We Americans need to stop fooling ourselves about why we’re in Iraq. Weapons of Mass Destruction were never our primary concern. If they were, we’d be all over North Korea, not Iraq. And if we wanted to free an oppressed people, there are African countries where the level of oppression is and was far worse than Saddam could have imagined, but we leave them alone. Our interest in Iraq is oil. Our interest in the entire middle east is oil. We need to admit this openly. Once we do that we can start reaping the benefits of empire instead of paying the price of establishing one without getting anything in return.
What in it for me?
Here I am, a working American taxpayer whose percentage of liability for government costs has gone up under President Bush because he’s reduced it so much for people whose incomes are derived from coupon-clipping or choosing parents correctly rather than work. So I’m paying for this war, while Bush and his allies in the class war on working America are not.
And others are paying for this war more dearly than I am, namely military personnel and their families. Note that we have in effect reinstated the draft to sustain our role in Iraq, not by using it to bring new people into the military but by involuntarily extending enlistments for full-time military and by ordering reserve and national guard units to spend far more time away from their families than they ever dreamed they would when they signed up.
And what, pray tell, are the working-class troops and working-class taxpayers getting in return? So far, the most tangible result of our middle east military adventure seems to be higher oil prices. Bush’s people like this — oil industry profits are at record levels — but it’s hurting the rest of us.
Quit pretending and be an empire!
When we first went into Iraq under this Bush’s father, we easily and rapidly conquered the parts of the country that were important to us: the oil fields. We threw the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and also held all of the Kuwaiti oil fields. We had over 100,000 troops within an easy day’s drive of the oil-producing parts of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Iran, and there was no force in the region that could have stood up to our military for more than a few hours.
Why didn’t we simply annex the oil-producing areas in these countries and keep them as American protectorates?
One of the big talking points Islamic radicals use to stir up hatred against the U.S. is that our technology, culture, and oil money corrupt poor innocent Muslims. I see no reason to argue with this attitude. In the spirit of “go along to get along” let’s take over the small bits of land (less than 10% of any of the involved countries) from which the oil is actually pumped and run them for our benefit and our profit. We would no longer be corrupting whole countries. We wouldn’t care what happened outside our fences. The innocent Muslims could happily practice their religion without any interference from the Great Satan, which would no longer have any motivation to meddle in their affairs.
We “liberated” the Kuwaitis from Iraq, but I don’t see photos of cheering people in Kuwait City every year since then on America Day, a holiday you’d think they’d have — but they don’t. And Iraq surely isn’t going to have that holiday, either. Remember the stirring speech at the last OPEC meeting from the Kuwaiti oil minister about how his country was going to sell to U.S. oil companies for $30 per barrel out of gratitude, instead of charging $40+ like everyone else? You don’t — because he didn’t make that speech.
We should have kept the Kuwaiti oil fields when we had them — and the Iraqi ones too. And perhaps we should have grabbed the Iranian ones while we were at it. Iran hasn’t been our friend. When a country has government-led demonstrations where they burn our flag and call us names and otherwise act like they’re at war with us, we should call their bluff and act like we’re at war with them.
If we did things my way, the U.S. would be the world’s greatest oil-producing nation, bar none. Oil revenue would pay for our armed forces and then some, thereby relieving the tax burden on us workers nearly as much as Bush has relieved it for his people. And U.S. troops in the middle east oil protectorates could live like potentates, using the same “guest” workers the Saudis have today (although I’d like to think we’d pay a little more and treat them a little better).
What’s the downside?
Obviously, if we nakedly grabbed territory from other countries halfway around the world the United Nations would condemn us. Hey! They do that anyway. Dictators worldwide would scream about the nasty Yankee colonizers. This would be new? Islamic radicals might decide to mount terror attacks against us. They’ve been doing that anyway.
In other words, we’re already experiencing all the negative effects of running a good old fashioned colonial empire but getting none of the positive ones.
We need to get our heads out of our [redacteds]
Why can’t we be honest and take what we really want from Iraq and other countries? Why are our troops mired in sad little urban battles with nutcase religionists over towns we wouldn’t want to live in on a bet even if we “win” all the battles?
It would be cheaper — and do us more good — to simply take over the oilfields and oil shipping facilities in the middle east and let the locals govern themselves however they want. Of course we’d pay nominal royalties to their governments for our use of “their” land. But if they wanted to get in on the oil swag beyond that, they’d have to work for it. And work just as hard as the Texas roughnecks and other Americans we’d send over there (at large salaries), and work with them only after they went through a long security process and trial period in order to (hopefully) weed out those whose ambition is to be a Glorious Martyr instead of doing honest work and living well on their earnings.
Maybe if Kerry beats Bush in November he’ll implement this sensible plan.
(Just kidding. Of course he wouldn’t. He might be 10% or 20% better than Bush as president but that’s about it.)
