>They do not think the concern over potential use of nuclear, chemical, and
biological weapons is negligible or insincere, but they do think that "oil and
Israel" is a pretty good summary of what, for President Bush, makes Iraq
different from your run-of-the-mill evil dictatorship. Yet this presumption
about Bush, and these issues
themselves, barely appear in the flood of speculation and argument about Bush
War II.
Maybe I haven't been reading enough, but at this point, whether there actually is a war in the near term is moot. Bush has won by positioning the Democrats as being without any traction in the mid-term elections, at least on the war issue. The tacit agreement to equate good citizenship with support of American militarism in the political record has made it impossible for them to "nationalize" this election--which is hard to do anyway, but impossible now. So he's won on that score, and with or without the war, he gains in the near term.
I am more or less assuming that the Dems have no traction on economic issues, since the fiscal austerity bit doesn't play well in a recession.
> Surely, though, even a sensible opponent of the war ought to register a
steady oil supply as one of the better reasons for it.
Has the supply of oil to the West been unsteady in the last 10 years? Real oil prices are now, what, 50-60% of what they were in the 70's? This is the kind of statement that I think rightly drives Mark Jones nuts: either it suggests that oil supply _has_ been unsteady in the past (not true) or that it might be in the future, but doesn't draw out any of the implications of the latter. A steady supply is not any comfort to anyone who thinks that the mid-term prospects of oil production and supply are questionable (cf Doug's interview w/ Chomsky). In that case, whether supply is steady or unsteady is beside the point--the only thing that matters is which companies can snatch up drilling rights and whether you own BP or not.
>
> The lack of public discussion about the role of
Israel in the thinking of "President Bush" is easier to understand, but weird
nevertheless. It is the proverbial elephant in the room: Everybody
sees it, no one mentions it. The reason is
obvious and admirable: Neither supporters nor opponents of a war against Iraq
wish to evoke
the classic anti-Semitic image of the king's
Jewish advisers whispering poison into his ear and betraying the country to
foreign
interests. But the consequence of this massive
"Shhhhhhhhh!" is to make a perfectly valid American concern for a democratic
ally in a
region of nutty theocracies, rotting monarchies, and worse seem furtive and
suspicious.
Nutty theocracies? There was a great article in the Guardian the other day that addressed the administration's support for Israel--saying what others have said about the loony millennialists' need for Israel to be intact, though mostly destroyed, before it can be saved. And this is driving US foreign policy. And so where is the nutty theocracy? And the valid concern for a democratic ally?
Christian