Oil and ISIS: If We Hadn’t Needed One, the Other Wouldn’t Exist

Jul 11, 2016 | Ian Reifowitz
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The moral responsibility for murders lies solely with those who carried them out, those who ordered them, and those who encouraged them. But beyond responsibility lies the question of how ISIS came to be, and what can be learned from this history.

There would have been no invasion of Iraq in 2003 had the first Gulf War not taken place. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who in 1990 invaded a sovereign country, Kuwait, without any provocation. But let’s get real. The world cared about that invasion enough to organize a huge coalition to overturn it—as opposed to so many others—because of a three letter word: oil. Taking and holding Kuwait would have given Saddam control of about 20 percent of the world’s then-known oil reserves, double what they had previously. This was not acceptable to the United States.