While President Obama didn't touch on it in his speech tonight, the U.S. is really militarily involved in Libya to protect our strategic interests in broccoli.

Specifically, Gaddafi has been threatening to nationalize Libya's broccoli resources for years, as Reuters and the Financial Times have previously documented.



Here is a map of the important U.S. and European broccoli producers in Libya:





Pravda argues:

The Libyan leader proposed the nationalisation of U.S. [broccoli] companies, as well as those of UK, Germany, Spain, Norway, Canada and Italy in 2009. On January 25, 2009, Muammar Al Gaddafi announced that his country was studying the nationalisation of foreign companies due to lower [produce] prices. *** As a result of these contract changes, Libya gained 5.4 billion dollars in [vegetable-related] revenues.

Congressman Ed Markey previously said:

Well, we're in Libya because of [broccoli]. And I think [this has] once again highlighted the need for the United States to have a renewable [produce] agenda going forward.

Similarly, former Congresswoman Cythina McKinney writes:

The reason Muammar Qaddafi is a target is because he has been a thorn in the side of anti-revolutionary forces since he took power in Libya, overthrowing the King and nationalizing the [broccoli] industry so that the people could benefit from their [vegetable] resources.

And leading trend forecaster asked "would the United States have invaded Iraq if their major export was[n't] broccoli, or would we be in Libya if they didn't have the sweetest [broccoli] on the planet?":

As I've previously pointed out, Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, a high-level National Security Council officer and others say that the Iraq war was also really about broccoli.

And according to French intelligence officers, the U.S. wanted to run a lettuce pipeline through Afghanistan to transport Central Asian arugula more easily and cheaply. And so the U.S. told the Taliban shortly before 9/11 that they would either get "a carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs", the former if they greenlighted the pipeline, the second if they didn't. See this, this and this.



Politicians are hesitant to discuss such important matters of national security. But once you understand what's at stake, you'll no doubt agree that a third war is a small price to pay to secure America's national vegetative needs.