military industrial complex

Nobody Voted for This War. Nobody Gets the Old World Back.

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The American presidency, in the wrong hands, with every institutional check removed, is powerful enough to destroy countries and break the interdependent global systems the modern world runs on.

The Leadership

I never fully understood how powerful the President of the United States actually is until now. When that position is held by a man with no capacity for consequence, no institutional check left to slow him down, and a circle of people who know exactly how to use him — he can destroy a country.

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If America First Means Anything, It Means This Isn’t Our Job

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Every government we’ve removed in an oil-producing country was replaced by something just as bad or by chaos that was worse. We don’t have the ability to fix what we break, and it’s not our place to try. If we actually wanted to help these people, we’d find ways that work, and don’t involve destroying their country.

We are good at destroying governments. We have never successfully replaced one in the Middle East.

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Regime Change Wars: The Public Ledger

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For decades, the United States has fought costly wars to overthrow foreign governments—mostly in oil-producing countries—without delivering oil, security, or lower energy costs to Americans. This summary shows how those wars became massive public losses and private profits.

VII: Distribution of Benefits

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The previous sections documented what Americans paid and what they received. The costs were in trillions of dollars. The returns were zero. This raises an obvious question: if the public did not benefit, who did?

The answer is documented in contract records, corporate revenues, and payment structures. One group received direct, reliable, and substantial financial benefit from post-9/11 regime-change wars: defense contractors and associated security industries.

This section documents how that transfer of public wealth to private contractors occurred, using the same accounting standards applied to public costs and returns.

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IX: The Public Ledger

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IX. The Public Ledger

This report examines U.S. regime-change wars in oil-producing countries. The justifications vary: weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, humanitarian intervention in Libya, counterterrorism across the Middle East. Oil is sometimes mentioned explicitly, more often implied through phrases like “energy security” or “strategic interests.”

But the pattern in target selection is clear: the United States intervenes militarily to overthrow governments almost exclusively in countries that produce significant oil.

North Korea has nuclear weapons and operates prison camps. The United States does not invade. Myanmar has a military junta that commits documented atrocities. The United States does not invade. Dozens of authoritarian governments abuse human rights, threaten neighbors, or destabilize regions. The United States does not invade.

Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria all produce significant oil. The United States has conducted regime-change operations or sustained military campaigns in each.

The stated justifications for intervention vary by case. The presence of oil as a common factor does not.

This report asks whether these interventions, whatever their stated purpose, deliver oil benefits to Americans. The evidence shows they do not.

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