Dave at The Galloping Beaver has begun a splendid two-part post on the history of Iraq's oil industry and the international politics that have swirled around it since the 1970s.
I can't even say I wish I had written that because I never could have. But I am very grateful that Dave has.
WOW ... what a terrific piece of research - the next instalment is tomorrow - I may stay up late tonight so as not to miss it. I have sent it off to work where I can print it out and so study it closer.
skdadl .... there is not much you write that I do not agree with - but: "I can't even say I wish I had written that because I never could have." Is one of the ones I cannot agree with at all.
Another excellent primer on Iraq and its oil: "It's the Crude, Dude," by Linda McQuaig.
I don't fully agree with everything the Galloping Beaver posted. Most of it, definitely. We part ways somewhere around the invasion of Afghanistan, specifically the little bit where he says, "The appropriate options, with sufficient deadlines, were offered to the Taliban government. The failure of the Taliban to respond appropriately, (hand over Osama bin Laden and company), forced an assault."
I'd agree that it wasn't really the war most of the administration wanted. But in a way I suspect it was precisely their determination to go to Iraq that forced them to make it a war at all. In terms of simply getting bin Laden, negotiations could have been effective; had they chosen to make a deal with the Taliban that would get what they wanted but allow the Taliban to save some face, they clearly could have. The Taliban were not flat-out refusing to hand over Osama. They were asking for evidence of bin Laden's involvement, they were suggesting that they might hand him to a third country, perhaps a Muslim country (There were plenty of Muslim countries under the US thumb that would have done fine--Kuwait, Egypt, one of the little ones; if they really had to have him in the US, the CIA could have had him out of those places faster than Mullah Omar could say "I wash my hands of it"). They were, frankly, asking for a fig leaf--one which the US flat out refused to even investigate giving to them.
But then it would have sounded kind of strange when they started beating the drum on Iraq, wouldn't it? It would have been, like, negotiations were good enough to deal with the people who were *actually sheltering the culprit*, but with Iraq (which even the Bushniks couldn't make seem more than indirectly involved) only a war is supposed to be good enough? Afghanistan was (officially) the more crucial target, and so if they wanted war to be the response with Iraq, war had to be the response for Afghanistan too. That (as well as arrogance and bloody-mindedness, of course) is IMO why they so systematically botched up all communication with the Taliban regime--the whole "We do not negotiate with terr'ists" thing. It was a typical case, seen also in the run-up to the Kosovo bombings, of refusing to risk getting yes for an answer.
In short, the Taliban did not force a war; they attacked Afghanistan mainly for what warmongers call "credibility". Although around the edges there may have been some people saying "Hey, this could be win-win 'cause there's a pipeline or two we were thinking of building."
I doubt a fig-leaf deal would have been seriously considered in the U.S., no matter who was in charge. Remember, this was right after 9/11 while the anthrax stuff was still going on. Al Gore would have invaded too.
Oh, I agree, PLG, except I think the "win-win" guys were more than just around the edges. The history of fiddling in Central Asia was already long and tangled, and at least some people grasped how strategic a region it was becoming.
The White House and the neo-cons, I dunno. Even now, their obsession with Iran is leading them to treat Afghanistan as a distraction, which makes the so-called war there incompetent as well as wrong.
Is it too much to consider that with Afghanistan and Iraq at least compliant that leaves Iran in the middle (actually and metaphorically) - the major power in the area going back to the Persians.
Afghanistan was not important when the Soviets were there, exhausting the USSR was: no one cared about Iraq (the US/Germany sold them the ingrediants for the gases Iraq used) very much intil Iran got its shit together and the Mulahs in Tehran discovered they were important.
Ironically it was Saddam's survivability that ensured his death.
Research? Dave has crafted a narrative consistent with the events he selected to include in it. It isn't the only possible narrative or necessarily the correct one. It isn't exactly replete with citations affirming the motivations of the prominent actors. What happened to the PNAC narrative which was so popular recently, or the more limited pro-Israel hypotheses?
To state that "it's all about the oil" is correct, but only in this sense: the US is concerned with the security of oil supplies, but - absent facts rather than speculation - not necessarily interested in controlling any particular oil supply. If there were few oil resources in the Mideast, the US would have much reduced strategic interests in the region and act (or rather, refrain from acting) accordingly. What stops any particular country from nationalizing or re-nationalizing its oil industry?
If your thing is conspiracy theories, here are a few more starting points:
- it's all about unfinished business and revenge (the Kuwait war)
- it's all about shaking up the political status quo in the region, Iraq being seen as the best candidate by virtue of being among the least secular and more cosmopolitan (relatively, with respect to its regional peers)
- it's all about creating a true independent Kurdistan with its own oil wealth and as the real beacon of political change in the region, regardless what happens to the rest of Mesopotamia
- it's all about pre-empting the balkanization of Iraq (natural or unnatural death of prominent strongman, followed by breakup of federation and open civil war between major religious/ethnic factions, resulting in near complete disruption of major economic activities in and adjacent to affected country) by holding the inevitable conflict down to a manageable level
- it's all about the security of Israel, and Iraq was one of two remaining countries in immediate proximity (Syria being the other), with the added bonus that neutralizing Iraq isolates Syria much more handily than neutralizing Syria would isolate Iraq
- it was an object lesson to demonstrate that the US could remove any regime in the region at its pleasure
- it's all about isolating the true preceived enemy, Iran (Iraq on one side, Afghanistan and Pakistan on the other)
- it's all about moving the US's base of influence from religiously problematic Saudi Arabia to some other locality adjacent to the Persian Gulf
- it's all about establishing a geographic band of at least lukewarm US influence (Turkey, Iraq) which divides the Muslim world approximately in two
It could be all about all of those, and more.
Um, ah ... has anyone here disputed any of those points, IrC? I've written about several of them a number of times, eckshully. And Dave has written in order to trace one dominant thread through four decades, not, I think, to exclude all others. He seems to me very open to expand in detail in other directions when questioned.
So you're complaining that he didn't write the article you would have written? Well. Ah ... *cough* ... there's an obvious solution to that problem.
I only point out that one should not confuse "conspiracy theory" (narrative which fits selected evidence) with "research".
What an original definition of conspiracy theory, or, alternatively, what a reductive view of coherent narrative.
I think it's true that most honest people discover that there is a temptation when one is writing to develop a narrative that is deceptively smooth, to offer closure in words that one does not exactly feel in the mind. That is an interesting problem in rhetoric and poetics.
But in practical terms, it's just the daily struggle of everyone who writes and tries to keep her/his writing honest. A writer like that will open up for discussion and expansion at once when questioned, which Dave has done. That's not conspiracy theory; that's honest human work.
Some people, of course, don't work that way. With every line they write, they reinscribe a psychological need to be always totally in the right. Conspiracy theorists are more like that, in my experience.
You think it an original characterisation? Hardly. There is a ceaseless spate of articles crafted, in essence, to explain away one set of events or another. An overreaching hypothesis to fit selected evidence is all a conspiracy theory really is. It is distinguished from a proper hypothesis in that the latter must explain all the data (evidence). It helps if there is actual evidence underpinning the premises rather than a mere suggestion of appearances.