Mother Jones Daily: War Watch
January 8, 2003
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Washington's Oil War
Regime Change, Redux
War Blindness
Try as they might, Bush administration hawks haven't been able to outrun claims that Washington's real drive toward war has little to do with Iraq's weapons, and a great deal to do with its oil reserves.
The argument, floated by progressive pundits and anti-war activists ever since Washington turned its belligerent gaze towards Baghdad, has been given a mainstream makeover by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. A US-led attack on Iraq "will certainly be -- in part -- about oil," Friedman opines.
"I say this possible Iraq war is partly about oil because it is impossible to explain the Bush team's behavior otherwise. Why are they going after Saddam Hussein with the 82nd Airborne and North Korea with diplomatic kid gloves -- when North Korea already has nuclear weapons, the missiles to deliver them, a record of selling dangerous weapons to anyone with cash, 100,000 U.S. troops in its missile range and a leader who is even more cruel to his own people than Saddam?One reason, of course, is that it is easier to go after Saddam. But the other reason is oil -- even if the president doesn't want to admit it.
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Let's cut the nonsense. The primary reason the Bush team is more focused on Saddam is because if he were to acquire weapons of mass destruction, it might give him the leverage he has long sought -- not to attack us, but to extend his influence over the world's largest source of oil, the Persian Gulf."
Friedman isn't exactly hewing to the progressive line on the issue, though. His particular twist on Washington's petro-motivated war planning: it might be perfectly reasonable and ethical.
"If we occupy Iraq and simply install a more pro-U.S. autocrat to run the Iraqi gas station (as we have in other Arab oil states), then this war partly for oil would also be immoral.If, on the other hand, the Bush team, and the American people, prove willing to stay in Iraq and pay the full price, in money and manpower, needed to help Iraqis build a more progressive, democratizing Arab state -- one that would use its oil income for the benefit of all its people and serve as a model for its neighbors -- then a war partly over oil would be quite legitimate. It would be a critical step toward building a better Middle East."
If Friedman is looking for converts to his particular logic, he might as well skip Stephen White of the London Mirror. Noting that the US "maintains a presence in almost every country that either has oil or borders an oil producing nation," White argues that the Bush administration's priorities are painfully clear.
"US vice-president Dick Cheney came close to the oil question when he voiced his objections to Saddam's regime.He said: 'He sits on 10 per cent of the world's oil reserves. He has enormous wealth generated by that. And, left to his own devices, it's the judgment of many that he will soon acquire nuclear weapons.'"
Oil first. Regional influence second. Nuclear weapons third. The British government has cleverly arranged its policy priorities supporting war in a slightly different order -- Iraq's weapons programs and possible links to terrorists top the list. But, as Ewen MacAskil of The Sydney Morning Herald reports, control of Iraq's oil "has emerged explicitly as an issue in the campaign."
"While the US and Britain deny oil is a factor in the looming war, some British ministers and officials say privately that oil is more important in the calculation than weapons of mass destruction.They have pointed to the instability of current oil sources and the need for secure alternatives. Iraq has the second biggest known oil reserves in the world."
Predictably, war hawks remain steadfast in denying any meaningful link between Iraq's oil and Washington single-minded focus on invading and occupying the country. The National Post of Canada, dismisses such suggestions as simplistic, misguided and trapped in the past.
"The idea of a Washington establishment obsessed with securing oil wealth dates to the 1970s, when spending on oil accounted for about 8% of U.S. GDP. In today's information economy, by contrast, the figure is 3.5%. To put this number in perspective, consider that Americans spend about 13% of their GDP on health care. If Mr. Bush were really as greedy as the Chomskyites suggest, he'd invade Canada and take our tongue depressors."
The Financial Times at least entertains the possiblity that Bush "has some designs on Iraqi oil," but only to reject any suggestion that control of Iraq's petro reservers could be the administration's main motivation.
"[T]he idea that this is the main motive for an attack on Baghdad is fanciful. The reality is the US is condemned by its extravagant lifestyle to remain dependent on oil from far more than one Middle East producer.Launching a war against Iraq could expose that dependence. If oil prices rocket -- and the disorder in Venezuela has already raised them -- it could be a serious setback to the US economy and with it Mr Bush's chances of re-election in 2004. It is arguable that the rise in oil prices that accompanied the last Gulf war tipped the US into the recession that cost his father a second term.
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Even if Mr Bush gets his plan to open Alaska up to drilling approved by Congress this year, it will not dent the US appetite for foreign oil. The US is taking more oil from Russia and west Africa but the bulk of low-cost reserves still lies under the Opec members of the Middle East. And the latter are likely to account for up to half of world production by 2030 as non-Opec output falls in coming years. US control over Iraq's oil would not change these fundamental realities."
Of course, such conservative denials focus only whether a war might be motivated by US desires to control Iraq's oil. As Friedman, White and dozens of progressives have noted, there are strong indications that Washington's aim is to directly control Iraq in order to indirectly control -- or at least strong-arm -- other oil-producing states in the Gulf, most notably Saudi Arabia.
The Bush administration has done its best to remove 'regime change' from its lexicon, repeatedly stressing that its Iraq policy is not limited to replacing Saddam Hussein with a pro-US leader. Still, the White House is working steadily to produce plans for a post-Saddam regime -- just in case.
Initial plans suggested that the US would install a military governor, as Washington did in Japan following World War II. But that approach has fallen out of favor, Andrew Buncombe reports in The Independent. Now, Washington is suggesting that a "civilian administrator appointed by the United Nations" might run Iraq in the wake of a US invasion.
"While the proposals call for a heavy military presence led by a senior American general for at least 18 months after any invasion, the Bush administration has apparently accepted the need to establish democratic institutions inside Iraq as quickly as possible. With that in mind, planners envisage a civilian administrator working alongside, and with equal authority to, the military commander.'The last thing we need is someone walking around with a corncob pipe telling the Iraqis how to form a government,' said one senior Bush administration official, in a reference to the imposition of General Douglas MacArthur in post-war Japan.
The classified plans being finalised by the White House and the National Security Council also emphasise the limited use of courts to try only those Iraqis who held senior positions in President Saddam's regime. An effort would be made to keep and reform many elements of the government rather than scrapping them."
Naturally, Washington's planning sees this civilian administrator having one important additional duty: "ensuring Iraq's oil continued to flow."
Polling in both the US and Great Britain has shown deep public ambivalence about the expected war in Iraq and about the governmental motives behind that war. Still, most Americans and Britons remain firmly stuck on the sidelines, watching blankly as Washington and London prepare to begin the fighting.
Writing on opposite sides of the Atlantic, George Monbiot of the London Guardian and Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times consider the source of that apathy. And they arrive at similarly compelling -- and depressing -- conclusions.
It seems, Monbiot writes, that many in Britain who might be expected to oppose the war "simply can't believe it's happening."
"If, paradoxically, we were facing a real threat from a real enemy, the debate would have seemed more urgent. But if Blair had told us that we had to go to war to stop Saruman of Isengard from sending his orcs against the good people of Rohan, it would scarcely seem less plausible than the threat of Saddam of Iraq dropping bombs on America.These factors may explain our feebleness. They don't excuse it. It is true that our chances of stopping this war are slight: both men appear determined to proceed, with or without evidence or cause. But to imagine that protest is useless if it doesn't lead to an immediate cessation is to misunderstand its purpose and power. Even if we cannot stop the attack upon Iraq, we must ensure that it becomes so politically costly that there will never be another like it. And this means that the usual demos will no longer suffice."
Scheer observes a similar degree of self-deception in the US. For many Americans, he contends, "knocking off Saddam Hussein is an easy sell, offering as it does a cheap thrill demanding less sacrifice than that needed to acquire playoff tickets -- and less angst over the outcome."
"However, the viewing public doesn't seem to understand that what is being planned by our president is not Gulf War II -- a swift punch in the mouth to our old ally Hussein -- but rather a multiyear occupation by the U.S. of an independent, powerful and modern Muslim nation rife with ethnic tension....
With no draft and a completely dominant military, most Americans have come to view war as something akin to the dark twin of the Olympics: an international test of strength accompanied by big opening-night fireworks over the host city."
