You cannot imagine a "plausible scenario for a resource grab" because your thinking is limited by your First Worlder bias and because of your limited life experiences.

Look at our history since we learned to record it. Can you find a plausible example where we faced situations similar to Peak Oil and there was Not a "resource grab?"

The world has not even begun to feel the pinch of declining Energy and declining Matter.  

"Civilized" applies only to those who can afford it.  Humans are animals.  All of our cute little "morals" and "ethics" are Negotiable. And even the Culturally Superior Westerners will sink to the same levels of depravity as those crazy africaners.

There is no doubt whatever that there is a resource-access component in WWI, which I acknowledged in my original post. There are any number of alternative systems for reading that war. Orthodox power politics, Marxian class analysis (the ruling classes of the two sides colluded to emasculate the workers), etc, etc... None of these analyses is the exclusive truth.

But if you are alleging that the central powers <b>deliberately</b> launched WWI to shift the balance of power and grab resources, you are certainly going out on a limb.

And if that was their intention, it was hardly an unqualified success.

In any case, nobody has come up with anything even remotely resembling a modern resource-grab scenario. Which demonstrates my principal point.

Since WWII the US has never declared war against another country: not North Korea, not North Vietnam, not Cuba, not Panama, not Iraq, not Nicaragua, not Libya, not Lebanon.  Yet US forces have fought in all those countries (bar Nicaragua, and then there was the CIA).

The War Powers Act grants the President great leave to act in defence of the USA by military action, down to (effective) preemptive war.

If Bush wants to go to war with Iran, the only Constitutional measure which could stop him would be impeachment (and then the Vice President, Dick Cheney, would be President).

Can you see the Senate passing an impeachment bill with 2/3rds majority, with America at war with Iran?

Mob rule was rightfully feared by America's founders, and hence they designed a Republic, one with checks and balances between functions of government.  A Republic by the way which was supposed to limit which people could vote and which couldn't.  The whole idea was to preserve a "wiser" ruling elite.  Admittedly I think their concept of land ownership indicating wisdom was a faulty one, but the premise of every person being allowed to vote has been a question bothering me for some time and the notion that everyone should be able to vote I sometimes wonder is perhaps the reason our political system is in the mess that its in and I sometimes wonder will be the downfall of this country.

Perhaps the crux for me is because fundamentally the notion of a wide body of "elite" and wise voters sounds like it has merit, but then the problem of determining who is wise is that nasty snafu one gets hung up on.

But I would never assume that Democratic governments are anywhere near rational, and I've said this before, that pure logic is not something I think humans would enjoy being ruled by.  Pure logic probably would've had us killing off a lot of people already, as pure logic would dictate that its wasteful to spend resources on those members who are unable to support themselves.  We place emotional value to things like welfare, and tending to the old and infirmed.  The emotional value to me is a very important piece of our humanity and without it I think we would be even more brutal than we are with it, even when we see examples of emotion's darker side such as hate, jealousy and envy.

I believe he is now a lame duck, he could no longer launch a war against Iran for example.

I think the Israeli's are more likely to take the offensive step at this point: "Israel official: Strike on Iran possible." Then the US fleets in the Persian Gulf play the part of defender against Iranian counterattacks. When the Iranians inevitably hit one of our ships, we are in a position to legitimately counter-attack.

This looks to me like just as much an attempt at stalemating the Iranians as a real attempt to give us an excuse to strike. As in "We warned you that you should give up your nuclear program. Don't be surprised if the Israeli's aren't willing to wait for the UN. And don't expect to attack Ras Tanura or Persian Gulf shipping in response without setting off a much bigger conflagration." Come to think of it, the US would be pretty well positioned to seize Khuzistan in this process. We could claim that it was done in the interests of international energy security.