[Mb-civic] Oil and Blood

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Oil and Blood
NY Times
By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 28, 2005

It is now generally understood that the U.S.-led war in Iraq has become a
debacle. Nevertheless, Iraqis are supposed to have their constitution
ratified and a permanent government elected by the end of the year. It's a
logical escape hatch for George W. Bush. He could declare victory, as a
senator once suggested to Lyndon Johnson in the early years of Vietnam,
and bring the troops home as quickly as possible. His mantra would be:
There's a government in place. We won. We're out of there.

But don't count on it. The Bush administration has no plans to bring the
troops home from this misguided war, which has taken a fearful toll in
lives and injuries while at the same time weakening the military, damaging
the international reputation of the United States, serving as a
world-class recruiting tool for terrorist groups and blowing a hole the
size of Baghdad in Washington's budget.

A wiser leader would begin to cut some of these losses. But the whole
point of this war, it seems, was to establish a long-term military
presence in Iraq to ensure American domination of the Middle East and its
precious oil reserves, which have been described, the author Daniel Yergin
tells us, as "the greatest single prize in all history."

You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this war: the
weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove
the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cozied up to), the
connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and, one of President Bush's
favorites, the need to fight the terrorists "over there" so we won't have
to fight them here at home.

All the rationales have to genuflect before "The Prize," the title of Mr.
Yergin's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.

It's the oil, stupid.

What has so often gotten lost in all the talk about terror and weapons of
mass destruction is the fact that for so many of the most influential
members of the Bush administration, the obsessive desire to invade Iraq
preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. It preceded the Bush administration. The
neoconservatives were beating the war drums on Iraq as far back as the
late 1990's.

Iraq was supposed to be a first step. Iran was also in the
neoconservatives' sights. The neocons envisaged U.S. control of the region
(and its oil), to be followed inevitably by the realization of their
ultimate dream, a global American empire. Of course it sounds like
madness, which is why we should have been paying closer attention from the
beginning.

The madness took a Dr. Strangelovian turn in the summer of 2002, before
the war with Iraq was launched. As The Washington Post first reported, an
influential Pentagon advisory board was given a briefing prepared by a
Rand Corporation analyst who said the U.S. should consider seizing the oil
fields and financial assets of Saudi Arabia if it did not stop its support
of terrorism.

Mercifully the briefing went nowhere. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
said it did not represent the "dominant opinion" within the
administration.

The point here is that the invasion of Iraq was part of a much larger,
long-term policy that had to do with the U.S. imposing its will,
militarily when necessary, throughout the Middle East and beyond. The war
has gone badly, and the viciousness of the Iraq insurgency has put the
torch to the idea of further pre-emptive adventures by the Bush
administration.

But dreams of empire die hard. American G.I.'s are dug into Iraq, and the
bases have been built for a long stay. The war may be going badly, but the
primary consideration is that there is still a tremendous amount of oil at
stake, the second-largest reserves on the planet. And neocon fantasies
aside, the global competition for the planet's finite oil reserves
intensifies by the hour.

Lyndon Johnson ignored the unsolicited advice of Senator George Aiken of
Vermont - to declare victory in Vietnam in 1966. The war continued for
nearly a decade. Many high-level government figures believe that U.S.
troops will be in Iraq for a minimum of 5 more years, and perhaps 10.

That should be understood by the people who think that the formation of a
permanent Iraqi government will lead to the withdrawal of American troops.
There is no real withdrawal plan. The fighting and the dying will continue
indefinitely.

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   ---   George Orwell


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