The problem with the price of Oil is mostly our own doing, but is nothing really to do with the war.  There's currently enough oil output from OPEC to meet demand, but commodities speculation is really doing us in.  Iraq has massive oil reserves, so we have in fact secured a big chunk of oil from the war, assuming we can prevent the country from falling into chaos.

My apologies, I didn't look at the context of his thread.

Regardless however, my point stays the same.  The President of the USA is not (and could not be) soley responsible (or even largely responsible) for the downfall of the USA's economy. 

Actually, America was quietly providing arms and money to the allies before entering in both World Wars. Additionally, American and Soviet involvement in WWII was absolutely critical in the end result. Without one of those two, the war would have lasted much longer, and may even have resulted in victory for the Nazis, and certainly for the Japanese.

In addition, in the Cold War, the people of Eastern Europe all wanted freedom, and they got it courtesy of the US. Everytime some Eastern Europe nation gets into any sort of diplomatic row with the Russians today, we back the Eastern Europeans which, in my opinion, is to our detriment, as we've more to gain from co-operating with Moscow than we do Vilnius or Warsaw.

Do they owe us a debt? No. But we shouldn't have a pro-Eastern Europe foreign policy when this is the prevailing attitude, as it's detrimental to our interests.

 Stof never claimed he was largely responsible, merely that of anyone he was the most responsible.

@Phil. America only actually entered the wars both times after they came under some sort of attack, in WWI it was because a ship with American passengers was sunk, in WWII it was because of PH.

Also much of Eastern Europe  didn't get their freedom until the Soviet Union imploded, where did the US come into that?

We only *entered* the wars after being attacked. My point was that we were quietly supporting the Allied forces in both wars before entering(and make no mistake, our entry into each was as close as you can get to a forgone conclusion).  In WWI, we were shipping arms to the British.  Also, we didn't enter because of the sinking of the Lusitania, we entered as the result of a telegraph from the Germans to Mexico asking that they declare war on us.  In WWII, we had the lend lease program, whereby massive amounts of arms and financial support were given to the Allies.

As for the collapse of the Soviet Union, you don't honestly think that the US had nothing to do with that, do you?

 The Soviet collapse was entirely inwards, their economy simply wasn't able to sustain itself and they were no longer ruled by an iron fist so the Union just broke apart. Indeed I would say the final ruler of the Soviet Union was responsible for its break up. Gorbachev I think it is?

They were forced into an arms race they couldn't win by the USA.......

I daresay a communism-based economy WOULD have collapsed on its own eventually (thats why China is quickly developing a Capitalism-based economy), but in the Soviet Union's case, the USA certainly helped the economy on it's way to destruction.  

That's an overly simplistic view of what actually happened.  While the ultimate responsibility might lie with Gorbachev, he doesn't get the entire blame.  As starcraft has pointed out, the Soviet Union strained itself in an arms race with the US that it couldn't sustain.  The arms race wasn't an option, either.  If they decided not to spend so much money on their military, they would have lost power.  Additionally, Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was responsible for further economic strain as well as loss of prestige.

Now, none of this would have been possible without the stupidity of Brezhnev and Gorbachev, but their stupidity alone wasn't enough to down one of the world's two superpowers.  It took a combination of factors to do it.

What you guys say sounds strange. I guess the americans view on how the Soviet Union collapsed must be very different. In none of the scenarios that I have heard does it involve the americans specifically in any way. The Soviet union collapsed because they couldn't have an arms race with the united states! That is strange to hear, because normally weapon exports are one of the more lucrative industries. Normally you make more money by selling weapons more than you have to spend.

They ran their economy into the ground trying to maintain a power parity with the United States, they weren't building arms solely for export.  It costs money to house missiles.  It's not that complicated.