On 9/24/2010 9:37 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
> But you keep curiously insisting, without a shred of explanation, that oil was not even one among several underlying factors of the occupation
Okay, explanation. There are two reasons why I don't think oil was in any substantive sense one of the "underlying factors" in the invasion. First, because of the almost stunning absence of evidence that it was. (Notwithstanding Rumsfeld's Dictum.) And second, because I think that, given the information in the public record, it's pretty easy to construct a plausible account of why Bush decided to invade that doesn't involve oil in any direct way. I'll try my hand at a quickie:
1. US intervention in the First Gulf War *did* have something to do with oil, in the sense that Bush Sr. would have been much less likely to intervene if Kuwait had not been a major oil producer. Adding Iraq's oil to Kuwait's oil would put a lot of oil - and all the power (e.g., weapons) that go with it - in the hands of Saddam Hussein.
2. Bush Sr. made it clear he had no intention of accepting Saddam's continued postwar rule over Iraq. Why? Because you don't fuck with the USA. But Bush assumed Saddam would fall without much need for a push, given the disgrace of the war. Until that day came, the policy would be sanctions, non-recognition, etc. - Iraq was a non-country until it got rid of Saddam.
3. After his election, Clinton hinted he might accept a penitent Saddam back into the family of nations, but he got a lot of flak for it and retreated quickly to the Bush Sr. policy of non-acceptance of Saddam's regime. Sanctions would stay until Saddam was gone.
4. The longer Saddam stayed in power, the more of a headache Iraq became for US policy. I.e., if you swat at a bee you better kill it, otherwise it will start being a real pest. How big a pest? Not really that big in the scheme of humanity, but Iraq was always near the top of the list of US foreign policy headaches throughout the 90s.
5. A turning point, in my view, came in 1996. Clinton and the CIA undertook the most serious effort since 1991 to orchestrate a coup against Saddam, using the Republican Guard. But it failed spectacularly. This didn't receive a lot of attention in the US, but for those who followed policy closely it was a milestone, because it made Clinton's policy seem hopeless. Worse, the French and Russians had recently started calling seriously for lifting sanctions (a position suddenly popular in the Arab world). And behind the scenes there were fears that UNSCOM would declare Iraq to be clean of WMD.
6. At this point, the neoconservatives for the first time started a serious public campaign to inject the idea of invading Iraq into the national debate. Big milestone. Regime-changing Saddam becomes a major neocon policy plank. Why? It would be wrong to look for some specific rational goal. They're for invading everything that can be invaded. For the same reason they're for any weapons system proposed, regardless of its purpose. As Kristol and Kagan wrote in their 1996 manifesto "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy":
> The ubiquitous post-Cold War question -- where is the threat? -- is
> thus misconceived. In a world in which peace and American security
> depend on American power and the will to use it, the main threat the
> United States faces now and in the future is its own weakness.
> American hegemony is the only reliable defense against a breakdown of
> peace and international order. The appropriate goal of American
> foreign policy, therefore, is to preserve that hegemony as far into
> the future as possible. To achieve this goal, the United States needs
> a neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence.
7. In 1997-98, Clinton tried to deal with the Iraq problem by escalating the "war of inspections." This was largely a way of keeping Russia and France at bay, by claiming Iraq was still a threat. Bill Cohen held up a bag of "anthrax" on TV and said it could kill all of Baltimore. The US sent UNSCOM on all sorts of wild goose chases to Iraqi national-security sites and claimed to be shocked! when Iraq denied access to them. Clinton increasingly committed US policy to the proposition that Iraq's WMD was a global menace. The culmination was Operation Desert Fox in Dec. 1998, which leads Saddam to kick out the inspectors.
8. Now, with no inspectors even in the country, the policy is in shambles. Clinton does an internal policy review. One minority position is to invade Iraq. The consensus is to keep the status quo, labeled "containment" - sanctions, airstrikes in the North, no inspections, Iraq as pariah. The GOP see this as an opening to attack Clinton. Republicans in Congress start having public breakfast meetings with Ahmed Chalabi. They pass the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, which for the first time *publicly* commits the US to a regime change posture (though Clinton signs the bill only under duress and doesn't do anything serious to carry out the regime change).
9. For the next three years, Iraq is kind of a backwater story. The general for. pol. establishment consensus is that "containment" is working. Key point: When Bush takes office in 2001, he fully accepts the "containment" policy, which is fully supported by Colin Powell.
10. THEN COMES SEPT. 11. Let me set the scene: The whole country is now 100% mobilized against any and all "threats" coming from the Muslim world... America already hates super-villain Saddam Hussein... Iraq is universally considered a genuine source of threat in polite Washington society... Neoconservatives who have supported the Iraq-invasion idea for years now occupy important positions in the Bush administration (even though they were ignored until now)... In domestic politics, Bush has plenipotentiary powers, at least for a time... Karl Rove (here I'm just assuming) listens to the neoconservative case for war and sees it as a generation-defining winning issue for permanent Republican hegemony and for the Bush presidency....Bush's personal psychology already militates towards invading Iraq in numerous ways...
Therefore, be it resolved: Given all these reasons, why *wouldn't* Bush invade Iraq?
Now, even if you're inclined to credit the foregoing account, it's still possible to stand on your hand and squint your eyes and rack your brains trying to find some way to fit it into some underlying narrative about "oil." Because oil has to figure in there somewhere, right? Believe me, I used to have this kind of mindset - I used to be quite Chomskyish. I would argue, however, that this is a mental reflex you really want to avoid. All it does is give you a headache without adding anything to your explanatory capability.
SA