Here’s a fine piece on the 800-pound gorilla in the global room that few in America, and even fewer who toil in the fields for our mainstream media, care to acknowledge. Rogers has written a fine piece indeed, but the sort of piece that only an infinitesimal number of Americans will ever see. Despite the fact that we are ruled by men (and a woman) who have lived their lives in an oil-soaked world, who take planning for dependency on Middle Eastern oil for granted (and largely have, as Rogers points out, for twenty years), oil is simply not considered worthy of front-page attention; nor is there serious discussion or debate about the importance of oil to administration policy in our press. The general attitude seems to be one of embarrassment — a subject too vulgar and reductionistic even to bother to consider. The other day, in fact, a piece on growing American dependency on Middle Eastern oil, a rarity in itself, was buried deep in the middle of the New York Times news pages where only the wonkiest of news junkies (like me) would be likely to see it.
Paul Rogers, the global analyst for opendemocracy.net, takes this end of the year moment to focus on the three-letter word no one here cares to spell. Instead, this administration has us focussed on the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (though not on our own weapons of mass destruction — after all, simply with depleted uranium-tipped tank shells and other DU munitions we threaten to turn parts of Iraq into a radioactive battlefield). Under any other circumstances, WMD would be an issue of vital importance. But in the case of Iraq, such weapons, whether in its possession or not, are what Alfred Hitchcock used to call the MacGuffin — the red herring that captures our attention and only seems to but does not lead to the plot’s denouement.
The simple truth, I believe, is that it hardly matters whether Iraq now has such weapons, not in terms of war. What matters to this administration is getting rid of Saddam Hussein, occupying Iraq, and installing a government far more to our liking. The WMD focus on “does he or doesn’t he” in the present context reminds me of all the arguments, from the early 80s on, about whether a missile defense system of any sort, based in space or on earth, would ever work. The critics were generally devastated Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and have continued to be devastating on every prospective system that followed it down the pike. But serious arguments about such a system’s likely unworkability proved beside the point. The point was to dump vast amounts of r&d funds into research aimed at the militarization and domination of space — and so the work never stopped, no matter how convincing the arguments.
It’s time to discuss oil, as a crucial resource, as this administration’s instinctive conceptual framework for organizing the world, as a fantasy substance at the heart of even richer fantasies about global domination. If only at year’s end I believed that articles like this one would begin to sprout in the American press. Tom
The oil reckoning
By Paul Rogers
Opendemocracy.net
December 12, 2002As America prepares to invade Iraq, our security columnist puts aside all talk of weapons of mass destruction, Israel, democracy, nation building and the United Nations, to focus on a three letter word: oil.
It now seems clear, some would say abundantly clear, that the Bush administration is intent on terminating the Saddam Hussein regime, and it is frankly difficult to see how war will be prevented. All of the political signals coming out of Washington indicate a conflict within the next three months, and there are numerous indications that the final phase of the build-up of military forces is imminent.
War is likely, whether or not the UNMOVIC staff make progress, and the immediate rejection of the Iraqi offer of access to the CIA is a further indication that the Bush administration will not be diverted from its purpose.
To read more Rogers click here and then on Rogers at upper right of screen
As America prepares to invade Iraq, our security columnist puts aside all talk of weapons of mass destruction, Israel, democracy, nation building and the United Nations, to focus on a three letter word: oil.
It now seems clear, some would say abundantly clear, that the Bush administration is intent on terminating the Saddam Hussein regime, and it is frankly difficult to see how war will be prevented. All of the political signals coming out of Washington indicate a conflict within the next three months, and there are numerous indications that the final phase of the build-up of military forces is imminent.
War is likely, whether or not the UNMOVIC staff make progress, and the immediate rejection of the Iraqi offer of access to the CIA is a further indication that the Bush administration will not be diverted from its purpose.
To read more Rogers click here and then on Rogers at upper right of screen