There’s been an inordinate amount of discussion recently about what we (“we” being the good old US of A in all its Manifest Destiny glory) need to do to reverse the course in Iraq. Most of it is rather old hat stuff. For example, there’s Bush’s “We’ll Stay Until We Get it Right” Plan which is somewhat vague on the specifics of what we need to change but very pointed about what we can’t do if we want to win (i.e., we shouldn’t leave — ever).
Then there’s the recent “Big Idea” proposed by Tony Blair (though he’s not the only promoter of this approach), which calls for us to sit down and negotiate with Iran and Syria, and Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia too, in the hopes that by getting all the regional players involved a solution to our problem will just magically appear out of the ether generated by all that jaw-jaw.
And who could forget the McCain option: send in a few more troops, buckle down and fight harder. It isn’t so much a plan, as a campaign slogan, but it does have the advantage of a clearly defined action item. And of course, it has the unqualified support of the “last honest man” in American politics, not to mention the Tim Russert “I love maverick centrists” stamp of approval.
The problem with each of these plans is that none of them clearly specify what our objective in Iraq should be, making it difficult to determine how we will know when victory happens. Lots of supposed objectives have been put forward over the years by Iraq war supporters (i.e., depose Saddam, eliminate weapons of mass destruction, draft a constitution, hold elections, help the Iraqi’s form a new government, etc.), but, as we have seen, even when these goals have been achieved, no one in a position of authority has been willing to declare victory and issue the orders to ship our troops home.
And that’s because no one has been willing to clarify what is our true objective in Iraq. At least no one has until recently when President Bush spilled the beans about what we are really seeking to accomplish in Iraq:
PRESIDENT BUSH: You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources. And then you can imagine them saying, “We’re gonna pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up, unless you do the following.”
Now that’s a clearly defined objective. Keep the oil flowing — to us. The trouble is, as presently constituted, our strategy in Iraq is doing a lousy job of achieving this goal …
(cont.)
BASRA — Iraq’s oil production has fallen below prewar levels to its lowest point in a decade, depriving the country’s fledgling government of badly needed income and preventing the United States from achieving one of its main reconstruction goals.
Iraq’s oil wells — beset by equipment problems and saboteurs — are producing about 1.9 million barrels a day in net production, lower than the 2.6 million it was producing just before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES).
Of the oil produced, about 500,000 barrels are consumed daily by Iraqis, while 1.4 million barrels are exported, CGES says. […]
Production continues to slide despite a massive U.S.-funded effort to stabilize and boost output, repair critical parts of Iraq’s oil infrastructure and develop a long-term plan for the Iraqi oil industry.
… and none of the current proposals for winning in Iraq offered by the Grand Poobahs of the American political scene is likely to change that fact. As long as Iraq is beset by violence and chaos, increasing the delivery of oil from Iraq to American refineries, and then to your gasoline powered mode of transportation, will be haphazard at best. At worst? We could see Iraqi oil effectively removed from the international marketplace for a generation.
Now try as they might, the Bush administration is unlikely to secure Iraq’s oil, and thus achieve victory in Iraq (as determined by President Bush’s own metric for victory) with either a stay the course plan, or a “put in a few thousand more troops” plan. It’s simply hasn’t shown itself to be a very cost effective strategy for securing Iraq’s oil.
The Bush administration is preparing its largest spending request yet for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a proposal that could make the conflict the most expensive since World War II.
The Pentagon is considering $127 billion to $160 billion in requests from the armed services for the 2007 fiscal year, which began last month, several lawmakers and congressional staff members said. That’s on top of $70 billion already approved for 2007.
Since 2001, Congress has approved $502 billion for the war on terror, roughly two-thirds for Iraq. The latest request, due to reach the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress next spring, would make the war on terror more expensive than the Vietnam War.
And frankly, I doubt that Tony Blair or the Iraq Study Group is likely to propose any options for victory in Iraq which will assure us (and by us and mean the capitalized “US”) of getting our grubby paws on all that crude buried under the surface of ancient Mesopotamia. If oil is your objective, then you really have only one solution, something I like to call the “King Leopold’s Kill all the Brutes” strategy for stealing natural resources from brown people and delivering them to white people.
In brief, the plan is simply to kill as many of the inhabitants of Iraq as possible, while cowing the survivors into submission, preferably as a slave labor force. It’s a plan that has been successfully used numerous times in the past by imperialist powers to obtain the benefits of their conquests. From Genghis Khan and the Mongols, to the Spanish Conquistadores in the “New World” to the British occupation of India and Ireland, history is replete with examples of the effective uses of this method with respect to resource acquisition and the exploitation of weaker nations and peoples by stronger ones. Even the United States is not without its own history of employing the mass slaughter of civilians, torture and brutality as tools to achieve its territorial ambitions.
In response to a massacre of 54 Americans by the Filipino resistance in Samar, Francisco describes how US General “Howling Jake” Smith launched a “reign of terror” on the island. “Kill and burn…” Smith said “the more you kill and burn the more you’ll please me.” When asked the age limit for killing, he said, “Everything over ten.” The order from Smith was that Samar becomes a “howling wilderness” so that “even the birds could not live there.” The Americans had begun to utilize the deadly “water torture” against Filipinos – forcing huge amounts of water into their stomachs to then gather information – and Smith insisted on its use in Samar.
Some might call this proposal nothing more than unfettered imperialism, or even genocide, and they would be right. Successful implementation of this strategy requires ruthless and immoral actions on the part of the occupying force, including the murder, rape, and enslavement of the people who inhabit the areas where the goodies you desire are located. But if your goal is to steal someone else’s property (and let’s not mince words, this is theft, if only on a grander scale) then it’s the most effective means of achieving that end. And aren’t we already engaged in an occupation which has led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis? It’s not exactly like we have a moral leg to stand on with respect to how our current policy in Iraq has played out.
Of course, I am using overstatement here to make a point. The vast majority of American people would never support the mass murder of Iraqis, and the brutalization of the rest, solely to assure ourselves of access to the oil within Iraq’s borders. No, we would have to be told some great lie at this point for the American public to ever rally behind such a despicable and immoral policy. But, in fact, for too long our public discourse on Iraq has been hijacked by people whose true aim in advancing a policy of armed invasion and occupation was to insure American access to, and profits from, Iraq’s oil reserves.
Which means one thing. To win in Iraq, we need to change our objective. As long as we are addicted to oil, we will be drawn into wars and military conflicts in the Middle East to “protect” our supply of this oh so necessary substance. That is what junkies do: anything, literally anything, no matter how vile or degrading or evil, in order to obtain one’s fix. Even though the use of petroleum is literally destroying our planet’s ecosystem and threatening the continuation of our species, we will not stop, because our nation is simply the biggest oil junkie on the planet. And our source is rapidly being used up, making competition with all the other junkies (China, anyone?) inevitable.
So, at long last, this is my plan for victory in Iraq: we must end our dependence on oil, foreign or domestic, as our primary source of energy. That’s it. Fairly simple and straightforward if I do say so myself.
Just imagine what we could have achieved by now in terms of research and development of alternative energy sources if we had invested the hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent on this misnamed “War on Terror.” That is our future, and that is the only true path to victory, not only in Iraq, but across the entire globe.
And isn’t that a better objective than continuing our ever darker, ever more immoral quest for the declining resource we call oil? We have seen where that has led us, and where it might lead us in the future. Let’s choose a different path. Let’s end our addiction. Let’s win this war by making wars for oil obsolete.
That would be a victory everyone could appreciate.
