If you have not heard of Smedley Butler, you probably should have. I would place him towards the top of list on misunderstood and ignored Americans of the past 100 years.
If you have never read War is a Racket, let me help you. The link is from Canada: War is a Racket
Read it. He states the case much better than I can. Just remember to add petrodollars and change a few names and you’ll notice nothing has changed since he wrote it in 1935. The parallels are chilling.
Socialize the losses to insure privatized profits.
You’re not wrong. I would in fact argue that it’s not impossible that a Democrat could go to war for oil but the meme doesn’t flow as well just saying “It’s xxxx and we’re going to war for oil”.
Even more generic and era-independent would be “It’s xxxx and we’re going to war to steal someone else’s resources for our own use”.
There’s a great cartoon – I might have even posted it here at some point – where two intellectuals in smoking jackets are talking in a library and one, distraught, says to the other, “Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it; but those of us who know the lessons of history are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it.”
Been there, done that…
I would argue that Roosevelt’s oil embargo on Japan in August of 1941 is a prime example of a Democrat going to war over oil.
Sorry, just me sitting here watching history repeat itself…