Is the war in Iraq a political war, an economic war, or a religous war?”
It’s unlikely that political and economic reasons for war can be separated. The war in Iraq (whether from the point of view of the U.S. or the indigenous factions in Iraq) is largely about the control of oil. From the U.S. perspective the three largest pools of crude oil are under Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq. From a strategic point-of-view, U.S. policy-makers tend to believe that it is important that at least two of those three have regimes that are friendly toward, or at least not hostile to, the U.S., Europe, and Japan. The current government of Iran leans toward being unfriendly to the West; the regime in Saudi Arabia is viewed as potentially subject to an Islamic Revolution that would not be friendly toward the West. Therefore, control of Iraq (and the possibility of basing military forces in Iraq) currently is of high strategic value to the U.S. Within Iraq, there is a struggle between the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shiites. The Kurds and Shiites have access to oil fields, the Su
