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I want to say a few things about why the American Empire is in Iraq, why it’s going to a big job to get them out, and what it all means for anti-recruitment efforts and other parts of the antiwar movement.
In antiwar politics like in chess or football or any other contest, it’s important to know your enemy very well. Sometimes I’m not sure that everyone on the left knows or likes to face the full extent of what Uncle Sam is really up to and where he’s coming from.
It’s essential to keep our eyes on the prize of why the Bush administration is in Iraq. As all faithful daily readers of the nation’s official “newspaper-of-record” the New York Times know, the former ABC “Nightline” anchor-editor Ted Koppel graced yesterday’s Times op-ed page with a column chiding the Bush administration for its refusal to admit that “oil” is the reason that for the United States (U.S.) occupation of Iraq (hold up).
For some time now, the Bush administration has been saying that it is “irresponsible,” “partisan,” “dishonest,” and damn-near treasonous to “claim we acted in Iraq because of oil.”
That’s childish nonsense, Koppel says. There’s no reason,” Koppel declares, “to be coy about why the U.S. is in Iraq.” “The reason for America’s rapt attention to the security of the Persian Gulf,” he says, “is what is has always been. It’s about the oil.”
And there’s nothing to be embarrassed about in that, Koppel says. Glorious America is unfortunately “addicted” to overseas petroleum, he argues, and has long required “an uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil.”
Consistent with this historical argument, Koppel dedicates the bulk of his column to a review of successive moments when Uncle Sam has moved to guarantee secure regular “oil flows out of the Persian Gulf.” Koppel’s narrative includes British and U.S. collaboration in the illegal but apparently noble (or at least understandable, as far as Koppel is concerned) overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected head of state Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and America’s sponsorship of the brutal dictatorship of Sha Mohammed Reza Pahlevi between 1967 and 1979.
Also meriting favorable mention in Koppel’s account is the famous White House “Carter Doctrine,” which proclaimed that “an[y] attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” The provocative establishment of U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia and the launching of Operation Dessert Storm were legitimate expressions, Koppel feels, of America’s obvious and logical interest in protecting its own and the world’s economy by “defending the free flow of Middle East oil.”
Now some of this is music to the ears to those of us (and that's probably most of us in this room) who've never bought the doctrinal White House story lines about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and (then) the equally big fairy talke about the administration’s passionate desire to export “democracy” to Iraq and the Middle East. If it’s about controlling oil, then of course, the last they want is a truly free and independent Iraq. Such an Iraq would want to control its own raw material.
But this is Ted Koppel not Tariq Ali or Noam Chomsky so of course he leaves out a number of key things.
The first thing he deletes is all the Arabs and Persians who died so that American could supposedly "keep the oil flowing" from the Persian Gulf. the death count includes hundreds of thousands pf Iranians killed by the Shah of Iran, the hudreds of thousands killed by Operation Dessert Storm, and the many tens of thousandsof Iraqis who have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
That's a pretty big omission, but not surprising, morally speaking.
The second thing Koppel deletes is the selfish and imperial nature of America’s “rapt attention” to Middle Eastern oil. If Koppel likes history so much, he might want to look at how the U.S. State Department described that region’s unmatched oil reserves in 1945: “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in history.” As such, that “prize” has long been understood by U.S. planners to be what leading U.S. policy critic Noam Chomsky calls “a lever of ‘unilateral world domination,’” adding that control of that that “prize” has “funnel[ed] enormous wealth to the U.S. in numerous ways.”
Consistent with that imperial perception and the related wealth windfall, Chomsky observes, “the U.S. invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources, mostly untapped, and it's right in the heart of the world's energy system.” If the U.S. succeeds in controlling Iraq, Chomsky notes, “it extends enormously its strategic power, what [leading imperial strategist and Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor] Zbigniew Brzezinski calls its ‘critical leverage’ over Europe and Asia. That's a major reason for controlling the oil resources -- it gives you strategic power”(Chomsky, “Confronting the Empire,” Address to World Social Forum, February 2, 2003).
Now, I do think America’s insatiable demand for fossil fuels is making the U.S. increasingly reliant on foreign oil. But even if the U.S. overcame its gasoline “addiction” and became fully energy- self-reliant (it currently receives just 20 percent of its oil from the Middle East), something else would still make U.S. officials positively obsessed with Middle Eastern petroleum: the ongoing and ever-worsening loss of America’s one-time supremacy in basic global-capitalist realms of production, trade, international finance, and currency and the related emergence of the rapidly expanding giant China as a new strategic military (as well as economic) competitor. America’s basic economic decline, reflecting predictable (and predicted) shifts in the spatial patterns of capitalist investment and social infrastructure gives special urgency for the empire to deepen its control of Middle Eastern oil and use it as what Chalmers Johnson calls “a bargaining chip with even more oil-dependent regions” like Western Europe and East Asia, homes to the leading challengers to U.S. economic power.
America’s long-fading capitalist hegemony is a big part of what drove its hard-right and nationalist administration to occupy Iraq. By many analysts’ estimation, OIF is part of a White House effort to use America’s last truly unchallenged form of world dominance – it’s near monopoly over globally projected organized violence – “to establish U.S. control over the global oil spigot, and thus over the global economy, for another fifty years.” As David Harvey noted on the eve of the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq:
"Europe and Japan, as well as East and Southeast Asia (now crucially including China) are heavily dependent on Gulf oil, and these are regional configurations of political-economic power that now pose a challenge to U.S. hegemony in the worlds of production and finance. What better way to ward off that competition and secure its own hegemonic position than to control the price, condition, and distribution of the key economic resource on which the competitors rely? And what better way to do that than to use the one line of force where the U.S. still remains all-powerful – military might?”
Now that’s a helluva lot different than trying to save the world economy for the benefit of all. It's also rather different that trying to keep the oil flowing; it's more about controlling its flow and restricting its use by others...mainly our competitors both economic and military.
The third thing Koppel either doesn’t know or doesn’t wish to divulge is that the U.S. is not simply worried about “outside forces” controlling Persian Gulf oil. It’s has an equal and related fear that groups internal to the region might attain significant control over the region’s critical raw materials.
The fourth thing Koppel leaves out is that the U.S. is actually more willing to reduce, not enhance "security" in the Middle East in order to deepen its control over Middle Eastern oil. Just look at what's happening in Iraq today and what's been happening there since March 19, 2003.
Full truth be told, the U.S. strategic “stakes” and opposition to internal control in Iraq are so great that much current U.S. discussion of American withdrawal from Mesopotamia seems exceedingly na*ve. Even on what passes for a left in the U.S., many commentators seem to think that the invasion is properly understood as a bungled effort to spread democracy – an incompetent occupation that genuinely sought to “liberate” and would have been undertaken even if Iraq’s only raw materials were chicory, lettuce, and bananas. The “freedom”- loving Bush administration, many “left” American commentators seem to think, should just call off its overly “idealistic” misadventure and let the Iraqis work their problems out on their own. “We” should accept “defeat,” which “we” allegedly suffered in Vietnam and muster the humanitarian courage to admit “our” (merely) tactical “mistake” and leave (see, for example, Nicholas Kristoff, “What We Need in Iraq: An Exit Date,” New York Times, 14 February, 2006, p. A23).
The White House has never had the slightest interest in creating a genuinely free, sovereign, democratic, and independent Iraq. Under the useful cover story of “Iraqi Freedom,” it wants to deepen U.S. control of Iraqi and thus Middle Eastern oil, something such an Iraq would be certain resist. That core objective would hardly be attained by leaving Iraq to its own independently and democratically determined fortunes.
And to make “the logic of withdrawal” yet less apparent to U.S. planners, like Chomsky's been saying, the majority of Iraqis are Shiite Muslims and therefore likely to use real national independence as an opportunity to form a rough anti-systemic partnership with also oil-rich Iran. Together with Iran, Iraqi Shiites might well inspire Shiite resistance to state power in the Persian Gulf’s ultimate oil-prize, feudal and arch-repressive Saudi Arabia, home (by the way) to the world’s largest known oil reserves, where “strategic” petro-imperial considerations have long mandated a deep U.S. partnership with tyranny and dictatorship.
The good news is is that Iraq's oil reserves and related social infrastructure cannot be “saved” for “critical [imperial] leverage” and global-economic windfall through wanton annihilation. The utter demolition America inflicted on Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s doesn't seem to me to be a fully rational imperial option in regard to Iraq.
The bad news is that Uncle Sam isn't leaving anytime soon. Iraq cannot be physically lost – territorially conceded – to the Iraqis without monumentally dire consequences to American Empire.
He'll do a lot to stay along time in one way or another. As he draws down ground troops he'll increase imperial enforcement from the sky, as is already sort of happening according to Symour Hersch and others.
So does that mean it’s pointless to work to stop recruitment? Not at all. There are all kinds of reasons to work against recruitment.
The biggest one is that war is generally and this war in particular is morally wrong. Even without the torture and the civilian casualties, the very invasion itself is monumentally illegal. Saving people from participating in evil is a good thing.
Another reason is that even if they shift more of the burdens of empire to high-tech air power and the like that stuff will be concentrated in the Middle East and they’ll be trying to shift "boots on the ground" to other regions like…especially Latin America. If it wasn’t for the Iraq quagmire they’d be recruiting for harassing and ultimately working to overthrow Chavez and Morales so as to ..gee guess what...deepen U.S. control over world oil and gas supplies.
In fact one part of the U.S. ruling class is pissed off at Bush II because they think his big adventutre in Iraq is distracting the empire from handling other threats...like Latin American democracy and independence (Chavez and Morales etc.) and Chinese expansion. Take a look at the latest Foreign Affairs; there's an article by someone from the "Inter-American Dialogue" titled "Are We Losing Latin America?" or something like that.
Another reason to fight recruitment is that military recruitment is class-biased and class-selective: very predominantly working-class. The armed forces are (very) disproportionately staffed in the most dangerous jobs by people with limited economic options: people without the family inheritance for college tuition in a period when the college wage premium (the earnings gains to those with versus those without bachelor's degrees) is higher than ever before.
Another reason is that a mercenary army is a very bad thing. You don't want a whole cadre of people whose livelihoods depend on warfare and preparation for war. Such people become a separate militaristic caste, something that is very dangerous for peace and democracy at home and abroad. If you must have a military it should be a conscription army.
Another reason and this is very important is that every person trained and employed as a killer is not being trained and employed as a teacher or a child care provider or a drug counselor or as a sustainable energy developer or as a civil rights investigator or as a poverty lawyer…or as a fill in the blank of your favorite socially productive and healthy profession.
I looked up the NPP web site and did their Cost of Iraq War thing for your state. Iowa’s share of the Iraq War cost is $2.2 billion, which = 435,905 scholarships for university students; 1,325, 921 children receiving health care; 52,336 elementary school teachers; 23,934 affordable housing units.
So my point isn't don't do counter-recruitment. My point is to do it while being serious and honest about who we are fighting: a determined and powerful empire that explicitly wants to sustain unilateral world domination ---- see its key "Defense Strategy" documents --- and sees Middle Eastern oil as a big part of that domination and will do a lot of different, complex, and deceptive things to keep it. It’ll draw GI’s down in Iraq but then increase bombs and missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles and send in more off-the-books Blackwell mercenaries while transferring more troops to the hills of Columbia and the outskirts of Bolivia and many other critical energy areas.
We are also fighting a related system of severe domestic socioeconomic inequality which mandates that some of us go to college with money from our parents (I did) and others feel the only the way they can access opportunity through a college degree is by serving a deadly, murderous hitch with the military that can cost them their lives, limbs, and/or their sanity.
We need campaigns for peace and justice but we also and above all need a movement for social and transformation and renewal in accordance with the principles of democracy. A campaign against Wal-Mart is a good thing but it’s not the same as a movement for social and economic justice. It might be part of such a movement but it’s not a movement. Same I think for counter-recruitment. It's a damn good campaign and of course it needs to be part of a broad movement for peace and justice.
Counter-recruitment is a natural and essential part of a broad egalitarian, multi-class, multi-ethnic, and interracial recruitment to a popular-democratic movement for peace and justice and against empire and inequality in post-9/11 America.
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Growth and the death of capitalism
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 02, 2006 18:37 PM
I agree that growth for growths sake is a misguided capitalist fetishism. Almost are entire lives are tied into the growth of the system. In the classic frankenstienian way the growth of the economy has become the monster eating us alive. It fuels war and ecological distruction, exploitation and unhuman behaviour. Yet, a very large portion of our lives is tied into growth, thereby tieing our wellbeing into the maintinance of growth. From pension funds and retirement that would put millions of the elderly on the street if the growth stoped to the necessity to consume to maintain the overall robustness of the economy you mention.
The "greedy nature" of people to act "rationaly to maximize profits" is a construction of the capitalist system. It has been socially engineered, you either act this way or you suffer through a tougher life, or worse you die.
Business cycles have become effectively "manageable" by elites. "Recessions return capital to its rightful owner" Andrew Mellon. I even have my suspitions that the manufacture them, the last three republican admins. have had major recessions. Recessions also act to dicipline labor and force the greedy response and acceptance of imperialist policies. All of which eventually help the elites not the worker.
C. Wright Mills described an economy that grew at the same rate as population or slower (populaton slow down would probably also be in order). I wonder why we even need growth, why the captial that gets put into infurstructure should not pay dividens back to society rather than just growth.
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GDP
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 01, 2006 12:26 PM
Capitalisms growth rates are actually quite telling, negatively telling. The growth rates of global GDP has declined in the last 30 years compared to the previous by over 50%, down from over 3% per year to approx. 1.4%. Real wages in the US, and most of the rest of the world for that matter, have also declined
I think the slowing down of growth rate in and of itself is not an indictment of capitalism.The question is why do we chase after growth to begin with, and to what end?
The real problem is not so much growth rate has slowed down, but the fact that capitalism cannot survive without perpetual growth for growth"s sake. In many situations slower growth is actually more rational than to achieve growth through wastefulness and grotesque consumptions. China's high growth rate is to no small extent fuelled by total lawlessness, complete disregard of human rights, senseless enviromental destructions, official corruptions, prostitution, scams and their spin off effects, it is hardly a success story that we should emulate.
Slowing down is natural for a mature economy simply because there is least room to grow into.There are also more restrictions on economical activities in favour of other non economical priorities in the developed countries such as conservation, labour standard etc. It is absurd to say there is something wrong with a 40 year old because he is not gaining height and weight like a 15 year old. What is wrong, it is that under capitalism the said 40 year old has to choose between either turning himself into a Sumo Wrestler by gorging himself to achieve "growth" or starving to death.
Even if we disregard other political factors such as class wars, capitalism even in its ideal implementation is pathological, it operates on the binary logic of either growth or die.
Economics text books get it upside down. It is not so much that because people are "greedy",--unsatiable demands,--that capitalism is "natural". Quite the contrary, we have to behave like greedy bastards in order to keep the economical engine humming under capitalism. If we all make an effort to consume less and stop borrowing to buy stuffs that we don't need the economy would collapse into an bottomless pit of depression. This is perverted if you think about it..
BTW, the stagnation of real wages is accompanied by a balloning of Corporate profits and CEO compensation packages. Now that cannot be explained by the boom and bust of the business cycle. Somehow even ebbing tide lifts some boat while most people are drowned when the tide is high.
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More Wrong with Rudy
By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 28, 2006 17:24 PM
Not to mention that even if "capitalism" is a great economic institution, what we have is a system of investor's rights, state bailouts and subsidy of the rich, and extortion and theft from the poor, decidedly not capitalism (and even the Cato Institute in their more insightful moments concede this, my man Rudy).
Further, capitalism is an inefficient economic institution because of
a) externalities
b) commodity fetishism
c) undervaluing of social goods
d) antisocial and counterproductive incentives for consumers and producers
e) undermining of research (real technology development in capitalist societies occurs only because of the state)
f) improper balances between autarky and comparative advantage
g) inequity, which reduces growth rates and leads to catastrophic depressions (and even Mead, no one's leftist, concedes that one)
Leftists would actually be fine with something like an American or European capitalist economy being put into place in Third World countries, or at least would be happier with it than with the outright theft that is the current system (among the best books on this topic I've read recently with very reformist proposals is Pogge's World Poverty and Human Rights, which argues from a LIBERTARIAN negative rights perspective for domestic and international policies normally the province of liberals and leftists). Even decidedly unsatisfying economies like Botswana, among the only countries in the world to tell the IMF to blow off, are seeing 8-10% GDP growth, dwarfing America's.
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Rising Tide?
By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 27, 2006 21:26 PM
Capitalisms growth rates are actually quite telling, negatively telling. The growth rates of global GDP has declined in the last 30 years compared to the previous by over 50%, down from over 3% per year to approx. 1.4%. Real wages in the US, and most of the rest of the world for that matter, have also declined. So I am not sure if one could call it a rising tide. More like a sinking ship. Neoliberalism is an utter failure and capitalism is quickly showing its tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
As for Iraqi anarchy, some have theorized a maintinance of chaos theory promoted by the US in the mideast. By keeping governments unstable the need for strong despotic regimes that can easily be bought and controled, which has been going on since FDR's meeting in the 30's (I think it was FDR). Therefore effectively removing the threat of democracy breaking out, which would cut into the oil flow by creating a middle class that would demand social welfare spending and some of the oil for themselves. Iraq is meant as a sign for the other past US pupet despots. It is meant to tell Iran, Saudi and others to play by our rules or we will unleash the rath of the people on you. As well as keeping China, India and EU from outbidding us. Also the chaos also keeps many from questioning the fleeting of a very large natural resourse.
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Drivel
By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 27, 2006 18:07 PM
Rudy's comments don't seem very intelligent. He says that I say "the U.S. is trying to gain control over the Middle East by creating anarchy." And then he asks, "how does one 'control' a state of anarchy?" Never said U.S. was trying to create anarchy. Who knows, maybe Bush administration actually believed that OIF would be a nice neat operation, without anarchy. There were numerous establishment analyses suggesting otherwise, however.
At the same time, there's a certainly a long history of empires having obvious interests in cultivating chaos among occupied peoples and yes so-called anarchy in the periphery can serve power for the center. It might make the imperialist state's alleged "police" role seem more indispensable, for example,...and it might also divide and preoccupy resistance.
Rudy says I said "the capitalist system is in economic decline" and then asks: "if the capitalist system is in decline, how does one explain continued economic growth? Capitalism raises all tides," Rudy asserts, adding that "- if China or Vietnam experience economic growth that is fundamentally a good thing."
But I didn't make a broad statement about the imminent (or long-term) decline of "capitalism." I did make reference to the fairly well known fact that America's position vis-a-vis other leading capitalist states and regions is continuing along a path of decline from onetime hegemony and I suggested that this declining global economic power is part of the context for the urgency with which Uncle Sam has felt compelled to deepen its control over ME oil.
The "capitalism raises all tides" line butchers the usual metaphor (a rising tide lifts all boats) and is quite naive. There has always been and continues to be real conflict between different national capitalist classes and between different social classes within and beyond nation states...it's not just a big win-win. Only someone at the intellectual of a three- year-old (nothing against pre-schoolers) would seriously think about things that way and its certainly not how advanced state policy actors think, we can be quite sure. OIF has struck European elites as a zero-sum (opposite of the lift all boats claims) move in which the U.S. empire has opted to serve purely selfish national interests and not the interests of the advanced state community as a whole.
It's very childish at this late date of global-environmental trauma and related mass human immiseration to just assert that growth is a good thing, without reference to the distribution of its rewards or to externalized environmental and other social costs and the like...
Rudy says I say "the U.S. wants to control Middle Eastern oil through dictatorships and tyranny vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia." Then he says, "but recent elections in Iraq and throughout the Middle East - particularly on the Arabian Peninsula - contradict Paul's assertions."
But I never specified which outward form of government and politics the U.S. wants to impose on Iraq or anywhere else. I said that the last thing Uncle Sam wants is a truly free, independent and sovereign Iraq and I mentioned various I think obvious reasons why - reasons that relate very much to oil. The U.S. happens to have been the great sponsor of one of the most reactionary governments on earth --- Saudi Arabia ---- for many decades. That has been all (quite explicitly) about oil and it all speaks volumes about our commitment to democracy and freedom; which is not to say US policymakers will not work for a more outwardly democratic corporate-polyarchy (consistent with the work of Marxian analyst William I. Robinson...see his book Promoting Polyarchy) even there over the not-so-distant future. The Iraq elections were actually forced on U.S. policymakers, who then made sure to take credit for them.
Rudy says: "thrice Paul appeals to morals. This is especially disturbing considering one of the left's central tenants is to not only question morality, but to deny the existence of truth when truth is implicit in morality."
That is a baseless and vicious assertion about "the left." The last part of the sentence in particular seems to be more about (Rudy's understanding perhaps of) postmodernism, which is not the same as "the left."
On the very disproportionately working-class composition of the U.S. miltary, people can see the long New York Times article I cited in the chapter on Jessica Lynch, the armed forces, and social class in my book Empire and Inequality. There aren't many (or any proportionately appropriate share of) people from Dick and Dubya's socieconomic cohort getting their legs blown off in Iraq, that's for sure.
It is insipid childishnes of the highest order to try to equate people and regimes acting on various (certainly often vile) power and interest agendas in their own own regions and societies with the U.S. acting to retain and expand global dominance of a sort that no imperial state has ever enjoyed. Rudy shows no sense of the U.S. terrible role in the Iraq-Iran war.
Calling "fascism" part of "left ideology" is a good sign of commenter Rudy's intellectual deficiency. The line about "the liberal ideologies of the America" being "worth fighting for" add a note of moral deficiency.
Oh but wait I'm a leftist so I'm against morality. Right.
Whatever.
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That Aulde Memory Hole
By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 27, 2006 10:17 AM
Rudy said:
"It is no secret that the Middle Eastern Baath parties are model[led] on, and ideologically aligned with the fascist parties of Germany and Italy circa WWII."
Well... then... Rudy... why did the Reagan regime, with Rumsfeld in office and pressing the flesh with Saddam, supply arms to Iraq? And, do you think George Bush jnr. knows Rumsfeld played this hideous role in the 80s? Now... I may be a little cynical... but... well... I'm guessing he did. Margaret Thatcher's UK government actually increased the sale of arms to Iraq following the gassing of Kurds in the late 80s. See the beginning of Mark Curtis's Web of Deceit.
Maybe the left is correct in not assuming that "just maybe the liberal ideologies of [...] America are worth fighting for."
Secondly, Paul Street did not say the gulf war is simply all about oil. It is about control of world resources and reinforcement of regional hegemony to ensure this:
"Under the useful cover story of “Iraqi Freedom,” it wants to deepen U.S. control of Iraqi and thus Middle Eastern oil, something such an Iraq would be certain resist."
Lastly, the elections in Iraq were forced upon the US regime by Iraqi people going out on the street and demanding them. To suggest that the US political elites couldn't wait to have an elected assembly in Iraq dominated by Shiites is naive, to put it mildly. George Bush snr. left the Shiites to a terrible fate, following the first Gulf War, at the hands of Saddam's USSR/US/French/UK supplied war machine, rather than support their cause.
You're right in one respect: I am a 'bastard child' of something, but it's a liberal-capitalist, neo-colonial global system of politics, economy and trade, dedicated to the profits of corporations and a trail of death, destruction, torture, rape, exploitation, poverty, slavery, racism, celebrity...
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and librate us from
By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 27, 2006 10:11 AM
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edit : simple answer
By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 27, 2006 10:09 AM
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simple answers..
By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 27, 2006 06:45 AM
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Strawman, Red Herring, you
By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 27, 2006 02:42 AM
Strawman, Red Herring, you immediately bored me to death. *Yawn*
Try again.
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Paul writes a series of
By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 27, 2006 01:10 AM
Paul writes a series of oxymorons. The U.S. is trying to gain control over the Middle East by creating anarchy. How does one "control" a state of anarchy? The U.S. capitalist system is in economic decline. If the capitalist system is in decline, how does one explain continued economic growth? Capitalism raises all tides - if China or Vietnam experience economic growth that is fundamentally a good thing. The U.S. wants to control Middle Eastern oil through dictatorships and tyranny vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia. But recent elections in Iraq and throughout the Middle East - particularly on the Arabian Peninsula - contradict Paul's assertions.
Thrice Paul appeals to morals. This is especially disturbing considering one of the left's central tenants is to not only question morality, but to deny the existence of truth when truth is implicit in morality. This foggy logic allows Paul to either leave out essential facts concerning his examples, or to make gross assertions, which no facts can back up. For example, Paul speaks of America's tyranny. It is no secret that the Middle Eastern Baath parties are model on, and ideologically aligned with the fascist parties of Germany and Italy circa WWII. If we're going to appeal to morality, doesn't a moral imperative exit to fight fascism? If the U.S. is "immoral" for attempting to expand its empire, why wasn't Saddam "immoral" as well for attempting to expand his empire with the invasion of Iran and Kuwait, positioning himself to challenge Saudi Arabia, and funding Palestinian terrorists? This of course raises a central leftist question: "whose morals?" which creates the circular reasoning so often found in leftist propaganda. For example, Paul, says all war is immoral, but not the war being waged by the Iraqi Shias to align themselves with Persian Shias to ultimately create an alliance with Saudi Shias which will disrupt the Middle Eastern balance of power.
Paul also claims the U.S. backed Shah of Iran killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. Hundreds of thousands? Where does Paul get his figures? Of course the number, if a number exists, doesn't matter because the truth doesn't matter. Hence, another fallacy Paul cites: that military is disproportionately poor and colored. In truth, the household income of recruits generally matches the income distribution of the American population. There are slightly higher proportions of recruits from the middle class and slightly lower proportions from low-income brackets. However, the proportion of high-income recruits rose to a disproportionately high level after the war on terrorism began, as did the proportion of highly educated enlistees.
Finally Paul relies on the canard that the Gulf War is really "about oil." Unfortunately, once again, the facts don't support him or other mouthpieces of the left, like Chomsky. World oil reserves are estimated at 1.3 trillion bbl. According to the U.S. Geographical Survey there is a 95 percent probability that Iraq has at least 14 bbl, a 50 percent probability that it has at least 45 bbl, but only a 5 percent probability that it has 84 bbl of undiscovered reserves. Thus, with Iraq's known reserves of 78 bbl, it has approximately 10% of the world's oil and the chance for any greater amount is virtually nil. Given those facts, it doesn't seem likely that the U.S. would go to war to gain materially so very little. But given the track record of leftist ideology (communism/socialism/fascism), it is highly unlikely that any red-blooded leftist would acknowledge that just maybe the liberal ideologies of the America are worth fighting for. Hence, the left demonizes oil.
The true leftist issue seems to be power. Capitalism has it, Marxism and its bastard children do not. And for that the left is hypocritical, complaining about the use of power it only wishes to exert.
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