using oil as a scapegoat is the catch all argument winner, everything is always about oil with the U.S right? well of course if you have the opportunity to benefit from war, you will grab the reigns and make sure you get it, but to say we just fire up wars all over oil is silly. Benefiting your country from world affairs is what must be done when the world literally depends on you making it revolve.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations#2010.E2.80.93present
Just look at that link, not even 95% of those operations included oil as a war goal.
I never said all US wars were about oil, rather it is about control and domination of other countries, like any other imperial power before it, for example the European major powers in the colonial age. Could we at least be honest to ourselves about this? I'm not out to bash the US in particular, I'm just pointing out universal laws regarding states in an international hierarchy and standard empire policy.
Usually it is about markets and controlling ressources, if a country will not open for foreign investment troops are sent in to make sure the country is open for exploitation (read 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman', very elightening documentation of this from an inside source). Almost any US 'intervention' happened this way, from the early imperialist wars of your own theater, following the Monroe Doctrine making the hemisphere a North American mare nostrom, invading Haiti, Cuba, Texas, Nicaragua and other remnants of the collapsing Spanish Empire, supporting coups and brutal dictatorships like in Chile, Africa and South Vietnam to the invasions and coups of the Middle East.
WWI and II was mainly about securing the for US industry important European export market. But there's other motives in other wars of course, the wars in Indo China like the illegal invasion and years and years of terror and chemical bombardement of the small, poor rural country of Vietnam was about international prestige. Like the godfather sending out goons to put a hammer to the hands of feet of the small business clerk that dares to defy him publicly. Analogy lent from Chomsky but it fits the picture perfectly. Same with Afghanistan, when the country wouldn't extradite or even confirm if Osama Bin Laden was in the country, they get invaded, as if national sovereignty was something only attributed to the US itself. There's many different ways these wars could have been dealt with within a lawful framework.
In general I don't like the way you speak of military intervention as if it was some kind of right held by any country. Please educate yourself a bit on international law and understand that your own country, no matter how well you like it (and like with any country there's plenty of other things to be liked about it), is the worst breaker of international law there is, even dismissing outright treaties that the US itself has proposed, clearly only wishing to subject others to them when it fits its policy, but exempting itself from it due to the dangerous principle of American exceptionalism. Most empires that has come before has done the same thing, so this is not new historically, the British had the 'White Man's Burden', the French had a civilizing mission, America has 'democracy'.. Let us remember how nice a position it is for an imperial power to call itself 'world police' when that really means you're above the law and can invade any threat as you see fit, as the real police holding a monopoly on violence. The only difference between now and the past is that we are less honest about it (propaganda is today PR), but think about this; Rome never invaded a single country or started a single war! It was always forced upon them for security reasons or whatever, and thus it grew into the Roman Empire. Look closely at the history of the British Empire and you'll find much the same, 'we' are always right, 'they' are always wrong.
The US has so far exempted themselves from the world court, no american citizen can be prosecuted in the Hague no matter his crimes, the US has exempted themselves from the Geneve convention, the laws of war and peace does not apply to America (but America has them apply to everyone else except close allies), America abstains from laws against biological and chemical weapons, it abstains from many laws regarding nuclear proliferation (for example when it was seriously proposed to make the Middle East a 'nuclear free zone' by every country in the world including Iran, but the US and Israel abstained..), it rejects declaring war before attacking, in fact it has vetoed more security council resolutions since 1972 than any other member, and this mostly in contempt of international law when other countries sued the US in the world court, for example for heavy US support for the murderous contras, or intentional civilian bombardements, be they in Dresden, Korea, Kosovo, Sudan or Fallujah, or horrific torture or CIA-sponsored terrorism.
The people of the world went through two world wars before we got a decent international system in place for cooperation and mutual benefit, and even to prosecute war criminals of any country at the world court, and UN resolutions that can democratically send out international peace keeping forces whenever needed. These laws are in place because they could make for a safer, better world, not just something you break whenever it fits your policies.
To defend these matters through ignorance or not being able to glean obvious moral truisms when the historical evidence is so evident is truly a great feat of indoctrination. You are not serving your country, in fact quite the opposite. The people making these policies are not average Americans, the people as a whole bear little responsibility for the actions of a small power elite, which are the only ones who in the end benefit from the wars, your kind or my kind, AntiBlitz, we are just cannon fodder, or at best feudal peasants.
ps. if anyone needs sources please write me, this is all well-documented.
pps. if the US was really the first state in history to act out of moral compulsion and not self-interest why will it not subject to international law nor subject itself to the same moral standards as everyone else? Every single American president since the founding would have been hanged at Nuremberg for war crimes and crimes against humanity, if not for double standards. Same with Syrian chemical weapons to just name a recent example, who defies international law by producing, storing and using chemical and biological weapons more than anyone else? That's right, you guessed it.
ppps. You mention countries that might benefit from US invasion? Look at Haiti and Nicaragua, the countries that has had most US intervention over the course of time; both are now the poorest most miserable countries of the entire region
