Sullivan, continuing to argue with Max Boot, makes a very good point:

But let me remind Boot that there was no mention before the war that we were there to secure oil supplies as he now argues.

In fact, that very idea was regarded as a left-wing smear. Nor were we told that we would invade and occupy a country indefinitely in order to “protect our interests” in the region. We were told there was a terrible threat to our security; and this was untrue.

Well, you could interpret Boot’s phrase “protect our interests” very broadly, of course; but it’s absolutely true to say that before the invasion, the slightest insinuation that the war had anything to do with oil immediately got you branded as an America-hater.

Because the hawks/neocons had to build the moral case for war, and the fear-based case. Oil has now been revealed as the pragmatic case for war, but pragmatism doesn’t sell Americans on the need to go barging into another country, incurring who knows how many American casualties in the process.

No, we needed the gut punch - We can’t let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud; we must save the poor Iraqis from their totalitarian existence. That was the neocon case; and it was a front. Make no mistake, the exact same thing, for the exact same reasons, is now happening with Iran. And it’s good that more people are finally beginning to realize this now. But some of us realized it then.