Know When to Walk Away and Know When to Run

Thomas Friedman wants Bush to talk to America's top negotiators:

“I want you to move to the Green Zone, meet with the Iraqi factions and do not come home until you’ve reached one of three conclusions: 1) You have resolved the power- and oil-sharing issues holding up political reconciliation; 2) you have concluded that those obstacles are insurmountable and have sold the Iraqis on a partition plan that could be presented to the U.N. and supervised by an international force; 3) you have concluded that Iraqis are incapable of agreeing on either political reconciliation or a partition plan and told them that, as a result, the U.S. has no choice but to re-deploy its troops to the border and let Iraqis sort this out on their own.”

The last point is crucial. Any lawyer will tell you, if you’re negotiating a contract and the other side thinks you’ll never walk away, you’ve got no leverage. And in Iraq, we’ve never had any leverage. The Iraqis believe that Mr. Bush will never walk away, so they have no incentive to make painful compromises.

Friedman claims to believe that Bush's reluctance to do this is baffling. I'm not sure if that's just a columnists gamesmanship, but my fear is that Friedman is genuinely baffled. But here we are, over four years after the invasion, and it's time to face up to the possibility that the Bush administration's policies in occupied Iraq haven't been driven exclusively by a sincere and idealistic commitment to the well-being of the Iraqi people and the principles of liberty and democracy. Shocking, yes. But not to put too fine a point on it, it's the imperialism, stupid.

Bush won't adopt a bargaining strategy that involves walking away as an option, because he's not willing to walk away. The objective is to retain Iraq as a platform for the projection of American military power in the region, to continue a larger regional struggle against Iran and Syria, to maintain physical control over Iraq's oil resources, etc. That means Bush can't walk away and can't "let Iraqis sort this out on their own." To accomplish his objectives, the United States needs to be intimately involved in Iraqi affairs to give us leverage and prevent the possibility of the dread "Iranian influence." It's unrealistic war aims that launched this war, it's unrealistic aims that have made it last so long, and it's unrealistic aims that prevent it from ending.

Defense Department photo by Specialist Elisha Dawkins, U.S. Army

Comments

"it's the imperialism, stupid" is probably a decent analysis of why Cheney won't leave, why the Neocon Kristols and Peretz's and so on won't leave, and why a lot of the big-money Republican elite won't leave.

But as an explanation of Bush? Nah--that gives him far too much credit--it almost treats him like a rational agent.

Look, it's far simpler: he's a loser and a dim-wit, and he is paralyzed by his own fear. He is caught in the head-lights, unable to figure out what to do.

It's a replay of every previous failure in a life of unremitting failures. He fucks up, and then he just freezes, paralyzed, and waits till some one else comes to clean up the mess.

That's all that Bush is up to. He won't care if the imperial dream goes down the crapper--everything else he has touched turns to shit, it won't surprise him that this does to.

He just wants to make sure it happens *on the next watch*. Stall. Run the clock out. See if you can leave it for the next guy.

And of course that fits very well with his own basic terror and inability to think his way out of the difficult positions he gets himself into.

The imperialism is keeping Bush in Iraq? Nah, not really. That gives him far too much credit. It's the stupidity, stupid.

Posted by Count Cant | July 18, 2007 10:49 AM

I'm not paying to read Tommy Airmiles, but I'd hope that with his supposed experience in the Middle East, he'd bring up the clash between American time-management culture, based upon action items, goals and deadlines, and the region's tradition of inshallah (or B'ezrat Hashem), epitomised by the August recess kerfuffle.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 18, 2007 10:58 AM

Possible, but dubious. Also possible, but more likely: maybe W has so much of himself (his ego, his legacy, etc.) invested in the war that he can't just walk away without committing emotional suicide.

Posted by ostap | July 18, 2007 11:00 AM

Matt,

Maybe it's time to drink with a different crowd. This analysis sounds like the product of too much time in a fringe-left echo chamber:

"The objective is to retain Iraq as a platform for the projection of American military power in the region, to continue a larger regional struggle against Iran and Syria, to maintain physical control over Iraq's oil resources, etc."

This doesn't make a lot of sense, for a couple of reasons.

1) Having U.S. ground forces vulnerable to counter-attack in Iraq isn't a deterrent to Iran and Syria -- it's the opposite, a deterrent to us. We aren't going to invade Syria or Iran (or any other country for the foreseeable future), and we don't need to be in Iraq to bomb them (we can easily do that from our bases in Kuwait, Qatar, and elsewhere in the region). Because of this, Iraq is not a platform for the "projection of American military power" in the region.

2) We don't control Iraq's oil resources now. Iraq's government owns these resources and profits from their sale (though, in practice, local Iraqi corruption siphons off a lot of the flow). When presented with these facts, lefties sometimes respond with one of a couple implausible arguments: a) that we are spending $100 billion per year to keep Iraq selling its oil (as if any oil-producing country -- even one hostile to us, such as Venezuela -- needs any incentive to sell its oil on the world markets beyond the market price); or, b) that we are in Iraq to keep oil prices high, in order to benefit U.S. oil companies (and, presumably, to hurt all U.S. companies for which oil is a cost, increase the trade deficit, etc.).

Use Occam's Razor here. For better or worse, Bush actually believes in all the rhetoric about the power of democracy to change Iraq, and the Arab world, for the better. His belief in egalitarianism, derived from his Christian faith, leads him to ignore the obvious tribalism, sexism, and intolerance that plague the Arab world and make it difficult for democracy to take hold there.

Posted by Fred | July 18, 2007 11:07 AM

Matt:

Replace each use of the word "Bush" with "Cheney" and you've got it right.

Posted by Bill | July 18, 2007 11:21 AM

Thanks for saying what needed to be said regarding the real agenda of the warmongers.

I think you are doing a great job complementing TPM on providing a interesting and real counterweight to all the GOP propaganda sites like the Corner. Kevin Drum is too nice for this work.

Posted by gregor | July 18, 2007 11:23 AM

Friedman's legal analogy is misplaced. This is not a negotation but a mediation, and any good mediator will tell you that not every suit can be settled. Sometimes starkly opposed parties will insist on litigating, against everyone's rational interests, and it's the mediator's responsibility to recognize that reality and get out of the way.

Posted by UN Plaza | July 18, 2007 11:33 AM

Use Occam's Razor here

Sorry. There's too much evidence that he's a gangster that makes assertions of sincerity preposterous.

Occam's Razor would slit someone's throat.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 18, 2007 11:38 AM

"Use Occam's Razor here. For better or worse, Bush actually believes in all the rhetoric about the power of democracy to change Iraq, and the Arab world, for the better. His belief in egalitarianism, derived from his Christian faith, leads him to ignore the obvious tribalism, sexism, and intolerance that plague the Arab world and make it difficult for democracy to take hold there."

But then how do you explain the Bush administration policy towards Egypt and Saudi Arabia?

Posted by peep | July 18, 2007 11:39 AM

His belief in egalitarianism...

Um, I don't think Bush ever thought or believed in that.

While I think Bush's PNAC-loving advisors do regard Iraq as a springboard for "our presence" in the middle east (because it has to go somewhere, and we have a military presence most everywhere else), Bush himself just doesn't want to hear bad news about how we have to leave. It's as simple as that, and it's not baffling. His ego is too invested in the project, and he's convinced himself that "leaving = losing."

Matt is adopting that irritating affectation of looking at everything through a 19th-century imperial lens.

Posted by Tyro | July 18, 2007 11:41 AM

Winning and losing both result in the same thing, no more war. That. Won't. Happen.

Fred, you are at least as far out of touch as you say Matt is. We don't control Iraq's oil? Who does? (Hint: 1776, apple pie, baseball)

Posted by jg | July 18, 2007 11:42 AM

"This doesn't make a lot of sense, for a couple of reasons."

No, it doesn't make sense. This is why it has taken so long for the media to grasp what's going on. They've been wrongly assuming for six years that our leaders wouldn't try to do something that is orthogonal to common sense.

Having U.S. ground forces vulnerable to counter-attack in Iraq isn't a deterrent to Iran and Syria -- it's the opposite, a deterrent to us. We aren't going to invade Syria or Iran (or any other country for the foreseeable future), and we don't need to be in Iraq to bomb them (we can easily do that from our bases in Kuwait, Qatar, and elsewhere in the region). Because of this, Iraq is not a platform for the "projection of American military power" in the region.

A very good, succinct summary of what's wrong with the plan. In fact, opponents of the war have been saying all of these things for years. Unfortunately, you're making the exact same mistake that Friedman has been making for the past four years, which is to wrongly assume that the people running this country UNDERSTAND that Iraq is a lousy platform for projecting military power into the region. If the neoconservatives, whose entire worldview is centered on promoting American military hegemony, actually appreciated the extent to which our Iraq policy weakens our strategic position in such an important part of the world, they wouldn't be advocating this policy. Occam's Razor, you know.

2) We don't control Iraq's oil resources now. Iraq's government owns these resources and profits from their sale (though, in practice, local Iraqi corruption siphons off a lot of the flow).

The purpose is not to "control" Iraq's oil resources; it's to prevent hostile parties from controlling Iraq's oil resources. Oil was by no means the primary motivation for the war, but to think that a non-oil-rich nation would have gotten the same level of attention from American politicians is laughably naive.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 18, 2007 11:44 AM

Peep,

"But then how do you explain the Bush administration policy towards Egypt and Saudi Arabia?"

The Bush administration has more influence with Egypt than on Saudi Arabia, since Egypt is a recipient of billions of dollars of annual U.S. aid. The Bush administration used that influence to encourage Mubarak to allow another candidate to challenge him in the last presidential election there. The administration has since backed off of pressuring Egypt (where Mubarak's election opponent now languishes in jail), partly because it has so much else on its plate and partly because it deems Egyptian help WRT the Palestinians now is more important.

The Bush idea was never that the U.S. could forcibly democratize every Arab regime, but that once democracy was implanted in Iraq, it would eventually spread throughout the region. I would bet Bush still believes that.

BTW, one question about the Friedman column: What countries does he suppose would contribute troops to the force he imagines would supervise a partition? Ed Koch had a more realistic (if problematic) suggestion for withdrawal advocates: the U.S. should do as Britain did with its Palestine Mandate in '48 -- inform the UN of the date it plans to leave and then leave, come what may.

Posted by Fred | July 18, 2007 11:50 AM

Matthew,

Thank you for finally stating the obvious. Friedman also deserves praise for (belatedly) integrating oil-sharing and oil-revenue-sharing into account in his analysis.

The regional power issues with Iran and Syria and concerns over Islamic terrorism are serious and must be taken into account in any reasonable analysis of the issue. But the future of Iraq's natural resources is one of the paramount issues separating American foreign policy from the actors we claim we're trying to help. American analysts and bloggers need to be asking--how is it possible to build a US-friendly secular political coalition in Iraq if these secular players believe the proposed oil law is a giveaway to international oil concerns?

Posted by Scott Kern | July 18, 2007 11:53 AM

Getting back to our earlier dicussion of reading fiction, it always seemed obvious to be that leaders could be oblivious, out of touch, and irrational-- this is pretty much a stock character of fiction since, basically, the invention of fiction. I do sometimes wonder how the media failed to grasp this simple fact and apply it to Bush.

Posted by Tyro | July 18, 2007 11:55 AM

Another great post. I'm growing more and more excited about Matt's book - it looks like it's really going to be an attempt to create a sea change in our elite discourse.

We don't control Iraq's oil resources now. Iraq's government owns these resources and profits from their sale (though, in practice, local Iraqi corruption siphons off a lot of the flow).

And the Bush administration nearly forced an oil bill through the Iraqi parliament that would have basically given the rights ot the oil fields to large American corporations. The bill failed, but the goal of the Bush admininstration could not have been clearer.

Badly run imperialism is nonetheless imperialism.

Posted by DivGuy | July 18, 2007 11:57 AM

"If the neoconservatives, whose entire worldview is centered on promoting American military hegemony, actually appreciated the extent to which our Iraq policy weakens our strategic position in such an important part of the world, they wouldn't be advocating this policy. Occam's Razor, you know."

It's like how on the one hand neocons like to say they want to spread democracy, but they also hate the idea of having other powerful, large liberal democratic entities out there that can give other ideas of the best means to liberal ends. Look at how they rejoiced at the French electorate's rejection of the EU constitution. If you want to make the overall international system more liberal, having major democratic powers out there that are both strong and liberal are useful. In theory, an more unified, integrated EU, and increasingly liberal versions of India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and maybe Japan (the military issue decreases their power) would prove very useful. However, they have only really paid attention to India out of this group and only as a potential counterweight to a rising China. In the end, for them it is not so much about the spread of liberalism per say, but instead about power.

Posted by Reality Man | July 18, 2007 12:04 PM

Any lawyer will tell you, if you’re negotiating a contract and the other side thinks you’ll never walk away, you’ve got no leverage.

In related news, after Dem leaders took impeachment "off the table", the administration stopped even bothering with appearances of following the law, keeping Abu G in office despite his obvious incompetence, lies and corruption, and telling Harriet Miers not to bother showing up to answer a subpoena.

I think this administration has a pretty good idea how leverage works.

Posted by jimBOB | July 18, 2007 12:08 PM

The craziness of the establishment position, of which Tom Friedman is an invaluable reporter - because he is so transparent - is encoded in the Iraqi oil bill. The reporting on it in the U.S. MSM is all about the distribution of oil revenues, as if - sensibly - that was the entire content of the bill. Of course, the bill's content is firstly about destroying the Iraqi state's hold over the oil industry. There's no good Iraqi reason for this - one thing that was continuous up through Saddam's regime was that the oil ministry did an excellent job of oilfield management. The problems with the oil fields since 1992 are the result of the sanctions. But the U.S. does not have an interest in letting the Iraqis build on a past success here. This is just what imperialism is: the interests of an aggressive, more militarily stronger nation trump the interests of the territories it is supposedly "protecting", such protection often taking the form of occupation. The same is true with all the laws and the 'constitution' that was written for the Iraqis, or by Iraqis having to 'consult' with Americans. The same is true with Iran-Iraq relations, which the US is busy trying to worsen. The course of the occupation has revealed, as was inevitable, that the U.S. and Iraq have radically different interests.

Friedman, however, who spent the 90s celebrating the fact that 'economics' was now impervious to political pressure - his golden straightjacket thesis - is simply extending the anti-democratic part of the program, which was why invading Iraq was a natural fit for him and the neo-liberals around Clinton. The same people who were more than willing, four years after the fall of communism, to corrupt entirely the Russian election process to place a mafia connected drunk at the head of Russia are eager to partition or subdue Iraq - paying no attention to the fact that Iraqis are as opposed to partition as they are to the American occupation. The imperialist mindset has sunk in so deep in the American establishment that this data point isn't even mentioned. Why, after all, mention what the Iraqis want?

Posted by roger | July 18, 2007 12:53 PM

Because of this, Iraq is not a platform for the "projection of American military power" in the region.

Are you kidding? Check out the huge fortress we're building in Baghdad. Anything we could project from Kuwait or Qatar could (their theory goes) be done far more effectively in an Iraq of our own making. Remember: all Cheney wanted was a Chalabi figure to rule and grease the skids of American interest.

As for oil interests, again look to Cheney, or the people whose pockets he is in. War is a racket, and rebuilding Iraq's oil infrastructure was to benefit American companies.

Use Occam's Razor here. For better or worse, Bush actually believes in all the rhetoric about the power of democracy to change Iraq, and the Arab world, for the better. His belief in egalitarianism, derived from his Christian faith, leads him to ignore the obvious tribalism, sexism, and intolerance that plague the Arab world and make it difficult for democracy to take hold there.

Again, this is Cheney's war. Cheney's war went badly, which left Bush to grasp for any rhetorical justification within reach. The chance that Cheney cares about any of the above is nil. He probably knows his policy has failed irretrievably, but he's also probably happy to stick Bush with the historical blame. But in the meantime we'll continue digging in with Fortress Baghdad, the money to build which will make leaving completely practically impossible for any President.

Posted by Bill | July 18, 2007 1:18 PM

roger, this is a good point that can't be overstated enough-- to a degree, the aftermath of the Iraq war fits in seamlessly to the 80s and 90s-era drive to encourage governments to dismantle and privatize their public sectors and state-owned industries. The region that never went through this was the middle east and their energy industry. The very existence of a such a huge nationalized industry like this is a huge offense and spit in the eye to neo-liberals like Friedman. Even if not explicit, this probably played a subconscious drive in their obsession with "democratizing" the middle east.

Posted by Tyro | July 18, 2007 1:25 PM

Friedman is really saying nothing.

Notice if the #1 conclusion is made Friedman doesn't say what happens if the conclusion is mistaken. He doesn't say what happens if the conclusion is correct. Should we withdraw in 30 days? Stay and help? Help in what way?

Suppose the #2 conclusion is made. What if the carnage gets worse while the UN ponders for a year or a decade? Where is the supervising UN force going to come from - other nations don't seem all that eager to jump into the meat grinder.

#3 is at least clear. But why move US forces to the border?

I think the error is in the analogy to a legal negotiation. The choices assume all Iraqi's want the present government to be substantially restructured and the US policy to fail.

The analogy also fails because neither Iraqi or US policy can be static. Lawyers are fairly sure the law will not change while they argue. And they have good ways of assessing both facts and risks.

Posted by K | July 18, 2007 4:00 PM

Badly run imperialism is nonetheless imperialism.

Succinct but true, as a comment on the history of empire.

And that is the point that is not fully grasped by those (here and elsewhere) who seek to dismiss the imperial designs of the US Middle East project.

That is why, also, the “incompetence dodge” will come back to haunt the Democrats when their turn comes to deal with the imperatives of America’s “strategic interest” in the Middle East.

And, by the way, apropos of Bush’s zeal for bringing “freedom” and “democracy” to the hapless brown people of the Middle East, who can forget the fervor of 19th century European imperialists to bring “Christianity” to the benighted natives of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Posted by Justin X | July 18, 2007 4:01 PM

"Are you kidding? Check out the huge fortress we're building in Baghdad."

The embassy? You think we need a big embassy in Baghdad to bomb the crap out of Iran? Of course not. If anything, the embassy provides a handy local target for retaliation. Which supports my original point that the purpose of having troops in Iraq now is not to "project American power"; it's to facilitate Bush's Wilsonian "Forward Strategy of Freedom".

It may sound like bullshit to you that Bush actually believes that democracy can take hold among "hapless brown people of the Middle East" (as Justin X calls them), and that, once implanted, democracy will weaken the call of jihad. But that's what Bush believes, and that's what drives his policy. And it's the only explanation that makes sense.

Posted by Fred | July 18, 2007 4:26 PM

But that's what Bush believes, and that's what drives his policy. And it's the only explanation that makes sense.

The "great man" theory of history has never succeeded in explaining anything.

Posted by Justin X | July 18, 2007 4:32 PM

I find it amazing that the commentators here take Tom Friedman seriously. This guy with his give the Iraq adventure 6 more months and his the world is flat pronouncement is a proven moron whose imbecility even exceeds that of David Broder.

Posted by SLC | July 18, 2007 7:10 PM

I find it amazing that the commentators here take Tom Friedman seriously.

It's more that he needs to be taken meta-seriously; since other people take him seriously, it's worth knowing what they're reading.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 18, 2007 9:41 PM

I think Matthew had it about right.

The critical strategic paradox of Bush's policy has been that, to ensure that the Iraqi's would go along with permanent American military bases, the Americans would have to install a very weak central Iraqi government, dependent on American military power to survive.

The Bush effort to "strengthen" the Iraqi economy and promote a democratic polity was a charade, with the money largely diverted into corruption and patronage, for both Americans and Iraqis.

The paradox is that any Iraqi government weak enough to want the Americans to stay, is too weak to hold the country together, and Iraq has spun out of control.

What was intended to be a base for projecting American power outward, intimidating Iran and Syria, while protecting the interests of Bush family friends in Saudi Arabia and among the Gulf States, has collapsed in on itself.

In some respects, the Bush policy has succeeded mightily. Bush prevented the resumption of Iraqi oil production under the aegis of the French and Russians, by intervening before the sanctions regime broke down. Saudi Arabia would have been in serious trouble, due to the precipitous decline in Saudi oil production quality and quantity, but were rescued by the run-up in oil prices. Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton and Bechtel have not done so badly, either.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | July 19, 2007 12:36 AM

If anything, the embassy provides a handy local target for retaliation. Which supports my original point that the purpose of having troops in Iraq now is not to "project American power"; it's to facilitate Bush's Wilsonian "Forward Strategy of Freedom".

Nothing says freedom like having the nation that invaded you take over four square miles of the capital and the largest swimming pool in Iraq.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 19, 2007 12:47 AM

For once I agree with SLC--though I have the sneaking suspicion that he disses Friedman mainly to shore up his "liberal" credentials. Friedman is a fucking idiot. Seriously. His columns are filled with banal statements of the bleeding obvious when he's not patently wrong about a particular issue. Friedman's supreme stature and prominence in American political/foreign affairs discourse constitutes exhibit A testifying to the intellectual degradation of our society and culture.

Posted by Warren | July 19, 2007 1:20 AM

For once I agree with SLC--though I have the sneaking suspicion that he disses Friedman mainly to shore up his "liberal" credentials.

SLC is a liberal. Without a doubt. I surmised a great deal about who SLC was withing about 10 posts of him being here, his age, he's Jewish, he's a votes for democrats, and none of that information was there within 10 posts.

If you want to kick SLC out of the liberal club you need to get ready to throw out the entire club of Democratic U.S. Senators and nearly all of the Democratic House of Representatives.

You could let SLC sub for Tom Lantos and chair the House Committee on Foreign Relations and it wouldn't change much (SLC might actually be more sane about Chavez and Cuba).

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 19, 2007 1:45 AM

Forgot, they renamed the house committee to Foreign Affairs. SLC would probably still be an improvement to the still standing Senate version that has the original name over Joe Biden.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 19, 2007 1:56 AM

Matthew has hit the nail on the head and driven it flush to the plank. Its all right there for public inspection on the website of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Its been there all along if anyone cares to read it.

Posted by Jim Somers | July 19, 2007 12:35 PM

To ascribe any true ideological belief in "democracy" to George Bush, this administration, or neocons in general, flies squarely in the face of all evidence. There have been far too numerous examples of the opposite, including:

• Not supporting Aristide in Haiti, who despite all of his flaws, was democratically elected.
• Supporting Musharraf in Pakistan despite the fact that he came to power through a coup against the previous democratically elected administration.
• At a minimum turning a blind eye in Venezuela to the coup against Chavez, and more probably giving tacit support.
• Not supporting the arguably only real democratic Arab government in Lebanon during the recent Israeli siege.
• Not supporting, and in fact taking sanctions against, despite their flaws, the democratically elected Hamas led Palestinian government.
• Supporting countries such as Egypt who's democracies are at best a "sham".
• Continuing to support normalized trade relations with China despite their many anti-democratic actions against their people.
• Supporting numerous totalitarian Eastern Block countries who have harshly repressed petitions for democratic reforms.
• Arguably stealing the election in 2000 and, if you put much weight in Palast (I do), probably stealing 2004 as well. Certainly they have made well documented attempts to suppress (most likely Democratic leaning) minority voters.
• Delaying Iraqi elections until the CPA could set laws in stone that would be difficult to democratically revert, thus fulfilling the neo-con economic agenda.

If anything the clear message to take is Bush et al are highly anti-democratic. Why Friedman is oblivious to this, given his day job is to focus on just this sort of thing is a good question.

For those who would point to "realpolitik" driving many of these anti-democratic examples, I'd have to say quite clearly that either you believe in democracy or you don't. You can't believe in democracy only when it supports your interests or agenda. Saying otherwise would imply that should say, Hilary get elected, it would be acceptable commit a coup to remove her. The basis of civil democracy depends on accepting even those viewpoints that are not ideal and using non-violent means to convince those you disagree with.

So, to those who might argue that Matt is towing the standard liberal "conspiracy" theories here, rather than following Occam's razor as it were, I've got to say it's the opposite. It's quite a stretch of threading the needle to believe that it really is about democracy in Iraq. It certainly wasn't until no WMDs were found (and Bush is so fond of accusing others of "rewriting history").

Posted by Matt Fahrner | July 19, 2007 1:33 PM

Like Fred, my initial reaction to claims that we invaded Iraq "for the oil" was skepticism. After all, Iraq would still be selling its oil on the open market; we wouldn't be loading it onto tankers and sending it directly to the US without paying for it.

But we are trying to privatize it, and in the special case that is Iraq, that's pretty close.

First, note that Iraqi oil is some of the easiest in the world to extract: we're not talking about drilling 2000 feet deep under the North Sea here. Yet, unlike every other Middle Eastern nation, all of which forbid foreign ownership of their oil industry, Iraq's "government" is actually debating privatizing its own oil production. This would allow foreign owned oil companies (and with the American occupation rules still applying to this area, this means American oil companies), to pocket between 20% and 70% of an area's oil production, by entering into "production sharing agreements (PSAs)."

Let's do some math and figure out what a 20% royalty tax from Iraq to American oil comapnies might be worth. Iraq has minimum reserves of 112 billion barrels of oil, which at $60/barrel, is worth about $6.7 trillion dollars (Iraq may have considerably more, since exploration has stalled for the past 15 years or so). A 20% PSA fee would thus be worth about 1.3 trillion dollars to the respective companies (none of this money would go to the American public, of course, just to the highest execs at the respective oil exploration and engineering companies). Hey, doesn't Dick Cheney still own some Halliburton stock?

Now, virtually everything we've done in Iraq, right or wrong, makes sense when viewed through the lens of privatization and PSAs, that is, as an attempt to take ~20% of Iraq's oil money and distribute it to some of Cheney's friends.

We started off, recall, with a DoD sponsored plan to install Ahmed Chalabi as the head of the new Iraqi government. Chalabi told the WaPo, as early as December 2002, that he'd look kindly to entering into PSAs should he come into power somehow. Our government abandoned this plan only when it became clear he had no following within Iraq.

Next, the American occupation authority tried to privatize Iraq's industries directly, but this time they ran into trouble from the oil company lawyers, who warned that according to the 1949 Geneva conventions, this would not be legal, and Iraq's later governments would simply be able to walk away from expensive leases. They needed an authentic Iraqi government to agree to the desired PSAs.

So around this time, Bush started talking about holding elections in Iraq. But note, he doesn't need a strong Iraqi government, he needs one sufficiently dependent upon US troops for its existence that it can be pushed around to sign away 20% of Iraq's oil wealth. And indeed, although you won't read it in the American press, some of the most unpopular parts of the new Iraqi oil law deal with privatizing Iraq's oil industry: the delays aren't all due to Shia vs. Sunni fights.

Today, Iraq has a very weak government, apparently unable to operate *any* offices outside of the green zone. The US is pushing it *very* hard to pass an oil law to privatize the Iraqi oil industry, which would transfer over a trillion dollars to American oil companies over the next decade or so. You can bet that Bush and Cheney, with 150,000 US troops sitting on top of a cool *trillion* plus dollars, isn't going to agree to the US troops leaving Iraq until that money is sitting in American banks, or until Congress recognizes that the goal of this war is theft, pure, although not simple, and gets us out of there.

If you want to read a good article on this, check out http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197 or for more details, the articles in http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/irqindx.htm .

Posted by PghMike | July 19, 2007 3:38 PM

Friedman is a fucking idiot.

How could that be the case? He types to well.

IMHO it's clear that Tom Friedamn is a star--i.e., an enormous gasbag held together solely by its own self-gravity.

Posted by taz | July 19, 2007 8:42 PM