He may indeed have been repeating old formulas, but he and apparently others seem to take them as operative. Obama's new Blitzkrieg in Afghanistan makes sense only if AfPak is part of the Long War for Mideast oil. The argument was set out by Pepe Escobar in his columns on Afghanistan as "Pipelineistan," e.g., <http://www.globaliamagazine.com/?id=764>, and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Joop Scheffer has discussed NATO's war in Afghanistan in regard to oil. --CGE
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jul 2, 2009, at 11:36 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> Oil (and gas) was certainly part of the essential background of the
>> war. If the primary product of Iraq were asparagus, we wouldn't have
>> half the American military there. The control of what the US State
>> Department, in 1945, described as "a stupendous source of strategic
>> power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history" --
>> Mideast energy resources -- has been the cornerstone of US policy in
>> the region ever since.
>>
>> Just after 9/11 but before the invasion of Iraq, Noam Chomsky wrote
>> "the September 11 terrorist atrocities provided an opportunity and
>> pretext to implement long-standing plans to take control of Iraq's
>> immense oil wealth ... US intelligence predicts that these will be of
>> even greater significance in the years ahead. The issue has never
>> been access. The same intelligence analyses anticipate that the US
>> will rely on more secure Atlantic Basin supplies. The same was true
>> after World War II. The US moved quickly to gain control over Gulf
>> resources, but not for its own use; North America was the major
>> producer for decades afterwards, and since then Venezuela has
>> generally been the leading exporter to the US. What matters is
>> control over the 'material prize,' which funnels enormous wealth to
>> the US in many ways, and the 'stupendous source of strategic power,'
>> which translates into a lever of 'unilateral world domination.'"
>
> 1945 was a long time ago. Is this really still true? What does this
> alleged lever of world domination do for the U.S.? How does it exercise
> this power? Is the U.S. going to blockade the Middle East to deny
> supplies to China? Wouldn't it be easier to blockade China?
>
> There's an aspect of repeating old formulas to this. It could still be
> true, but I'd love to hear someone explain the mechanisms.
>
> Doug
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