"A Blueprint for Iraq: Will It Work in the White House?" New York Times (6
October 2006)
After Mr Baker's presentation of The Iraq Study Group Report yesterday and
the subsequent press session when President Bush sat between Mr Baker and
Mr Hamilton, the twin chief authors, Bush looked for all the world -- and
to all the world -- like a delinquent schoolboy being disciplined before
the whole school. One almost felt sorry for him. He didn't even have the
support of Vice-president Cheney -- probably the chief architect of
America's horrendous dilemma -- at his side.
The crux of the matter started in 1990 when half a million American troops
arrived in Saudi Arabia preparing to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait's rich
oilfields. This massive clash of disparate cultures within Saudi Arabia
produced a split in the Wahhabi priesthood which resulted in the older
clerics enforcing a Sharia Constitution on the Saudi royal family and the
younger clerics breaking away to form a movement called the sahwa, or
awakening -- the beginning of the anti-American, anti-Western puritanical
movement we now generally call Al Qaeda.
At the same time, the Saudi royal family was prevented from continuing any
further negotiations for new oil and gas concessions with US- and UK-based
corporations and, indeed, President Bush Senior was probably lucky in
retaining the existing preferential oil contracts that President Roosevelt
had originally negotiated with King Saud in 1945 which subsequently became
a vital part of America's economy as its own domestic oilfields became
exhausted.
It was then -- from 1990 onwards -- that America had to start looking at
the prospects of the Iraqi oilfelds, the second largest in the world, and
only partially developed. Anybody who believes that the American invasion
of Iraq in 2003 had any other purpose than to deprive Saddam Hussein of the
potential wealth and military power that could be derived from these
oilfields is naive indeed.
It was understandable that Saddam Hussein had to be dethroned in one way or
another for the sake of the safety of the West, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
However, instead of containing Saddam Hussein's constant provocations and
awaiting a domestic coup d'état by means of maintaining relatively cheap
fighter patrols over Iraq, America and Britain decided to invade instead,
against all the advice of their Middle East experts in the State Department
and the Foreign Office. And most of the electorates of America and Britain
looked on. It is the ultimate spectator sport. There is nothing quite so
fascinating as a full-blown war -- so long as it's taking place elsewhere.
Because 99% of Western electorates are uneducated in the fundamental
importance of the Laws of Thermodynamics, they have little appreciation of
the energy derived from fossil fuels in maintaining modern economies.
Without fossil fuels -- and for the next century until alternative
technologies come on the scene significantly -- we would be totally sunk.
Therefore electorates were able to be persuaded by the sops given to them
by politicians, such as getting rid of "weapons of mass destruction" or
implanting "democracy", that were given as the reason for the invasion.
The invasion of Iraq is now history, though the tragedy of ordinary men,
women and children in Iraq continues apace. Apart from taking his troops
home -- and all his troops -- there is almost nothing Bush can do now which
can ameliorate the condition of Iraq or the Middle East. The solutions can
only come from the main Middle East countries themselves as they decide
whether they are to be essentially religiously-governed countries or
whether they want to become Westernised as China and Russia have decided.
Ominously, Saudi Arabia is trying to arrange a conference of
Sunni-dominated countries and Iran is doing the same among what is called
the Shia crescent. Whether this will result in some sort of major conflict
between the two schisms remains to be seen.
One thing is certain, however. Because of President Bush's and
Vice-president Cheney's stupidity they have now debarred America from any
constructive peace-making rôle in the Middle East. If there is to be peace
from now onwards, then the peace-makers are likely to be those who are now
quietly taking over the role as the world's economic leaders and who
already have sizeable oil and gas contracts with both Saudi Arabia and with
Iran.
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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