Oil

Alan Greenspan says he is "saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." I'm saddened, too. The argument on this point never seems to go anywhere. I mean, alternative to it being "about oil" is that it was "about" Saddam's threat to the wider region and it happens to be a region that's . . . full of oil so it all comes around the same anyway.

The real question worth debating is whether the policies we've enacted in this regard are, in fact, necessary or even useful to securing the energy supply the world needs. It seems to me that they are, in fact, much more driven by paranoia and inability to do cost-benefit analysis (like would the economic damage of marginally more expensive oil really exceed the economic costs of the giant US military presence in the Gulf?) than from sober-minded calculation of what the world needs from its oil-producing regions. When there was a Soviet Union around that might plausible dominate the military east if the US didn't push back, it may have made sense to adopt such an aggressive posture there, but instead of relaxing following the retreat of Communism we've tightened our grip in a way that seems to have achieved nothing.

Comments

The Bush crowd, principally Rumsfeld and Cheney, originally believed in American omnipotence. Why ask when you can command? Now, I think the Administration is rather desperately seeking an enemy, because national security is the only issue the Republicans have.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | September 16, 2007 10:56 AM

The ideas that the war either a) is all about oil or b) has absolutely nothing to do with oil . . . seem, to me, equally bizarre.

Posted by southpaw | September 16, 2007 11:22 AM

Southpaw,

Well, let's see. Yes, it was about other things than oil - I mean, we do have other interests in the Middle East, primarily Israel, and then there is the barren logic of the hegemon, which is compelled, or feels compelled, to swat down all threats to its power. Those are the biggies. I'm not one of the people who thinks it was DIRECTLY about helping non-oil industry friends and supporters of the Bush administration, such a Haliburton, but there are always those interests lurking in the background.

What it wasn't about, at all, in any measure, was Democracy, terrorism, Al Quida, WMD or any of Bush's lying justifications for the war crime of invading Iraq.

Bush and Cheney, after a fair trial, merit the same punishment that was meted out after WW II for hte same crime of aggressive warfare.

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 11:36 AM

If you watch today's 'This Week' on ABC, it becomes obvious that the memo has come down to Will, Friedman, Zakaria et. al that the new moral imperative for America is to stay in Iraq for ten more years, a time limit that will inevitably increase to 20 to 30 etc.

The American pundits should all be shipped to Ramadi to pontificate to the Iraqis.

Posted by gregor | September 16, 2007 11:37 AM

I agree with both Mr Vanneman and Mr Southpaw; how boring. Best book on the subject: 'Banking on Baghdad'. Documents how the British/French and later American oil companies were deeply involved in the entire formation of the Iraqi state. Without the oilfields, no Iraq. I s'pose this is not excessively conspiratorial. Without 'resources' the boundaries and politics of most nations would be very different than they are. Still, the present unhappy situation is merely the latest scene in a lengthy drama whose central theme is oil. Almost anything by Kevin Phillips (I'm currently reading American Theocracy) places the Bush family and associates in center stage for several decades past.

For so many reasons, the US simply MUST pioneer the post-petrolium civilization that is striving to be born.

Posted by JohnMcC | September 16, 2007 11:40 AM

It seems to me that they are, in fact, much more driven by paranoia and inability to do cost-benefit analysis (like would the economic damage of marginally more expensive oil really exceed the economic costs of the giant US military presence in the Gulf?) than from sober-minded calculation of what the world needs from its oil-producing regions.

It's not about oil. It is about paranoia (you're right). That is it's fear of high gas prices. Like the day Bush the Elder woke up and Saddam had invaded Kuwait, just like we had greenlighted, and lo, oil had gone to 60$ a barrel and MUNICH MUNICH MUNICH.

m, while you're doing something with your transmission and oil, you should maybe get a new belt and some plugs and do something about the antifreeze too!

Posted by max | September 16, 2007 11:40 AM

I agree with both Mr Vanneman and Mr Southpaw; how boring. Best book on the subject: 'Banking on Baghdad'. Documents how the British/French and later American oil companies were deeply involved in the entire formation of the Iraqi state. Without the oilfields, no Iraq. I s'pose this is not excessively conspiratorial. Without 'resources' the boundaries and politics of most nations would be very different than they are. Still, the present unhappy situation is merely the latest scene in a lengthy drama whose central theme is oil. Almost anything by Kevin Phillips (I'm currently reading American Theocracy) places the Bush family and associates in center stage for several decades past.

For so many reasons, the US simply MUST pioneer the post-petrolium civilization that is striving to be born.

Posted by JohnMcC | September 16, 2007 11:40 AM

Of course it's about oil; How else do you suppose Saddam could afford to be a threat to the wider region?

Everything about the middle east is "about oil" in some sense or another, because if there weren't all that oil under the region, it would be a no consequence backwater, of interest only to archaeologists and the occasional tourist.

And we have to care about the region not just because we need to keep the oil flowing, but because we're buying the oil, and that means a huge flood of money going to whoever sells it. And the way they spend that money has a huge impact on the world, whether they spend it on developing nuclear weapons, funding world-wide terrorism, promoting bloodthirsty sects of Islam...

So, yes, it IS all about the oil. Just not in the "We're there to steal it" way most people who say that mean.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 16, 2007 11:45 AM

Matthew: again, you have to at least address the question of whether the war adds to the comparative advantage of US oil and oil-services corporations, as opposed to the question of whether it is in the interests of the US as a whole. You may think that's not politically important, but you have to at least raise the issue. I mean, in the week after a Hunt Oil chairman who serves on an Administration policy advisory committee deals the final blow to the possibility of a unified Iraqi government by cutting a deal on the side with the Kurds, you have to at least look at the extent to which US policy decisions may be driven by people whose visions of the American interest are too closely bound up with their visions of their own private oil-related corporate interests.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 16, 2007 11:49 AM

“Oil as THE REAL rationale” is a convenient and deceptive red herring for the Neocons to deflect blame for this catastrophe they have brought to the US and Iraq. 750,000 - 1.2 million dead Iraqis? MSM is essentially silent but history and world opinion will not be so kind.

It is bullshit and deceptive to suggest that oil was the prime factor behind the ideological zeal of the war’s most key and fervent supporters and architects: Wolfowitz, Kristol, Hyatt, Lieberman, et.al.

Perhaps oil was a collateral benefit to get the likes of the greedy Cheney and the mentally feeble Bush to jump on the killing train.

Posted by dex | September 16, 2007 11:56 AM

Dear Matt: You don't have "bingo", but you do have "bin." The ineffectiveness of using the U.S. military to secure oil is the most evident area of the unspoken trauma affecting the U.S. military and political elite. Namely, we've spent, what, googolplex dollars on our military, and in the past six years, we've found that the most powerful armed forces of history are of little practical use to us. They can't protect us from loonies who drive planes into buildings. They even catch 'em. They can defeat any army that stands and fights, insuring that none ever will. And they cannot occupy hostile foreign territory.
Unilateral U.S. military action cannot achieve anything of current value to us. That threatens the entire military-industrial complex.

Posted by JMG | September 16, 2007 12:03 PM

Brett Bellmore

"Of course it's about oil; How else do you suppose Saddam could afford to be a threat to the wider region?"

Written with the intellect of a slug, a dense sinky slug at that.

Posted by Jennifer | September 16, 2007 12:17 PM

Well, that was a cogent reply.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 16, 2007 12:21 PM

Look, anyone who actually believes that our Iraq War was primarily "about oil" must also believe that that group of Haitians down in South Florida trying to buy "terrorist uniforms" was a dire threat to American security...

Posted by RKU | September 16, 2007 12:22 PM

Re RKU

I have only one question for Mr. RKU. Does he think that the Iraq adventure would have taken place if Iraq had no oil. That's a yes or a no.

Posted by SLC | September 16, 2007 12:27 PM

The Administration was relatively open about the fact that the Iraq War satisfied several constituencies. Some of those constituencies were interested in the area because of oil. It's quite likely that not all of them were. Would the Iraq War have happened without oil in Iraq? Nobody knows. Would it have happened only for oil? Nobody knows.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | September 16, 2007 12:37 PM

LarryM, you make a good point, that we also have interest in the region because of Israel. That beinig said, how politically inconvenient has it been to mention that role in Iraq policy?

Posted by Mike | September 16, 2007 1:01 PM

We don't know the extent to which the Iraq war was "about" oil, but we what we do know is that it certainly wasn't about the reasons the Administration gave or hinted at in late 2002 to justify the invasion. And that is what makes this war unique.

The army is attempting in Iraq to carry out a mission that is double secret, it has never been coherently explained by the Administration in an accurate manner. The army itself either doesn't know why it is in Iraq, or thinks it knows why and is wrong (ie alot of the enlisted think Saddam was behind 9-11, but I'm sure none of the generals belive that). No wonder that it is floundering.

Posted by Ed | September 16, 2007 1:01 PM

The most important thing about oil is that whoever has it sells it into the market. Controlling the oil is meaningless. There is either oil going to market or oil not going to market. Except for Saudi's brief boycott in 73 sellers have never seriously withheld supply. (sure the OPEC cartel has held down sales from time to time but when prices are high they are just pretending to be holding quotas).

The devil Saddam sold all the oil he could. Sadly for him after the Gulf War we imposed restrictions on how much oil he could sell and the other pressures on him led to a severe degradation of their oil fields. Rarely mentioned is that Iraq's percentage of reserves which are recoverable is easily the lowest in the world. We have managed to put a significant dent in world oil supplies with our Iraq policies. I'm just saying.

In a hugely related but never discussed matter we could easily put stupendous pressure on Iran, or any oil exporter by blockading their shipments. Of course that is never discussed. The reason is pretty obvious. Can you say huge price spike and, ohmygod, recession. So anyway while producers always produce and send to market if they can we never, except in the Iraq case, never cut off the supplies. If we attack Iran we won't bomb their oil infrastructure and you can bet they will still sell, They have to, Both sides are trapped in the need for the revenue or the need for the energy.

We didn't go into Iraq to 'control' the oil because standing on top of the oil has nothing to do with control, except in the minds of juvinile Risk players.

Posted by rapier | September 16, 2007 1:04 PM

As an economist Greenspan probably thinks that Bush evaluated the costs and benefits of invading Iraq including the benefit of increased control over the use of Middle East oil. Greenspan is asserting that without the oil benefit Bush wouldn't have given the order to invade-- all the other benefits together wouldn't have justified the costs.

Without the oil benefit Bush might have decided to invest instead in more military action in Afghanistan, or possibly Somalia or Sudan, or some other country that happens to be rich in oil but is deficient in freedom and democracy.

Posted by PeterE | September 16, 2007 1:25 PM

Matt Highlights only a portion of this massive f**k up.

The biggest part of it is that what we should have learned from 9/11 is that we needed a Manhattan Project/Space Race level of support to find an alternative to oil.. immediately.

That was six years ago and the folks that have no interest in seeing this happen, including the president, despite his flirtation with the corn lobby, basically suck all the life out of it looking for crony kickbacks and protecting existing industries.

Posted by Thunderlips | September 16, 2007 1:36 PM

As a gloss on what Rapier said at 1:04 pm, about how oil producing countries need to sell all they can, the one big exception over the years has been Saudi Arabia. They've been able to sell much less than their output and still get along.

And boy do we ever suck up to them.

Posted by Hal | September 16, 2007 2:16 PM

RE SLC:

Well, let me put it this way. I'd say that our invasion of Iraq was mostly "about oil" to the exact same extent that I believe that "SLC" is himself fanatically motivated by the "oil" issue, spends all of his waking moments thinking "about oil" and is probably a "oil" company employee in private life.

After all, everyone knows that Norman Podhoretz, Michael Ledeen, Bill Kristol, Martin Peretz, Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Friedman, and Judith Miller have spent their entire adult lives writing about absolutely nothing except "oil"...

Posted by RKU | September 16, 2007 2:22 PM

And the way they spend that money has a huge impact on the world, whether they spend it on developing nuclear weapons,

Which Saddam wasn't doing;

funding world-wide terrorism,

which Saddam wasn't doing to any meaningful extent--certainly nothing approaching our pals the Saudis;

promoting bloodthirsty sects of Islam...

which Saddam wasn't doing.

In short, Brett, your comment has no real relevance to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, so I'm not sure what your point was.

Posted by Uncle Kvetch | September 16, 2007 2:31 PM

Um, the war was about proving Bush a bigger man than his father. Which is kinda about oil, but mostly about psychosis.

Posted by Kimmitt | September 16, 2007 2:35 PM

Re RKU

"Well, let me put it this way. I'd say that our invasion of Iraq was mostly "about oil" to the exact same extent that I believe that "SLC" is himself fanatically motivated by the "oil" issue, spends all of his waking moments thinking "about oil" and is probably a "oil" company employee in private life"

Mr. RKU doesn't answer the question which was would the Iraq invasion have happened if Iraq had no oil. Mr. RKU mentions a number of individuals in his response so I will expand the question. Does Mr. RKU think that any of these people would have agitated for an invasion of Iraq if Iraq had no oil? And to respond to Mr. RKUs' query about my alleged employment in the oil industry, the answer is no, although I admit to having been an occasional reader of "Oil and Gas Journal" years ago.

Posted by SLC | September 16, 2007 3:29 PM

It seems to me, that even if there was no direct interest in benefitting the "hanger-on's" of the War (Halliburton, Hunt Oil etc...), there was still the effect these people had on the choice.

In other words, for Halliburton, at some level, whether consciously or unconsciously, most likely while meeting or lobbying the Bush crowd, likely provided at least support of the decision to invade Iraq, even if, they provided a rationale beyond the direct profit their entities would acheive from the invasion.

So even if Bush and Cheney never once thought consciously to invade Iraq to benefit their friends, I am sure they were comforted by the fact that their idea had support amongst their friends.

Posted by Brad | September 16, 2007 3:36 PM

It seems to me, that even if there was no direct interest in benefitting the "hanger-on's" of the War (Halliburton, Hunt Oil etc...), there was still the effect these people had on the choice.

In other words, for Halliburton, at some level, whether consciously or unconsciously, most likely while meeting or lobbying the Bush crowd, likely provided at least support of the decision to invade Iraq, even if, they provided a rationale beyond the direct profit their entities would acheive from the invasion.

So even if Bush and Cheney never once thought consciously to invade Iraq to benefit their friends, I am sure they were comforted by the fact that their idea had support amongst their friends.

Posted by Brad | September 16, 2007 3:36 PM

Mike,

True enough. But I must say, by and large, I don't think that Israel plays quite as big a role as some people believe in our Middle East policy in general and Iraq in particular (I DO happen to think it's playing a very large role in the coming aggression against Iran).

Interestingly, I think that if we focus very directly upon Iraq, there is a strong case that concern about Israel played very little, if any, direct role. Invading Iraq was arguably irrelevant to Israel's interests, and even arguably contrary to those interests. Israel's role there was more indirect - in the sense that that is one of the reasons why we seem to think that we need to exercise hegemonic control in the ME, and a big part of the decision to aggress against Iraq was to protect our role as the regional Hegemon.

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 4:14 PM

When there was a Soviet Union around that might plausible dominate the military east if the US didn't push back, it may have made sense to adopt such an aggressive posture there, but instead of relaxing following the retreat of Communism we've tightened our grip in a way that seems to have achieved nothing.

Well, but even though the Cold War is over, the US has been competing pretty heavily with Russia and China for strategic turf in the Middle East (see e.g. Russian opposition to Iraq War). On paper, gaining Iraq is a smart move, if you only consider the benefits.

Posted by Toadmonster | September 16, 2007 4:17 PM

Brad,

You're still missing something. Halliburton, the rest of the military industrial complex and the oil industry play a more subtle role than the cartoonish version that is often advanced. To oversimplify a bit, by exerting there financial muscle (in terms of political contributions, primarily), they help insure that the people who are elected are people who more or less sincerely believe that the United States should continue to maintain an interventionist foreign policy. Not that you're wrong about your suggestion, just that that is an incomplete picture.

This stuff is nothing new. See LBJ's rise to power, which never could have happened without the large scale support of Brown and Root. Now where have we heard THAT name recently?

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 4:20 PM

Several years ago when I ran out to buy Forbidden Truth I remember thinking aha! This will answer everything!

Sadly, the book turned out to be a collection of unsubstantiated horseshit.

However, it is worth rereading if only for the subtext. Obviously the "Caspian Sea pipeline" theory became irrelevant once Bush actively began campaigning to invade Iraq: why buy the cow when you can get milk for free?

The fact that Bush redeployed the military from Afghanistan (al Qaida, bin Laden, zero oil) to Iraq (no al Qaida, no bin Laden, mega-oil) says an obvious something.

Posted by Monty | September 16, 2007 4:29 PM

Well, the role played---if any---by the Oil Lobby in pushing for the Iraq War is an empirical, debatable point. And while it certainly can't be settled conclusively, I'm enormously skeptical myself.

Consider, for example, that while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he was actually lobbying quite strongly for America to *lift* sanctions on Saddam and reestablish relations (thereby giving more potential business to Halliburton). Afterward, once Cheney reentered Government, and hooked up with Irving Libby and all the other neocons, Saddam suddenly became the great menace who had to be overthrown.

Also, during the lead up to the War the NYT ran a big article on the sentiments in the Houston Petroleum Club, ground-zero of the Oil Lobby. Apparently, none of the members thought the war made any sense to them, but said that they assumed that Bush must have some very strong secret intelligence on WMD or something. Meanwhile, every DC/NYC neocon was daily shrieking for war at the top of his lungs and Judy Miller and Jeff Goldberg were publishing their garbage...

If the Oil Lobby really was behind the war, it seems that nobody bothered to actually inform the leading Oil Lobby members...

Posted by RKU | September 16, 2007 5:13 PM

LarryM:

Great point. At some point once the politician rises to political prominence, who is beholden to who? Does Halliburton support Bush because Bush is in agreement with their ideas, or is Bush in agreement with their ideas because Bush is beholden to them? Only Bush really knows, since he actually is the one officially in charge of setting the US's agenda both domestically and foreign policy-wise.

In other words, I am sure Bush already had some form of ideological consistency with Halliburton's ideas before Halliburton came along.

But this gets to a larger point that the MSM NEVER dares discuss, or if they do, it is reduced to some sort of cartoon level where the proponents are nothing but conspiracy nuts. The question that needs to be discussed is this:

throughout the entire post WWII period of American history, especially its foreign policy decisions, how many of those decisions were made on behalf of corporate interests which, were sometimes at the expense of the general population of the citizens in that country/region. And how many of those decisions has placed the United States in a position of being disliked by those citizens may have or is contributing to the level of hatred to be sufficient to generate the rage needed to decide to kill onself for such a cause?

Posted by Brad | September 16, 2007 5:25 PM

RKU:

first of all, I take such Petroleum Club sentiment with a grain of salt. I mean, one thing that may have caused a bit of trouble for Bush would be a bunch of oil executives touting about how great it would be to invade Iraq. I can assure you, those people would not have talked to the NY Times without first calculating how it would impact the invastion itself.

Also - keep this in mind. They disagreed with him officially, yet, supported the decision based on the assumption of "secret" intelligence about WMD. Knowing how the oil industry operates, whenever they have an issue they "actually" disagree with (think environmental regulation), they not only disagree, they fight it with every weapon at their disposal. Yet, here they are publicly announcing they think going to war is a bad idea for their industry, yet are okay because the "government" has information? If they really disagreed with it, do you not think a bit more of a fight would have been put up if it was against their interests?

Posted by Brad | September 16, 2007 5:34 PM

There are also some pretty serious negative feedback loops running. After all,during the cold war the threat from the Soviet Union, while exaggerated, was not made up. It was used by people and institutions with a more self centered agenda - the military industrial complex, inter alia (and recall Eisenhower's invocation of that phrase, no liberal pacifist he). Post WW II we took on an interventionist mantle for reasons good and bad; once a nation takes on that role, and people get used to it, it takes on a life of its own. At that point, you necessarily NEED a large degree of control/influence by the beneficiaries of such policies, though certainly you had that too.

And then came the end of the cold war, which could have broken that cycle, and threatened to do so. As much as the anti-inteventionists rightly condemn aspects of the Clinton administration foreign policy, it's evident in retrospect that aspects of our interventionist foreign policy were being caller into question - ironically in some cases from parts of the Republican party.

And then 9/11, which drove us collectively crazy for a while, and (along with the 2000 presidential election; ironically whatever one's take on that, Bush did not run as a hard core interventionist and the election wasn't fought on those grounds) allowed the most extreme advocates of empire to seize the day. They lacked effective opposition for many reasons, not the least of which were habits of thought common to politicians and ordinary citizens alike as the result of over 50 years of interventionism, not to mention the aforementioned collective insanity caused by 9/11.

And then you have the remorseless logic of the hegemon, referred to previously. I'm convinced that a large part of the reason for the lack of push back on Iran is simply that, if you accept the assumptions upon which our foreign policy is bases, Iran really IS a threat to our foreign policy. Of course that doesn't change the fact that attacking Iran would be both immoral AND insane. But those are the kind of corners that imperial powers often back themselves into.

(Parenthetically, i think that many non interventionists tend to miss some of this to a certain extent, which makes there stuff seem more conspiratorial that it needs to be or really is. See, e.g., Arthur Silber, who does some wonderful work but who IMO sometimes misses some pf the subtleties).

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 5:50 PM

Brad:

Well, I'd certainly not regard one largely-anecdotal article in the NYT as conclusive. And since the article ran almost five years ago, I'd hardly trust my memory for every precise detail.

But as I recall it, the sentiment in the Petroleum Club was neither one of strong support for the pending war nor certainly any sort of clear opposition. Basically, the big oil men and all of their friends were very, very puzzled. None of them could figure out *why* we were getting ready to invade Iraq, so they generally assumed that Bush (who was after all "their" guy) must have some powerful reason, such as secret evidence of a advanced nuclear weapons program or something.

Needless to say, this sort of puzzlement and confusion is not what one would expect to see among the people even remotely connected to the drive for war. The contrast with the behavior of the DC/NYC neocons during this exact same period is extraordinarily sharp.

Posted by RKU | September 16, 2007 5:51 PM

we've found that the most powerful armed forces of history are of little practical use to us. They can't protect us from loonies who drive planes into buildings. They even catch 'em. They can defeat any army that stands and fights, insuring that none ever will. And they cannot occupy hostile foreign territory.
Unilateral U.S. military action cannot achieve anything of current value to us. That threatens the entire military-industrial complex.
Posted by JMG

Wrong. That assumes that laws and conventions drafted postwar to promote humaitarianism in wars involving clashes with organized armies but ineffective against assymmetric warfare will continue to be blindly obeyed. But its the law! The sacred law that diplomats 60 years ago thought wise! We must worship the law! No, law can be scrapped, and may have to be. In all of human history, but for recent decades when we tried fitting the square peg of guerrilla warfare into the round peg of humanitarian laws affecting conventional combat - resisting populations did not last against successfully invading armies. Conventional armies from the Hittites to the Xian dynasty, the Mongols, to Napoleons forces, to Saladin, to the Union Army, to the Wehrmacht did what was needed to make the civilian population submit.

All of history, nothing "magic" has prevented a hostile band of warriors from doing stuff ranging from burning Sumer's outlying cropfields to picking off a Roman trade ship to Indian braves from a tribe mostly not in favor of war from being able to pick off settlers with ease. Or the Soviet ability to launch 5,000 nuclear missiles and our military "not being able to stop them". And today there is nothing to stop extremists from any nation from flying more planes into our buildings.

Except consequences that opposing military can visit on them. Which should be swift and terrible and nearly berift of humanitarian considerations to establish deterrence.

We can if we choose, with allies, establish a system that ends planes being flown into buildings by assuring that any nation that supports knocking down our edifices gets a thousand knocked down for each one their agents topple.
We can, if we chose, realize that humanitarian 20th century rules have been made obsolete by assymmetric war tactics, and establish a new system that ends the current limits on fighting insurgencies decisively. How long would have the Iraqi insurgency lasted if the occupying army had stood back but cut off all electricity and road travel in "insurgent areas"? Accept that assymmetric war entails civilian suffering as the Union Army did in successful use of collective reprisals against Southern bushwackers??

Posted by Chris Ford | September 16, 2007 6:36 PM

Chris Ford,

You are a monster. I hope you and all like minded people die quickly. I don't want you to die horribly - I'm not the monster here - but just die so you don't pollute our polity by you sick fucking fantasies of death.

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 6:45 PM

Arthur Silber is nothing less than a great, albeit frustrated, writer. Educated, intelligent & literate, but ultimately too self-absorbed to be taken seriously on policy discussions.

Personally, I think his essays are second to none in terms of presenting and/or advancing an argument. But he's too wedded to his own worldview. Too inflexible.

Posted by Monty | September 16, 2007 7:08 PM

Though if I was an optimist - which I'm not - I'd think that "Chris Ford" was a brilliant parody to demonstrate the depths to which the world view of this nation's death merchants inevitably leads. Sadly there are all two many creatures who think exactly like Chris Ford thinks. Some of them, of course, our our enemies, though even they are slightly redeemed, as they have legitimate grievances, as well as values which, as deeply as I disagree with them, are more edifying than the values that Ford and his ilk hold, i.e., love of the almighty dollar. Not to mention that they are attacking a democracy, where one can at least argue that the civilians killed bear some responsibility for the actions of their government. Whereas slime like Ford get off (literally, most likely) killing innocent residents of authoritarian regimes who not only bear no responsibility for said regimes, but are themselves victims of such regimes.

In any event, precisely the same logic that guides non-human scum like Ford is the same logic that leads people to fly planes into buildings.

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 7:19 PM

Rapier - The most important thing about oil is that whoever has it sells it into the market. Controlling the oil is meaningless. There is either oil going to market or oil not going to market.

Rapier shares the flaw Matt has in believing that oil is somehow mandated to automatically go to a somehow sacred free market and never, ever be used as a political weapon by the nations or consortium of nations that control supply.

Which ignores the US/UK/Dutch embargo on Japan that killed much of Japan's strategic vision of conquest even before Pearl Harbor. The 1973 and 1979 Oil Embargos back when 70% of US oil was domestically produced before exploration limits and population growth reversed that ratio. In both times, the Arabs/OPEC chose times of American weakness - Vietnam fatigue/Watergate and then the craven Carter years.

The Gulf War asserted US commitment to safeguard the oil so it could reach market and not be controlled by a single Arab despot.

And the Euroweenies got a huge shock in 2005 when Putin laid the "What free market in natural gas?" hammer on them - showing that all the precious Euro agreements, lawyers, pieces of international trade law paper didn't obligate Russia to do what Russia doesn't want to do with its national - not open market - resources. Just as Russia hammered the rapacious Oligarchs who thought they stole Russis's oil and mineral resources fair and square have had a 5-year wakeup call...

Cutting and running would make Iran the major player in the Gulf. Not dominant, but more important than the West...and we would hear little to no peeps of protest from the Euros about Irans nuke weapons, Saudi Arabia's countering nuke weapons crash program, or Turkey's new nuke weapons programs..And in the US, well, the Democratic Left would have some explaining to do..

Posted by Chris Ford | September 16, 2007 7:30 PM

LarryM - You are a silly Lefty twat.

The deal was never that the civilians of authoritarian regimes were totally innocent and never to be retaliated against, whereas the citizens of democracies were all "fair game" for Hitler, the Soviets, the Islamist because they "vote thus can be killed for policies they voted on".

You as a mindless twat think that the property and lives of civilian Confederate rebels was somehow sacrosanct and that of we had occupied Japan and the Japanese chose to do mass killings of US soldiers that we would treat it as an individual "crime" problem. Not so. Not even Democrats with brains would say that.

Nor did any American, but the most craven Lefty, ever claim that Russia's cities were inviolate because they were full of "innocent civilinans " with no voice in an authoritarian Politburo's nuke attack on the US. If America had shared your delusion, we would have been attacked by a Communist totalitarian regime confident of light losses knowing their cities were safe while ours were "legitimate" targets. Only the certainty that the Soviet Union would be destroyed or hit with nuclear tactical weapons - according to the Soviet rulers own memoirs and papers - deterred the Soviets from attacking NATO through the Fulda gap in the mid-50s, kept the bombers in check in 1962, and in 1973 stopped Soviet preps for advancing ME interests with troops.

As long as we are name-calling, LarryM, anyone who says enemy civilian's lives are more valuable than American citizen's lives and must be spared at all costs relative to our own people and soldiers lives being lost --is a grovelling little Quisling and a disgusting craven anti-American.

Posted by Chris Ford | September 16, 2007 7:47 PM

But I guess my final words on Chris Ford - and heck, he would even agree with me, I wager - is that his position IS almost logically mandated if one wishes to continue to support the American Imperial project, and if one wants to "win." I put win in quotation marks, because, even aside from the immorality if it, such a victory would be the biggest Phyric victory in the history of civilization.

But for those of you who think that I'm an alarmist when I start talking about nuclear annihilation and 100s of million dead, it's the mindset of the Chris Ford's of the world that I'm talking about. Because whether he knows it or not (and I suspect that he does), that's the logical end point of the Chris Ford vision of "victory." And honestly I'll GLADLY take the worst case scenarios of the death lovers (though I highly doubt that it would come to that) over nuclear Armageddon.

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 7:47 PM

Well you fucking monster, given that I do not believe that you are even "human" in any meaningful sense of the word, I don't give a flying fuck what you think of me; in fact, I take your words as a badge of honor. But even if every word of it were true I'd rather be that than a fucking blood stained mass murderer like yourself. While as I said I hope your death, though quick and soon, is painless, I do hope that you burn in the fires of hell for all eternity.

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 7:51 PM

> Rapier shares the flaw Matt has in believing
> that oil is somehow mandated to automatically
> go to a somehow sacred free market and never,
> ever be used as a political weapon by the
> nations or consortium of nations that control
> supply.

Which is absolutely and utterly what the oil-producing nations can do now. Venezuela can start selling all of its oil to the PRC for euro and there is f-all the United States can do about it (unless Cheney would like to try four invasions at one time). Russia can and does use its oil and natural gas for political purposes, and is probably going to start doing a lot more of that soon. Etc.

So the United States can either (1) get to work now on ridding itself of dependence on oil (2) stick it head in the sand and assume the good-rollin' SUV times will continue forever.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | September 16, 2007 8:04 PM

And you notice that Ford doesn't deny that nuclear Armageddon is where his vision inevitably leads. He knows it, but despite his faux tough talking persona, he knows that stating that fact explicitly would be a step too far. But that's what he wants. He most likely has an orgasm just thinking about the skin melting off the faces of the innocent children, the sick fuck.

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 8:08 PM

Hey chill out dudes. Watch the language, there's kids reading.

Posted by nbt | September 16, 2007 8:18 PM

"There is either oil going to market or oil not going to market. Except for Saudi's brief boycott in 73 sellers have never seriously withheld supply. (sure the OPEC cartel has held down sales from time to time but when prices are high they are just pretending to be holding quotas).

The devil Saddam sold all the oil he could."

And according to Greg Palast's theory, that's why he had to go.

Not to mention that he, like the Iranians, were going to dump the US dollars as the medium of exchange. Opinions differ from economists on just how important that would have been in the market, but if you assume the oil companies cared, well...

There are obviously various actors in the situation, but there is little doubt that oil and the control of it plays a significant factor, as does hegemony and simple war-profiteering.

The war in Iran, despite being touted as an "air war only" to effect "regime change", will somehow manage to turn into a ground war, and just by accident, of course, US troops will invade Khuzestan, just across the border from Iraq, where most of the Iranian oil is. The justification will be, "Well, we've got to cut off their money flow so they can't afford to prosecute the war."

Oh, wait, no, the justification will be, "We have to seize the oil so they can't use the money to make WMDs and 'support terrorism abroad'."

Right, that's it...

There's a term for people who don't think oil plays a significant role in the Iraq war: suckers.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 16, 2007 8:27 PM

instead of relaxing following the retreat of Communism we've tightened our grip in a way that seems to have achieved nothing.

The key point. I'm happy to say that Edwards is being explicit in his criticism of Bush/Cheney's 'cold war mentality'. I'm sure I'm not alone in having thought about this for a few years. It's nice to hear a major candidate actually develop that line of critique. It's both true and politically effective to always point out the mediocrity - the banality, if you will - of the Bush/Cheney Approach.

Posted by jonnybutter | September 16, 2007 8:28 PM

"Invading Iraq was arguably irrelevant to Israel's interests, and even arguably contrary to those interests."

Which is why Israel advocated attacking Iran FIRST, then attacking Iraq, instead of the reverse. They only went on board with the Iraq war first when it was presumed that Iraq would be easy and the US would immediately attack Iran (and possibly Syria) as well.

Just didn't work out that way - yet.

Now, of course, the Iran war is definitely on, so Israel is happy.

And of course some explanation of Israel's considerable support of the Kurds in attempts to get a pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa is needed.

Israel wants ALL the Middle Eastern Arab and Persian nations reduced to chaos and rubble, so they can dominate the Middle East (as the US's lapdog - which in turn wags its tail frequently for its own benefit) and thus be allowed to unilaterally expel all the Palestinians from "Israel's territory" without any Arab state complaints to the UN.

That the US neocon concerns and Israel's concerns happen to nicely mesh with the concerns of the oil companies, the military-industrial-security complex, and Christian Zionist freaks just happens to be a "perfect storm" of bad news for the world.

It's not useful to debate who is the most influential here. They're ALL assholes who need to be taken out by any means necessary.

Some years back, the Ronald Raygun notion that "Armageddon" was actually going to be fought there was considered a quaint conceit of a senile old fool.

Well, the people I list above are trying to make it a reality.

Stop them or pay for it later. You've already seen the cost of Iraq. Want to double - or quadruple - down in Iran, Syria and Lebanon? And what are the consequences in five, ten or twenty years when the rest of the world - including nuclear armed Russia and China - are cut off from the Middle Eastern oil except to the "friends" of the US (if we have any left) or the US itself?

Within six months is my guess is what you've got left to stop it - if you can (which I also think you can't.)

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 16, 2007 8:39 PM

Re: Which ignores the US/UK/Dutch embargo on Japan that killed much of Japan's strategic vision of conquest even before Pearl Harbor.

These nations were able to embargo Japan because they also controlled the sealanes (most especially the British and Americans), and indeed the entire world trade system. The current OPEC nations have no such control and as such they are unable to dictate what happens to the oil they sell once it leaves their sovereign borders.

Re: The 1973 and 1979 Oil Embargos

???
There was no 1979 oil embrago. What happened is that turmoil in Iran resulted in a drastic decrease in Iranian oil production and this, coupled with OPEC opportunism, sent prices skyrocketing. The 1973 embargo involved only Arab states (but not Iran, Venezeula, etc.) and was actually ineffectual, or at most a symbolic propaganda effort, again because the embargoing countries could not control the oil once it left their borders. In 1973, and in 1979, the damage was done not by any embargo, but by the quadrupling of the price of oil by OPEC, using the crisis as cover for price goughing.

Re: You as a mindless twat think that the property and lives of civilian Confederate rebels was somehow sacrosanct

Confederate civilians suffered looting andarson on a grand scale in the Civil War but exceopt in the "dirty war" in the west that was about it. Murder and rape, when they occurred, were almost always the doing of deserters not regular troops and Union commanders, including General Sherman, summarily executed anyone they caught perpetrating those crimes on the civilian populace.

Re: Not to mention that he, like the Iranians, were going to dump the US dollars as the medium of exchange.

Unlikely. The Euro is not ready for prime time in this regard. The dollar may be a bit tarnished, as is all else American courtesy of that idiot in the White House, but it's still the only game in town for international finance.

Posted by JonF | September 16, 2007 8:56 PM

Well Jon, as you can see above I don't think that there is much point in engaging monsters like Ford, other than with invective, but if we are going to, you barely scratch the surface of the many problems with his use of past actions by the United States to justify his twisted murderous fantasies. The truth is while some of his examples are, as you correctly point out, not apposite, some of them (primarily the actions taken against Japan and, to a lesser extent, Germany in WW II.

Now I don't happen to think that the following facts justify those actions - we could have beaten both nations without descending to barbarity - and I happen to think that the logic of Ford's position mandates atrocities that, while similar in type, are a couple of orders or magnitude worse in terms of the amount of death that will be caused. But that being said, and unlike the present conflict, in WW II we were fighting in a just cause, and we were arguably engaged in an existential struggle. Some people think that certain otherwise horrific actions are justified when a nation faces an existential challenge. I don't, but I at least count it as a mitigating factor. But nations that engage in such tactics in an aggressive war deserve Nuremburg justice - if they're lucky.

Posted by LarryM | September 16, 2007 9:52 PM

LarryM - You are in deep fringe enemy-loving territory.
Stop your ball-licking of radical Muslims, and presenting your eager, quivering posterior to the enemy reaming and justice you think, as a foul American white oppressor...that you deserve.

At least Benedict Arnold was a brave man with a twisted, but intact sense of honor.

Posted by Chris Ford | September 17, 2007 1:00 AM

Haha, you psycho. I really struck a chord, didn't I? Interesting how you still don't deny that your insane fantasies of death end with the nuclear annihilation of 100s of millions of innocents. In any sane society you would be in a locked ward for the rest of your life. Why don't you go back to torturing defenseless animals, since you are too cowardly to go to Iraq do the killing yourself?

Posted by LarryM | September 17, 2007 1:12 AM

Stop your ball-licking of radical Muslims, and presenting your eager, quivering posterior to the enemy reaming and justice you think, as a foul American white oppressor...that you deserve.
At least Benedict Arnold was a brave man with a twisted, but intact sense of honor.
Posted by Chris Ford | September 17, 2007 1:00 AM

You know, I appreciate a good insult by metaphore and I know how necessary it can be to hit back when attacked, all's good in love and blog so to speak. But honestly Chris, if liberals wont lie down and accept school prayer or illegal abortion, how are they going to lie down for sharia?
It doesn't compute. What because the sharia masses are browner than average whatever they say will be ok-ay, do-kay? Yeah. Don't think so. Say what you want about so called self hating whites, at the end of the day, their personal freedom comes first. Sharia may be a nice conservative girl but she ain't ever gonna get to first base with Mr Liberal.

Her veil gets in the way...ba da bom.

Posted by Northern Observer | September 17, 2007 10:10 AM

Couple of things:

Chris Ford/Larry M. I read Chris's post as making the simple and historically accurate observation that occupiers can indeed succeed. But what is required is a level of ruthlessness that is no longer deemed acceptable to a liberal democracy.

It is accurate to say, though, that civilians have often been targeted by the US, notably in the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, and obviously the two nuclear bombs. The difference, "wars of survival" vs "wars of choice" is obvious. With Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though, the calculus no longer rested on survival, but on breaking Japan's will to resist and avoiding the massive casualties that invading the home islands would have all but guaranteed.

And Chris is right (and is not a monster for pointing these things out) that MAD hinged in large part on a perceived willingness to perpetrate wholesale civilian slaughter. If that model was ethically acceptable and efficacious, it is not insane or murderous to ponder its possible application in another setting. The US's nuclear umbrella, extended over Europe/NATO, was a logical counterweight to the Soviet Union's asymmetric numerical superiority in armor and troops.

The occupations of Germany and Japan succeeded in large part because both of those nations were psychologically and physically eviscerated. There was no will or ability to resist.

Now, I'm not advocating such drastic measures in Iraq because our survival is not at stake, and because we initiated the conflict, but as points of argument, it is a fact that occupying armies can indeed subdue civilian populations, as the Romans, most notably, demonstrated.

We certainly could impose our will militarily, but have evolved to the point where such an approach is no longer acceptable.

If, in the hypothetical, however, someone managed to detonate a true nuke in an American city, I would imagine that such self-imposed prohibitions would dissolve rather quickly. The question is whether, in that circumstance, unleashing the US's full force without any limits would be monstrous. The more interesting question raised, but not truly answered, is to what extent a civilian population is responsible/accountable for the regime it either brings to power, or tacitly accepts?

The dilemma posed is that terrorists target civilians explicitly, but by being extra-national, they do not bring similar retribution upon their own native populations, because we cannot say with certainty which population is theirs, and whether that population is either directly or indirectly complicit in their actions. And yet, history has clearly shown that being able to link a loss of something valued to an attack is a deterrent to attacks.

Discuss.

Posted by kohoutek | September 18, 2007 12:35 PM

Now, about oil...

Whether it's "all" about oil is difficult to ascertain at present.

However, I suspect that having a physical military presence in the region, a region rich with oil that our economy and society depends on, is among the end goals. We court and excuse the Saudis for access to oil, but the truth is that nations with oil can sell it to whomever they choose. They can put it on the open market (and thus remain "neutral" and ostensibly immune from foreign seizure), or they can come to other arrangements.

As the demand for a limited and vital resource increases, conflict centered around the resource can only be inevitable. It's not so much the market mechanism of pricing that's at issue, but simple access, meaning that whatever the price, there might not be enough to go around to sustain the needs of developed industrialized economies and ambitious, newly developing economies.

I fear I'm giving Bush too much strategic credit here, and, given all the bumbling and idiocy, that fear is probably well founded. But my guess is that we're physically in the Middle East under false pretenses to guarantee our economy access to oil. Both Iraq-centered wars have been Chapters 1 and 2 in the "resource wars" narrative. The Gulf War was about protecting Saudi Arabia (and through their gratitude benefiting our own economic bottom line) and preventing too much control in Saddam's hands. The Iraq war is a response to China's growth, ambition, and demand, and Russia's unpredictability. We're seeking to be militarily entrenched, physically, in the heart of the oil breadbasket, not so much for now, but for the future.

(A side note...A venture-capitalist acquaintance of mine surmises that the Iraq invasion was actually about keeping oil OFF the market. Which has the effect of raising prices. Conspiratorial? I don't know. But that has been the net result, and it's a deliciously devious notion.)

Yes, I do think that the domestic political benefits of "national security", new bogeymen, etc., are all in play, but most likely the only vision logically compelling enough to justify such a potentially disastrous invasion (given we knew Saddam didn't have WMD, etc.) and to keep us there in the midst of all the negative consequences (insofar as there's a narrative from BushCo about why we need to be there despite how badly it's gone) is the specter of an American economy cut off from enough oil.

As far as cost-benefit goes, a realpolitik analysis would probably say we're paying a very acceptable price now to avoid a later economic meltdown, or at least make the most hay of the waning of the oil era. It would seem we're doing both.

As I say, I feel I'm giving BushCo too much credit (and by credit I mean by inferring there's a true, long-term, realpolitik strategy at work, whether one agrees with it morally or practically), but the whole mess makes so little sense otherwise. Are they really this stupid, or are they really this calculating? Since big-money realists are involved, I'm betting on the latter, and everything else is just theater masking our true intentions.

I truly don't know how to feel about this. The idealist is sick to his stomach, the realist acknowledges that all the "peak oil" stuff might actually be given credence by the implications of our actions.

Posted by kohoutek | September 18, 2007 1:08 PM