Now He Tells Us

I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil. —Ala Greenspan

For years now, those of us who dared state the obvious — that Bush/Cheney’s obsession with Iraq was all about oil — have been dismissed as left-wing cranks, or worse, as terror-loving traitors.

I doubt that this admission from the former high priest of American capitalism will make a difference. He’s just one of a long line of truth-telling former Bush-abettors.

Still, it’s an important statement, and not just the oil part: our decision to destroy a sovereign nation that did us no harm and push the world to the brink of apocalypse just so we could service our oil addiction is just one of a very long list of hard American truths shrouded in political denial.

The first step in waking from denial is the recognition of how deeply and dangerously asleep we’ve been.