AMERICAN ILLUSIONS AND IRAQI REALITIES: BACKGROUND

The following article was written sometime in late June-early July of last year. It was motivated by the editor's concern that the Iraq Oil Grand Imperial Grab Project (heretofore, "the Imperial Grab Project") was mired in illusions and should prove costly in American lives. The editor sent this article to friends of this newsletter, i.e. those who had called or written and given real names and email addresses (not emails by "Anonymous.")

At the heart of this nasty adventure lies the need and competition for the precious oil resource, and these are the main reasons behind this Imperial Grab Project. The press is awash of accounts by thoughtful writers about our need for oil and about competition from China and Japan for oil resources. In short, the need for oil has grown dramatically, and the sources have not. (See, e.g., Paul Roberts, "The Undeclared Oil War," The Washington Post, Monday, June 28, 2004, at A21); See also Lee Jofu, "The Relation [Between] the Gulf Countries and China...Progresses Speedily," Al-Khaleej (Online) (Arabic), Sunday, February 5, 2004.) This is not to mention the imperial bureaucracy's agenda to influence China by controlling oil resources that supply the Asian giant.

What has confused the nature of the Imperial Grab Project was all the propaganda about democracy and "good for Israel" propositions, which were strewn about in an attempt to justify such a grand-scale adventure and gain desperately needed votes in Florida. (How soon we forget! So many "good for Israel" liberals lent their support to this project; they had lost sight of the fact that the closest Israel and the Palestinians had come to peaceful co-existence was when Bill Clinton lent the weight of his presidency in support of Israeli-Palestinian peace, and treated Palestinians like people who mattered. This was the same Bill Clinton who avoided this nasty adventure. On the Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio, former President Clinton recently said that Paul Wolfowitz tried to sell him the Iraq invasion. Mr. Clinton knew better.) In short, politicians with close relations to oil interests (and those mandarins with close relations to the right-wing Israeli Likud, and Christian evangelist propagandists-crusaders) all joined hands in this sick Project that has resulted in the loss of over 900 American lives and the maiming of countless others. This doesn't even begin to approach the misery it has visited on the Iraqis. The liberal press had cheered the war, then apologized after American soldiers began to die at the rate of two per day. At the heart of their apology is not so much that no weapons of mass destruction were found or that their reporters relied so heavily on con-artists (which were their stated reasons.) At a deeper level, the liberal press has sensed that the Imperial Grab Project has gone bad, that it didn't seem to be so good for Israel, and that the mothers of those who died and those who were maimed will never forgive them their rush to, and excitement about, an unnecessary and misguided war.

Back to resources. It seems possible that OPEC has been for a good while producing oil at near maximum capacity; and yet oil prices have remained high. Could it be that oil production has hit a wall? In other words, could it be that the future need for oil, expected to increase at a significant pace, is an issue that is visiting us this very moment?

Unquestionably, the slide in the dollar's value had motivated OPEC countries initially to restrict production to raise prices (paid in dollars) to preserve their purchasing power. Still, there's enough smoke to suspect a possibly large fire: Capacity is seriously limited, and the ready ability to increase production seems to have hit a wall.

Saudi Arabia, for long the swing producer, may just be producing at its highest capacity--around 10.5 million barrels per day--which means that it may very well have lost its enviable swing position, at least for now. (I have no hard evidence of this; I'm suspecting it based on a survey of sources.) What motivates Saudi Arabia to produce at maximum capacity and lose as a consequence its position as swing producer within OPEC? The answer may lie in the Saudi government's need for income. Increased revenue for the state can be used to appease opposition at home, at a time when the public is calling for reform and the Saudi government is unable to deliver in a time frame that satisfies that opposition. (The government has promised partial municipal elections; the government has announced that these will take place in stages, starting in November.) The failure of the royal family to galvanize a consensus for public political participation among its estimated 20,000 princes and five kings (so to speak; these are Abdullah, Sultan, Nayef, Salman, and Abdul-Aziz bin Fahd)has hindered its ability to deal with an urgent need for reform and the demands by various sectors of the Saudi population for a voice in the political process. For now, money buys time, and it seems that money is flowing to the Kingdom thanks to what looks like maximum production of oil at a time when its price hovers at a $40-a-barrel high.

We're left with Iraq and its potential as a great producer of the precious resource. The nationalist resistance seems to understand that its country is a pawn in a worldwide competition for oil; hence its focus (when it can) on attacking oil installations and pipelines. (This is not to mention that these attacks would be expected to raise the price tag on the American taxpayer.) Any extra capacity therefore which the dreamed-of modernization of Iraq's oil infrastructure could increase is running against a war of resistance by Iraqi nationalists. Foreign fighters are eminently insignificant and would not be able to operate but for the acceptance by and support of the mostly Sunni Arab public and those Shia who follow Muqtadha as-Sadr; these, I suspect, probably are seeking training from some of these foreign fighters after performing miserably against American troops in their last Tet-like offensive. Arab Sunni and as-Sadr shi'a (and, increasingly, all others) as SPC has repeatedly indicated, now are clamoring towards Islamism, as this ideology assures a crossover to a wider populace--from Sunni Arab to Sunni Kurdish to Shi'a Arab, and so on. The hope is an Islamist Iraq, united to defeat America's Iraq Grand Oil Imperial Grab Project.

Meanwhile, in Washington, there are those who believe that the United States can gain better control of Iraq by subduing Iran. The latest withdrawal of American dependents from Bahrain should be seen as an American threat to Iran that the United States is ready to attack some of its strategic sites (such as the Abu Shehr nuclear reactor) while robbing it of the opportunity to retaliate against Americans in that majority-Shi'a Kingdom. In short, there's so much confusion in Washington on how to deal with Iran. Some want war; some want diplomacy.

SPC is currently working on advancing a proposal on how best to deal with Iran while avoiding bloodshed and how best to leave Iraq without losing it. Suffice it to say, for now, that those who want to attack Iran and change its regime should know that the moderates in Iran will behave the same way as the extremists. Both share and will continue to share the same strategic perspective of Iraq and of America's intervention there. Besides, no one really believes that the United States can attack any other far-away country in any serious fashion. Its troops are stretched thin and the American media is rife with stories about the malaise on the part of those who had witnessed their period of military service extended for a war that was misguided and eminently unnecessary.