
It said that the United States had to be, as Colin Powell put it at the time, 'the bully on the block.' This meant that other nations would have to understand that it's our world, they're just living in it; no other superpower could even think about emerging; collective action was rejected (NATO won a partial exemption here, but only partial) in favor of 'ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted'; preventive military action would prove necessary, somewhere, just to make the point that it was our prerogative to do so (the DPG mentioned Poland, Lithuania, the Philippines, North Korea, and Iraq); and more. The writing of the document was overseen by Paul Wolfowitz. When it was leaked, it was widely denounced as bellicose to the point of being unhinged. Bush 41 said this ain't our policy, noway nohow."
If North Korea or Lituania would've done, I don't see how one can assert that oil is the primary consideration.
-- Luke