Iraq Demonstrates the Unyielding Grasp that the Big Oil/Military-Industrial Complex Has on the World — Most of Us Are Oblivious, even When Our Sons and Daughters Die in Service to Its Grasping

© 2011 Peter Free

 

13 December 2011

 

 

Not what it seems, and certainly not what is advertised — yet with so many dead and more to come

 

Yesterday, I wrote about political matters not being what they seem.

 

Ted Koppel’s report on current events in Iraq, and the continuing American presence there — which aired a few hours later — implicitly made the same point.

 

 

Citation — to Ted Koppel’s MSNBC Iraq video report

 

Rock Center with Brian Williams, No Exit, MSNBC (12 December 2011)

 

For viewers’ convenience, MSNBC posted links to the shows’ individual segments:

 

No Exit: U.S. military leaving Iraq, but presence remains

 

No Exit: Iraq's oil and Iran's influence

 

No Exit: Ted Koppel reflects on Iraq's future

 

 

The overall lesson is that war always spirals into unforeseeable costs and complexities

 

The most critically important step in violence-making is the first, the decision to start a fight.  That’s the only phase that “we” have some control over.

 

After violence begins, combat’s direct and indirect (cultural and psychological) effects spin out of control.

 

These complications build upon themselves, until the combatants’ pre-existing worlds have both vanished, creating a completely new strategic situation for which no one has (generally) planned.

 

For example, by toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the United States inadvertently uprooted the geopolitical stability that Iraq’s economic and military strength formerly lent the region.  With Iraq’s power now effectively gone, Iran is the preeminent force in the region.  Worse, Iraq, in order to survive, is making peace with Iran, which further wanes American influence in the region.

 

Ironically, the United States is in exactly the situation that President George W. Bush had feared — a destabilized Middle East, with a terror-sponsoring, eventually nuclear-armed Iran in its midst.  President Bush’s poorly considered war resulted in exactly the crisis that his strategic policies had hoped to avoid.

 

 

Today, 16,000 vulnerable civilian Americans are left in Iraq, trying to protect American interests

 

No Exit shows the excruciatingly difficult and deadly circumstances that the mostly civilian Americans left in Iraq face today.  Politics forced the withdrawal of troops, who formerly protected them.

 

Ted Koppel notes that Iraq is more dangerous today than it was in 2005, when he was last there.

 

Brian Williams expressed corresponding frustration that these vulnerable people are driving around in the same kinds of civilian vehicles that proved so ineffectual during the beginning of the Iraq War. It is as if we have come full circle in nine years, with nothing learned.

 

 

What is actually at stake in Iraq? — The answer depends on one’s geopolitical vision and one’s greed

 

Koppel said bluntly, “Yes, to a large extent, it is about the oil.”

 

The video report’s flight over the oil field gives viewers a visceral sense of this importance.  No Exit estimates that Iraq has 1.4 percent of the world’s oil reserves, making it the second largest such region.

 

But, in my view, it’s about more than just Big Oil.  The Military-Industrial Complex financially benefits from perpetual war and perennial American presence overseas.  There is no motivation at all in this amorphous and wide-ranging group of “special interests” to assist Americans in adopting a saner balance of adventurism(s).

 

There is money to be made in virtually every conceivable area of troop and civilian support overseas.  If you pay attention, and are capable of envisioning the logistic necessities involved in continuing our presence in Iraq, Ted Koppel’s report is eye-opening.  Even for the willfully blind.

 

 

An alternative geopolitical perspective

 

One of the problems of making sound foreign and military policy is our psychological attachment to “sunk costs.”  These are costs in blood and money that have already been expended on (often losing) propositions.

 

So, for example, Ted Koppel concludes that, “American interests are vitally engaged over there.”

 

One reason for his assessment is that Iran might be able to exert enough influence over Iraq to push American gasoline prices upward to $5 or $10 a gallon.  That would be very bad for the U.S. economy.

 

However, Koppel’s proposition is arguably wrong in the long term, if one sees (a) alternative sources for oil and (b) more imaginative ways in which to deal with a hostile Iran.

 

The United States and Canada have enormous reserves of coal and oil sands.  Rather than continuing to depend on a hostile Middle East’s production of oil, it might be geopolitically wiser to begin exploiting our own fuel reserves — with corresponding financial and technological investments in making them cleaner and more versatile.

 

Similarly, there is no reason to leave civilians in an eminently dangerous Iraq, when the United States can exert military and economic influences that counter Iran’s shenanigans from further away.  I’m not, for instance, persuaded that the continuing CIA presence in Iraq is going to be orders of magnitude more effective in countering Iran than if its Iraq infrastructure is moved somewhere else.

 

I am also (not even a mite) convinced that the 16,000 American civilians remaining in Iraq are going to be able to do what more than 100,000 American troops couldn’t, in regard to pacifying the region and maintaining a strong and effective U.S. presence.

 

Without a large contingent of American troops in place, Iran is going to overwhelm the American presence in Iraq, whether we like it or not.  That is the price of troop withdrawal.

 

 

The moral? — Let’s think a little more wisely and creatively about securing a more favorable aftermath to a mistakenly initiated war

 

Continued mistaken-ness (read “stupidity”) is not a solution to anything.

 

Wasting more money and lives to promote the Big Oil/Military-Industrial Complex’s interests in Iraq is not an obviously wise thing to do.  Especially when we can transfer Big Oil’s attention (more beneficially) somewhere less hostile.

 

Second, the Military-Industrial Complex needs its teeth pulled.  Unless “we” want its avaricious shortsightedness to continue dragging the United States down and out of military and economic Great Power status.

 

Compounding these issues is the fact that our cynically self-serving President is obviously hoping that the price of his politically motivated military withdrawal from Iraq will not begin to see unpleasant things happen to the remaining American civilian contingent there — until after the 2012 election.

 

That’s why the President has been misdirecting our foreign affairs attention everywhere else, including most recently provoking China by sending Marines to Australia. These actions have been taken to defuse Republican criticisms that Democrats are soft on defense.

 

In sum, President Obama is merely continuing and expanding upon the mistaken postures taken by his predecessor.  And, as a nation, we’re digging ourselves deeper into military and economic over-commitments that will predictably spiral out of control, just as Iraq and Afghanistan did.

 

What have “we” learned from Iraq and Afghanistan?

 

Apparently nothing important enough to outweigh the Corporate Plutocracy’s influence and our leaders’ political self-interest.

 

Look at No Exit and let me know what you think.