For the Oil

Sunday, March 26, 2006

I've heard a lot of people say that we invaded Iraq "for the oil". I think that's simplistic at best. For one thing, it's not well thought out. What does "for the oil" mean? Do these people think that we're going to annex Iraq to be the 51st state? Or will we simply suck the ground dry into "our" tankers, and sell it on the open market? If so then among what parties does the money change hands? Who would own the oil in order to sell it?

If we did this I think the Iraqi people would get a little bit miffed at us (let's not worry about their current mood for the sake of this discussion). The fact is that Iraq owns the oil and no matter what the circumstances the US will respect that. Now, we might be corrupt about it, you know, bribe officials for a low price, etc, but the fact is that the Iraqi's will always own the oil (which Iraqi's specifically is their problem). It might also be fairly said that the US will work for favorable conditions for us to purchase the oil, but this too does not change the fact of the ownership.

So if not for the oil then why did we invade Iraq? There are two other oft-mentioned reasons. A recent poll indicated that something like two-thirds of the American troops in Iraq think we are there as revenge for Saddam Hussein's role in 9/11. Certainly the Bush administration does not dissuade this belief. However the 911 Commission Report clearly indicates that Hussein had NO role in 9/11. None, zip, nada. (and that makes sense - Hussein was a secular leader - not Bin Laden's kind of guy).

Another theory holds that Bush went in to distract the Nation from other issues, and to look like he was doing something against an intractable problem. Certainly I can't rule that out, and in fact I think a small element of that may have played a role. But I don't think that was the true reason.

I believe that we went into Iraq to create a Middle Eastern ideological counter-balance to Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden's over there preaching fire and brimstone, and there's not much we can do to counter the lure of that hatred. But what if there was another way? What if there was, in the Middle East, a democratic nation which worked? If was sufficiently unassociated with the US then it might serve to say that Bin Laden's path was not the only one.

I believe the Bush team had just the right kind of ideologues to think like this. Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are the kind of people who could think this might work. And who knows? I think there's a kind of logic to the notion. The thing is though it's a huge risk.

Tom Friedman of the NYT skirted around this notion, and he thought it had a sliver of a chance of working. He too summed it up as a big gamble. If Bush can pull this off then, really, all the pain would have been worth it. But it's a big "if".

I still hold out hope. And I think this is a slow-going kind of project. I would not want to say "success" or "failure" for at least a decade. I will grant, in the mean time, though that it's not looking good. Not only was it a huge gamble in the first place it was, IMO, very poorly managed.

To this day I wonder how much of Cheney's "greet us in the streets as liberators" comment was truly believed. If he really thought this then he's truly an idiot. Still, whether or not they greet us in the streets with open arms or with bombs is not terribly relevant to whether the above theory is valid or not.

I should point out that oil is still part of this equation, but IMO it's not in the way the "for the oil" theorists think. If we're going to try to make an ideological counter-balance to fundamentalist extremists then which nation should we work on? Saudia Arabia is already our friend. Iran is far too tough. Afghanistan has always been a place of warfare and poverty so a fledgling democracy would have a tough time.

Iraq on the other hand was already one of the most secular of the Middle Eastern nations. They'd already had most of their air force and army decimated in Iraq I. They had a dictator who no one liked, and they had oil. It wasn't oil for us, it was oil for the Iraqi's. Oil to fund the democracy. Oil for revenue to make the Iraqis (not the Americans) comparatively rich in the region. That wealth would be far more conspicuous than the fact that it came from oil, and thus a lure of its own.

So when people say Bush was/is evil I think it's silly. Like everyone else in the world they rationalized a project based on some notions and assumptions. I truly believe that Bush acted with a kind of altruism. Time will tell whether or not he also acted with stupidity.