IRAQ WAR “LARGELY ABOUT OIL.” That’s the conclusion Alan Greenspan comes to in his new memoir. I’ve always thought that argument deserved to be taken more seriously, not as the only reason for the push to war, but as the major economic rationale motivating the idealistic neocon project of “democratizing” the Middle East by force. Remember that the Project for a New American Century, the group that included Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Zoellick, and many other future Bush appointees, published reports and open letters urging war in Iraq well before Sept. 11, 2001. PNAC’s goal, first and foremost, was always to maintain American military and economic dominance globally, in large part through domination of key oil reserves.

–Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.