At 13:42 10/10/2003 -0700, you wrote:
From my POV, even the perception of a sell-off and war profiteering validates to more people than before that the US invasion of Iraq was not about WMD, not about making the Middle East safe for democracy, not about the humanitarian reasons to oppose a ruthless dictator, or even to protect Israel, but to provide new markets for American economy, reinvigorating the lagging manufacturing industry, including among many things, John Deere tractors, generators, PVC pipe, electrical supplies, huge defense weaponry reorders, tires, batteries, high tech battle gear, bottled water, duct tape (!), cell phones and their hosts, hospital supplies, and last but not least, frozen chickens and other US farm products.
But the Americans are still not getting out the oil in any sensible quantity! Now that they appear to have given up trying through the northern oil pipeline they are now going to pump the northern oil much longer distances through to the south. Saddam's henchmen are not so prevalent there but I suspect that Shia extremists will be encouraged to sabotage any attempt and this might also attract terrorist groups from Iran. (From what I gather Iranian Shias come and go across the border with ease in the south.) This might increase the desire of many people here to withdraw our troops from the south. So far, our troops haven't been attacked as often as the Americans in the north because the Shias are waiting for some hints concerning their role in the future Constitution of the country, but there is little doubt from what our journalists report that resentment is seething there and can easily be set off.
Sorry! I haven't touched upon the main point of your posting. Well ..... I don't feel that anything sensible can be said about it really. The Americans want the oil -- that's the crux of it all. The rest is window-dressing. The Americans want the oil, and they'd be prepared to share it with others, prepared to have a sort of free trade there -- so long as American oil corporations predominate.
The main problem is that oilfields are no respecter of cultures and Iraq's fields straddle the Kurdish north and the Shia south. Because of this the Americans can't entertain the only solution for Iraq that any historian (or evolutionary economist!) could tell them -- to split Iraq into three. Even when the Turks ruled Iraq they did so via three separate provincial governors at Mosul, Baghdad and Basra -- all natural cultural capitals. If these were separate nation-states there'd be much tension between them no doubt, but there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to trade together. The oil could flow readily across the Kurd/Shia border.
The Americans have grabbed the tail of a tiger or, to change the metaphor, they're in a quagmire. They have a hopeless job of achieving anything in Iraq. But then, they shouldn't have gone in in the first place.
After reading what Kristol wrote the other day, I think it's very possible to believe something unbelievable -- that the CIA + State Department + some of the military + some Republican Senators will overthrow Bush/Cheney in a coup on the grounds of mental incompetence. It came close to this in Nixon's time. I really think that as the quagmire becomes deeper and deeper with no way that Bush can struggle out of it and, unless he resigns voiluntarily, that something along the lines of a coup d'etat will take place in that most democratic of all countries (so they say!). I write all this not because I am an expert about the American political scene -- which I'm not, except what I read -- but because I can't see any possibility of any solution if Bush continues in his present path. And he can't change it because he'll lose credibility completely. He's on a hiding to nothing.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
