[Note: I included in the last dispatch a piece from a publication called Capitol Hill Blue on how Bush’s advisors are now urging him to look for an exit strategy. People I trust tell me that it’s not a reliable site. I confused it with The Hill, a reliable Washington publication. Nonetheless, perhaps CHB made a good guess since the lead New York Times piece of today had the startling subhead “Washington Fears Its Military and Diplomatic Efforts on Iraq May Be Stalling” and included the following paragraph: “But in private, administration officials conceded that both Mr. Hussein’s actions and Turkey’s refusal — at least so far — to allow American forces to strike Iraq from its territory had greatly complicated diplomacy, troop deployments and, potentially, the timetable for carrying out the war.” Still, I hate to pass on untrustworthy material. I’m afraid it was just a case of “human error,” as they once used to say when nuclear power plants started overheating.]
In this month’s Mother Jones magazine, “The Thirty Year Itch” by Robert Dreyfus suggests quite vividly how American Middle Eastern strategy and our urge to control global oil supplies has developed in the last decades. He offers the kind of history that allows us to see how Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. could view Iraq as the penultimate piece in the Middle Eastern puzzle. (The ultimate piece assumedly is Saudi Arabia.) I’ve seen nothing that explained the nature of our strategic planning in the oil lands of the world better. I recommend it strongly and also the sophisticated graphics and pop-up information that goes with them. These can be found at a separate address.
In particular, Dreyfus makes sense of the way in which, since the 1980s, we have slowly dropped our military garrisons into an arc of lands that runs from the former Yugoslavia to the deepest reaches of Central Asia but that centers on Kuwait, the Gulf States, and Saudi Arabia. With that in mind, I add a piece from Bulgaria by Ian Traynor in today’s Guardian on the beginning of the American garrisoning of Rumsfeld’s “new Europe” — particularly Bulgaria and Rumania — yet a further extension of the same arc of American military power. Tom
The Thirty Year Itch
Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington’s hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf’s oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance.
By Robert Dreyfuss
Mother Jones Magazine
March 1, 2003If you were to spin the globe and look for real estate critical to building an American empire, your first stop would have to be the Persian Gulf. The desert sands of this region hold two of every three barrels of oil in the world — Iraq’s reserves alone are equal, by some estimates, to those of Russia, the United States, China, and Mexico combined. For the past 30 years, the Gulf has been in the crosshairs of an influential group of Washington foreign-policy strategists, who believe that in order to ensure its global dominance, the United States must seize control of the region and its oil. Born during the energy crisis of the 1970s and refined since then by a generation of policymakers, this approach is finding its boldest expression yet in the Bush administration.
A Mother Jones contributing writer, Robert Dreyfuss was named one of the “best unsung investigative journalists working in print” last year by the Columbia Journalism Review.
To read more Dreyfus click here
Payback time for America’s allies as GIs set up camp in the new Europe
Bulgaria finds itself in the frontline of US military build-up
By Ian Traynor in Burgas, Bulgaria
March 4, 2003
The Guardian
On a beach by the grey waters of the Black sea, scores of young American airmen are racing against the clock to get ready for war. Surrounded by Kalashnikov-toting Bulgarian military police, fenced in by red corrugated iron, and shrouded by a pine grove, the men of the US air force’s 409th air expeditionary group are pioneers in a mission that is reconfiguring decades of the US military presence in Europe and redrawing Europe’s military map.
“We’re in a rush,” said Sergeant Jason Smith, just arrived from Charleston in South Carolina. “Our main role is to support the global war on terror. And we’re preparing for future operations.” <./blockquote>
To read more Traynor click here
If you were to spin the globe and look for real estate critical to building an American empire, your first stop would have to be the Persian Gulf. The desert sands of this region hold two of every three barrels of oil in the world — Iraq’s reserves alone are equal, by some estimates, to those of Russia, the United States, China, and Mexico combined. For the past 30 years, the Gulf has been in the crosshairs of an influential group of Washington foreign-policy strategists, who believe that in order to ensure its global dominance, the United States must seize control of the region and its oil. Born during the energy crisis of the 1970s and refined since then by a generation of policymakers, this approach is finding its boldest expression yet in the Bush administration.
A Mother Jones contributing writer, Robert Dreyfuss was named one of the “best unsung investigative journalists working in print” last year by the Columbia Journalism Review.
To read more Dreyfus click here
Payback time for America’s allies as GIs set up camp in the new Europe
Bulgaria finds itself in the frontline of US military build-up
By Ian Traynor in Burgas, Bulgaria
March 4, 2003
The Guardian
On a beach by the grey waters of the Black sea, scores of young American airmen are racing against the clock to get ready for war. Surrounded by Kalashnikov-toting Bulgarian military police, fenced in by red corrugated iron, and shrouded by a pine grove, the men of the US air force’s 409th air expeditionary group are pioneers in a mission that is reconfiguring decades of the US military presence in Europe and redrawing Europe’s military map.
“We’re in a rush,” said Sergeant Jason Smith, just arrived from Charleston in South Carolina. “Our main role is to support the global war on terror. And we’re preparing for future operations.” <./blockquote>
To read more Traynor click here