Greenspan: War about Oil.

[opebo]

...it isn't the "neoconservative" ilk within the GOP that should shoulder all the blame for the current state of affairs.  It's all of us, everyone from Jimmy Carter to you to me to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush.  Well, that, and you still haven't suggested any reason why we'd want them to adopt our economic way.  The simplest answer is sometimes the truest answer.  Ockham's razor would suggest that we realize that it is, in fact, that our own way of life is dependent on their vast supply of natural resources. 

All very true, angus.  Capitalism = kleptocracy.  But I would interject the caveat that, perhaps, while a great many americans are 'to blame' for the wildly destructive behaviour of our theiving State, we might exclude the american poor from that charge.

I know you'll say, 'oh, they still live better than a poor in the subject nations, and thus are also implicated... but do they really?  I think in fact that do not, for the most part, at least from what I have seen of Thailand and the american ghetto.

[angus]

I'm not really pushing guilt here.  Just pointing out that each empire thinks it is so different than all those before it because it has convinced itself that its way of life is the apex of civilization and therefore worthy of pushing on everyone else.  And, of course, reminding you that money (in one form or another) is the reason wars are fought.  Men can be forgiving, and can forego much abuse, but when your economic interests and mine are in opposition, we will come to blows.  The mantras change over the years:  "They have the nerve to tax our cup of tea?  This means war!"  or "Those Yankee industrialists have the nerve to put a one dollar tariff on ploughblades imported from England just so we'll buy theirs?  Just because the industrial revolution hasn't been here long enough for them to do it as well and as cheaply as the Brits doesn't give 'em the right to tax us like that.  How's a Virginia planter supposed to make a living if he has to pay two dollars for a ploughblade that ought to cost one?" or "Liebensraum für Alles!"  or "But he's a madman, and he's killing all his own people in paper shredders and developing nuclear weapons!  So you know we better oust the bastard before he starts burning all that petroleum like he did in 1991."  But they're all fights started over for economic interests. 

The problem in a democracy (or in a democratically-controlled republic) is that you have to get the people's permission to do anything.  This for example, is why the Chinese economy grows so much faster than India's.  Democracy is a wedge that slows things down.  So you have to sell any idea, especially one which results in going to war, to the people.  You have to get their permission.  The art is in how you sell it "life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness" sounds so much better than, "those greedy bastards are cutting in to my profit"  and "four score and seven years ago our forefathers founded a new nation, dedicated to liberty..." sounds so much better than, "those greedy bastards are cutting into my profit" and "Juden, nasen gegen die mauer!" sound better than "those greedy bastards are cutting into my profit"  Well, okay, they actually did use the line "those greedy bastards are cutting into my profit" in that last example.  But you get the point.  So, "Saddam is a threat to national security because he is developing weapons of mass effect" sounds better than "our consumer way of life is threatened when people who don't share our worldview are in control of the vast natural resources of the middle east."

In point of fact, that's exactly why Paul Wolfowitz, a highly regarded national security specialist and undersecretary of defense for policy for Bush41, was so roundly denounced by Bush41.  Herman Melville in 1850ish wrote that "we americans are the peculiar chosen people.  The Israel of our time.  We bear the ark of liberty of the world"  And accordingly, certain obvious truths had to remain unspoken.  Wolfowitz broke the rules.  The three no's--no to power politics, no to war, and no to limits--sustained the myth of American exceptionalism until then.  He wrote in a DPG for daddy Bush that it was incumbent upon the US to "maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to larger regional or global role..."  Mechanisms?  a euphemism for superior military power, no doubt.  When the DPG was leaked to the press in 1992 there was quite a public backlash.  Wolfowitz had been indiscreet.  He hadn't been dishonest, but this certainly wasn't the language of American statecraft.  I think historians still call this "the Wolfowitz indiscretion." 

Tell me what I want to hear, baby, and I'll walk with you straight through the gates of hell.  Just make me feel good about it as I do.  Well, it's not exactly that anyone lied about anything, it's just a matter of where you place the emphasis.  But I still can't help hearing this lyric in my head.


If I could turn the page
In time then Id rearrange just a day or two
Close my, close my, close my eyes

But I couldnt find a way
So Ill settle for one day to believe in you
Tell me, tell me, tell me lies

Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
(tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies)
Oh, no, no you cant disguise
(you cant disguise, no you cant disguise)
Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies

Although Im not making plans
I hope that you understand theres a reason why
Close your, close your, close your eyes

No more broken hearts
Were better off apart lets give it a try
Tell me, tell me, tell me lies

Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
(tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies)
Oh, no, no you cant disguise
(you cant disguise, no you cant disguise)
Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies

If I could turn the page
In time then Id rearrange just a day or two
Close my, close my, close my eyes

But I couldnt find a way
So Ill settle for one day to believe in you
Tell me, tell me, tell me lies

Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
(tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies)
Oh, no, no you cant disguise
(you cant disguise, no you cant disguise)

Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
(tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies)
Oh, no, no you cant disguise
(you cant disguise, no you cant disguise)
Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
    --Fleetwood Mac

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Giving the Iraqis democracy would be a boon to us because we believe we can convince a free and literate people that it is in their best interest to do business peacefully with us.  So, yeah, it is about the oil.  Well, that and maybe a little payback for trying to off daddy.  How rude.

our interests in the Middle East go far beyond oil...the whole Muslim/Israel conflict has very little, if anything, to do with oil, rather it is about religion, yet it threatens our security in more ways than higher oil prices - 9/11 being the prime example.

Money is not the root cause of every single war, you're naive to think so. 

And democracy and economic freedom don't always work as a bribe - a lesson the non-fundamentalist neocons are being taught.

[angus]

I do like your signature.  I used to get such messages from time to time as well. 

But yes, the Israelis and Palestinians are fighting for exactly the same reasons that Germans and Poles fought in 1939.  Israelis want a little more Liebensraum.  Can't blame 'em.  That little chunk of land isn't much larger than Brewster County, Texas.  And it isn't much more arable.  (Well, okay, it's a little more arable than Brewster County)  More land = more crops.  They want a homeland, and given the geopolitical situation in the 1920s--a time when the Russians and other Eastern Europeans didn't want the Jews in their neighborhood anyway--Palestine seemed like easy pickings.  So they loaded up the truck and moved to Galilee.  Hills, that is.  Problem is, Palestinians kinda like it where they are.  (Just like when the Poles figured piece of real estate from around Posen north to the Baltic sea at Danzig was theirs by around 1930.)  And landgrabs are done for sound economic reasons.  National security is one of the greatest economic reasons for any landgrab.  Owning Golan Heights means you don't have to worry about attackers running downhill toward your villages.  So owning it is means more economic security.  Of course, the original occupants of Golan Heights don't want their land stolen from them.  And annexing East Jerusalem is a good economic investment.  If you're Israel, that is.  If you're a Palestinian, it pisses you off.  If there's only one apple in the room, and we're both hungry, chances are we'll get into a fight.  It has always been this way.  Custer's boys and the Sioux people both liked the Dakotas, didn't they?  But there can be only one victor.  Might makes right.  At the moment, Israel is mightier than Palestine.  And as long as we continue to fund their endeavors they will continue to be.  That, I suppose, puts a big thorn in the sides of the arabic-speaking crowd.  Makes 'em think we're the bad guys. 

Anyway, I don't think we disagree about the fact that democracy and economic freedom don't always work as a bribe.  And I'll stipulate that "oil" here, and throughout the thread I'll assume, is a metaphor for "economic gain"  But yeah, oil itself, literally oil--Bubblin' crude.  Black gold.  Texas Tea.  Oil, that is--oil is a huge part of ithe problem since our way of life depends on it.  So, for that matter, does France's, England's, and China's, though not to the extent that ours does, which is why it's always a bit difficult to get those other members of the UN security council to go along with our schemes.  Oil is also the reason for Obama bin Laden.  Back when the tribal wanderers had nothing, they fought with big knives and didn't get into international squabbles.  But once the arabian peninsula's resources were tapped, all those sand people got rich.  And idle.  The idle rich can be very dangerous.  When I don't have to work for a living, I don't have to study engineering or law or business when daddy sends me to college.  I can study philosophy and the Koran.  And I can philosophize about great things.  Lots of time to think, those rich arab boys have.  And sometimes they think too much about things.  Things like how much better the world be if the evil greedy Americans could be made to feel the wrath of God.  But if they didn't have all that oil, they wouldn't have all those riches and all that time.  They'd have to work and go to school to learn a trade and stay out of trouble.

Oil is the big problem for them.  And it's the big problem for us.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

They want a homeland, and given the geopolitical situation in the 1920s--a time when the Russians and other Eastern Europeans didn't want the Jews in their neighborhood anyway--Palestine seemed like easy pickings.  So they loaded up the truck and moved to Galilee.

Did it ever occur to you that Palestine was chosen because the Jews believed to the very depths of their souls that God had given them that land and that their belief could not be bargained away with any amount of money?

The Jews believe that God gave them the land, the Arabs believe that God gave it to them.  Some Jews and Arabs may be willing to trade their beliefs for riches and/or land, but not all.

---

And landgrabs are done for sound economic reasons.

9/11 wasn't a landgrab, it was a suicide mission.  you don't get rich in this world by committing suicide.

Every war is not based on greed.  Some are based on religion and deeply held beliefs that the promise of wealth and prosperity can not touch.   

[angus]

I thought about all that.  These subjects are tricky.  Especially with you.  Because you're a biblical literalist.  And, frankly, I think you let all that cloud your judgement.  No offense.  I know you are one of the most informed posters here, but you do let all that philosophical/religious thinking inform your politics.  And I think you're head is too up in the clouds.  Like a professor.  And sometimes you have to step down out of your religious/academic way of thinking and be practical.  There are organizations that'll pay you 25 grand for a successful suicide bombing mission--In fact, the same wealthy arabs with nothing better to do than philosophize about an Islamic world are the ones giving that money to poor families--And that's quite a lot of money to people who don't even know where the next meal is coming from.  Sometimes we lose sight of that.  It's easy to be a head-in-the-clouds academic when you're here.  Safe, warm, and gainfully employed.  But put yourself in the place of the average Palestinian or the average Israeli Jew for a moment.  My guess is that the average Palestinian doesn't talk about Allah with his family over dinner.  He talks about providing food for his wife and his family.  And is glad he made it home through the roadblocks.  And my guess is that the average Israeli doesn't talk about Yahweh's wrath over dinner, but rather the fact that he lived another day in peace.  And what all those Jews and Arabs want is just what most of us here want:  prosperity, peace, and a chance to be.  No, the average Jew and Palestinian aren't fighting over whose interpretation of God's will is right and whose is wrong, but rather how they'll get to work in the morning in one piece.

It's about the economic condition.  It's about food on the table.  Not about gods and afterlives and divergent interpretations of the scriptures.  Although that's sometimes a good way to sell it to the people.  The medieval lords understood this, and the great unwashed masses followed their knights to their graves thinking what they were told to think by their lords.  But the conquest itself is about riches.  The conquistadores wanted peruvian gold and mexican silver.  If they had to put up with a few priests on board their galleons then that's the price they had to pay, but they just wanted the wealth.  Well, that and the La Fuente de la Juventud.  (Been there, done that.  There's a gaudy Billboard on IH95 coming from Miami to Saint Augustine advertising "Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth."  Even bought my kid a t-shirt there.  A t-shirt that was made in china, shipped across the ocean and hauled to Saint Augustine in a truck run on the very supply of petroleum products that we sustain big armies to protect.)

[opebo]

What he fails to understand, angus, as you so astutely point out, is that the hate with which he and all other religious are brimming over was placed there by someone for a political (economic) purpose.   Brainwashed slaves rarely realize what they are.