On 2010-09-24, at 11:37 PM, SA wrote:
> 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.
MG: It's remarkable how you resist oil as an explanation for the long record of intervention by the US and other imperial powers in the Middle East. This isn't the first time. You'll recall our earlier disagreement about what underlay US support for the formation of state of Israel. You attributed it to Truman's "humanitarian" concern for the Jews, and equally insisted there was "no feasible argument" that more hard-headed Cold War considerations ultimately prompted US support for partition, until I supplied some, including evidence of Truman's somewhat less than sympathetic attitude towards Jews.
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20100809/010730.html
As with the Greenspan quote, you simply ignored the evidence, insisting the quotes by Truman and administration officials were "taken out of context".
> 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.
MG: You understand that the first Gulf War did have "something to do with oil", that "the US did not want to "put a lot of oil in Saddam's hands." But the Iraqis were already sitting on a lot of oil of their own, which was of interest to all the majors. In any case, oil is oil, whether Kuwaiti or Iraqi or Saudi Arabian, and you're correct in assuming that it was, at bottom, security of access to that oil which prompted the first Gulf War.
Now you would have to explain what happened in the intervening decade which, in your view, abruptly eliminated oil as a consideration in the second Gulf War against Saddam by the second Bush.
> 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.
MG: Our disagreement has never been about whether the US wanted to rid itself of Saddam. But to say it's "because you don't fuck with the USA" and to simply leave it at that is to say nothing at all.
Of course, you don't fuck with the USA, but why not? The answer is that the Americans and their Western allies have been unable to abide regimes who are a threat to "fuck with" their oil supplies. Saddam had defied US warnings to keep his hands off Kuwait's oil, and his "rejectionist" Baathist regime was also an obstacle to US efforts to impose a peace settlement on the Palestinians in order to restore stability to the oil-rich region. Nor was he the first uncooperative Arab leader to incur the hostility of the West; Mossadegh and Nasser had notably preceded him. In fact, Saddam had himself been implicated in a 1963 CIA-sponsored plot against another Iraqi leader, Abdel Karim Kassem, who was also "fucking with the US". The New York Times recounted how Kassem, like Saddam later, was "threatening Western oil interests, resuming his country's old quarrel with Kuwait, (and) talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East":
> 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.
MG: Narrative. Not in dispute.
> 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.
MG: Your biological metaphor adds little.
> 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.
MG: Not in dispute.
> 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.
MG: I don't agree that "it would be wrong to look for some specific rational goal" for overthrowing Saddam. In fact, you approvingly cite what was, from the neocon perspective, the "specific rational goal" of using his overthrow to demonstrate the US will to use its military power against its adveraries. But, like Woj, you don't inquire into the purpose served by that exercise of power, which in the final analysis was to strengthen US imperialism. Kristol and Kagan and the other neocons generally are self-conscious proponents of "empire" who have argued for the aggressive deployment of US power to maintain and expand it.
> 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.
MG: Narrative. Not in dispute.
>
> 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).
MG: Ditto.
> 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.
MG: Ditto.
> 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…
MG: Ditto.
> Therefore, be it resolved: Given all these reasons, why *wouldn't* Bush invade Iraq?
MG: US domestic politics weren't the only reason which made Iraq a target. There's abundant evidence that Bush officials and advisors who were instrumental in the Project for a New American Century had targetted Iraq for regime change well prior to 9/11.
> 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.
MG: Henry Kissinger, like Greenspan, also reportedly thinks US Mideast policy is about oil, but you'll find a longer list of others at the bottom of the article who share your current "mindset" that it's just a made up fantasy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-weissman/greenspan-kissinger-oil-d_b_64659.html