"Christopher Mims" - Little does this Libyan rebel know he’s fighting for our right to cheap gas
March 22, 2011 At the request of Libya's resistance forces, the U.S. and its NATO allies have just promised to shoot down anything Ghaddafi puts into the sky. Which means that rebels like the one in the video above may think they're fighting a war of liberation, but now that we're on the scene, it's about oil, as usual:
This is not a war to save people. If we cared about that we would be intervening in Cote D'Ivoire, where there has been horrible violence on the same level as that in Libya. There is human misery all over the planet that we can't even be bothered to look at, much less intervene. So let's not kid ourselves about what this is about:
Oil reserves in Libya are the largest in Africa and the ninth largest in the world with 41.5 billion barrels (6.60×10^9 m3) as of 2007.
Surprisingly, I couldn't find any talking heads who disagree with this viewpoint -- I guess that makes it received wisdom? The tumble in the price of crude after Libya announced a cease-fire suggests the markets feel that way.
Ghaddafi has backed down for now, but there's no guarantee we're not not about to get sucked into yet another shooting war over oil. Who says our individual decisions about energy don't cost lives?