“America is addicted to oil . . .”
G.W. Bush, Feb. 14, 2006
©2008, UrbisMedia
“What goes around, comes around,” some people like to say, with the expectation that, in personal or social history, one just has to stand still and things will catch up with you. It’s not a truism, of course; there are cycles in Nature, but nothing ever happens the same way, at the same time, in the same place, more than once. Still, it is hard to deny that things sometimes seem to be that way.
There is some reason to think that it might be coming around to when it is time for America to be on the down slope. Less than a decade ago, Americans could boast that we were he greatest military power and the biggest economy in the world. We were then, and still are, but less so, and just how much less so, and where it is going, are subjects of much consternation and debate. Militarily, the inappropriate and inept adventures of George W. Bush have shown the world that America’s technologically superior military forces can be bogged down and stymied by the insurgent tactics of guys wearing flip-flops. 911 proved we are not impregnable, and that our homeland security is operated by dolts. These circumstances have sapped our finances, put the country in the debt of China and Japan, and diminished the value of our currency. American has torn up the regulation of its financial system and allowed greed to run rampant. Now, the country that uses more energy than anyplace else is being forced to pay for its profligate ways in higher fuel, food and other costs. We don’t look as tough and rich as we used to, and the world sees that. We could put a lot of this on George Bush because, at this crucial juncture, when we needed somebody smart and brave to lead us we ended up with a incompetent coward.
George Bush just might be the man on the cusp of a new era in American history, one that he has done much to help usher in. The good ole US of A has become somewhat like Europe was in the Quattrocentro. In the 1400s, the monarchies of the major European nations lived high on the hog, enjoyed warring with one another, and pretty much had spent much of their local national resources. However, they had the technology, in ships and firepower, to go abroad and rip off the resources of less-developed places. That, as we well know, is how the good ole US of A got started. America was supposed to be a rich source of timber, minerals, furs (and, hopefully, gold and silver) for good ole Europe. That worked for a while, until the colonies got ideas of their own and battled for their independence from their European imperialist overlords. It is a history that doesn’t require repeating here.
911 and the Bush administration’s reaction to it serve to expose our military and financial weaknesses. We will never know how things might have gone had Al Gore been properly installed in the White House (although the political Right confidently, and falsely, assuages its errors by saying “things would have been worse”). Wherever Dick Cheney was hiding during the days of 911, he must have been rubbing his grasping hands with glee. A few months before he had his secret meeting with the major oil company executives—the meeting that he went all the way to a favorable Supreme Court to keep from becoming public—from which not much is directly known, but from which has emerged a map of Iraqi oil fields. Nevermind that Iraq was not the country that attacked America, all that was needed is to convince a gullible electorate and Iraq would be America’s oily prize.
When Cheney did come out from under his rock, he must have been ready to Svengali his dim-witted president into a war for control of those oil fields. The WMD, the nastiness of Saddam, the ridiculous claim that it was about bringing “democracy” to the Middle East, all of it, every bit of it, was a ruse, a smokescreen and a snowjob. They took in Congress, “took out” Colin Powell, and took away a lot of lives and people rights. It is, and has been, all about oil. Dragon City Journal (No. 37.2) has been harping about it from way back, Alan Greenspan admitted it his self-serving biography, Wolfowitz has admitted it, and anybody with half a brain would understand why the two Iraqi ministries that our troops were sent to protect from looting and destruction in the aftermath of “shock and awe” were those for Oil and Interior.
The plan was for the American biggies—Exxon, Mobil, Shell, Total, etc.—to get sweetheart contracts to run those oil fields, bringing us the $20 per barrel prices that war booster Rupert Murdoch claimed we would get, and Haliburton, KBR, and Blackwater would clean up with re-building and running the country. This was supposed to be smoothed along with somebody like Ahmed Chalabi sitting in power in Baghdad. That didn’t work out and the satraps that the Bush Administration have installed have been unable to reconcile the religious factions and bring stability to the country. Some oil has been pumped, something like $55 billion worth to date, but none of that has gone to pay off the US. We continue to pour billions into an enterpreise that may never pay off.
As a result of these crude expectations the good ole US of A is now mired in Iraq, holding a tiger’s tail. It has to keep 140,000 troops there in order to keep the place from spinning out of control, at the same time convincing our people (who would like some of that oil) that we are someday going to leave. At the same time it needs to establish a government there that will make a deal with our oil companies, but the likes of Moqtada al Sadr and Shiites want the USA out of their country. If the US oil companies do get a deal they will have to establish military bases there to protect their interests and investment, something that would be a continual source of terror and great expense. It’s a difficult balancing act, built on a platform of lies and deception. What it means though, is that the good ole US of A could be entering itsQuattrocento period, a time of necessary imperialism in order to maintain not just the greedy salaries of energy executives, but also the increasingly restive middle class that has been encouraged to mortgage itself out to maintain its American Dream lifestyle. The problem is, this is the lifestyle we built since the end of WWII, when the rest of the world was busy repairing the damage. Now, China, Russia, Europe, India and Brazil are trying to achieve that lifestyle. And there is only so much crude to go around.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 7.4.2008)