Energy Task Force Summary

The documentary felt pretty biased in a particular direction that makes it feel closed off to the people for whom its point of view would be most helpful. It felt like another of the many news sources that yell into echo chambers filled with people already inclined to lean towards the point of view presented. It was also a lot of information presented very quickly and with very little contextualization. For instance the portion where it was talking about the Energy Task Force, a sector in the United States Government that was set up post 9/11, was really quick and did not explain it’s point well. The narrator talks about the Energy Task Force being forced to release some documents in 2003 and those documents being very revealing but I did not get what it was the documents revealed or even what exactly the documentary was saying the Energy Task Force was. …show more content…
People often make the same claim that the documentary was making, that western involvement in the Middle East has long been motivated mostly by oil, whether desire for it or desire for greater profits from it. Getting some facts behind that claim, although they were presented as existing in a vacuum in which oil and the money to be made from it were the only motivations of everyone maneuvering in the Middle East, was eye opening. It was really interesting to see the part oil played in a lot of western government actions in the Middle East. Learning a little of the story of the CIA’s removal of the Iranian Prime Minister Dr. Mosaddegh after he nationalized Iranian oil out of the hands of the Anglo-Persian Oil company, later BP, added an important context to the United States’ current antagonism with