Iraq Redux, Reflux, Upchuck

Many of you may not know this, but the United States has resumed combat operations in Iraq.  It seems that the US is deathly afraid that it will lose its fragile hegemony in Iraq and Syria which it won by breaking one of those countries and attempting to break the other.  (Oops, I mean, the U.S. is ramping up its efforts to achieve its "elusive" goal of destroying ISIS.)  Oh, and by the way, I made another mistake.  The U.S. isn't actually using the words "U.S. troops in combat."  Unless, that is, they are asked the sort of direct questions that leave no wiggle room.

I am greatly comforted in knowing that our great military is "defending our freedoms!!!" in such a selfless way, just as our brave policemen are fighting a rising tide of violent crime brought on by the fact that citizens have been posting YouTube videos of police being unnecessarily violent against innocent people.  If only we could ban those videos!  Then the police could really do their jobs.  And it's comforting to know that the folks who run things now are serving us a second helping of a war for which most sensible people have lost their appetite.  (The Iraqis certainly did not ask for a second helping.)  It's also interesting in a perverse sort of way to realize that many of the American patriots who are now joining the military are likely to suffer the consequences of a really bad decision.  Willful blindness is not helpful for survival when you've decided to play on a freeway.

Why I don't Entirely Believe In The ISIS Crisis

ISIS has been in the news a lot lately. I don't have a lot of time to search out links, but I will give a summary of my impression of the news. According to American media, ISIS has grown from a smattering of formerly American-funded and American-trained Islamic militants into a powerhouse of radical terrorist jihadism threatening to destabilize the entire Middle East. Not only that, but they are behind the barbarous beheadings of a number of foreign journalists who were unwise enough to be caught hanging out in places where they should not have been. And to top it all off, several ISIS plots have been uncovered recently to attack public targets in the United States, Australia and France.

In response to all of these things, President Barack Obama has declared a war to the finish against ISIS. (Never mind that we attacked ISIS first, thus prompting the first beheading of a foreign journalist.) So far, this has involved American and British airstrikes against targets in Syria and Iraq. Some members of the U.S. government have also talked of the need to initiate a ground campaign in the Mideast in order to eradicate ISIS.

That's my impression of the official story line, anyway. Now, I am not a national security analyst, but a few things smell quite fishy about the official story line. They have to do with how the U.S. and Britain are using the ISIS crisis (hey, that rhymes!) to accomplish a few policy objectives which they have long wanted to achieve, but which have to date been stymied. First is the overthrow of the Syrian government and its replacement by a puppet government constructed by the United States, which tried for many months to find a pretext for military operations against President Hassad, and which failed to motivate enough Americans to back such a stinky business. First, we tried to foment a fake revolution. Then we carried out a number of false flag operations. Then certain highly placed government officials told outright lies to a bunch of “news” outlets unworthy of the title of journalists. Now ISIS provides a convenient excuse to do something which was never legitimate in the first place.

So what about those beheadings? Well, all I know for sure is that they were carried out by a bunch of guys in Arab costumes with masks on their faces and speaking in funny accents. No sane or reasonable person would venture to try to identify any of those masked men by name – or by nationality. In the absence of more substantive identification, I feel the same way I felt after watching a grainy, low-resolution video broadcast by some mainstream media outlets purporting to prove that someone who looked like Michael Brown held up a convenience store before he was shot to death by a white cop while unarmed. Pardon me, but I need to see faces that I can recognize before I will even begin to consider any video “evidence.” Who knows, the beheaders might be my next door neighbors in Halloween costumes.

Compare the Anglo-American portrayal of ISIS to the portrayal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and you'll notice a striking number of similarities. Bin Laden served for years as America's bogeyman in order to legitimize two stupid wars, huge losses of life, oppression of two nations (three if you count the progress that has been made in turning the U.S. into a police state), and untold damage. Osama was America's Goldstein from 2001 until his untimely death at the tusks of a bunch of trained seals in 2011. I guess it was time for a new bogeyman, a new La_Llorona to keep us properly scared, compliant and willing to support our raging, uncontrollable addiction to war. Thanks, ISIS!

Oh, and one other thing. ISIS is being used to help us conveniently forget our own self-inflicted problems, such as the oppression of people of color by holders of white privilege in this country, the continued oppression of women by dominating, narcissistic men who legitimize domestic violence and rape, the oppression of sick people by a predatory system of “insurance”, “medicine” and Big Pharma, the environmental consequences we are now suffering due to the non-negotiable American way of life, the predation of the poor by the rich, etc, etc.

Scoring Some Big Books

Our knowledge of history is under threat in the United States – especially our accurate knowledge of recent history. An accurate knowledge of recent history and of the role the United States has played in that history might well cause a great deal of unease of conscience among the masses of consumatrons who make up the vast majority of native-born Americans. Therefore, powerful institutions are at work to try to make everyone forget. Their efforts seem to be working. As an example, I was talking to a couple of kids a month ago and found out that they knew very little about the origins of the war in Iraq.

Accurate online histories are also under attack, and false histories abound. Even accurate online histories can be subject to sabotage.

So I am happy to report that I scored a big prize today. I finally got my hands on two copies of Fuel On The Fire: Oil And Politics In Occupied Iraq by Greg Muttitt. The book was devilishly hard to get. I wanted to purchase it by a particular method: namely, walking into a bookstore and handing over cash in exchange for the book. I didn't want to order it online or use a credit card or Paypal account to buy it. (Partly, this was because I don't want to let the U.S. Government know what sorts of books I like to read ;) ). It seems that you can only buy this book in person if you go to bookstores in Britain. In the U.S., Borders Books only offers an e-book version. Barnes and Noble doesn't offer it at all. Amazon sells both paperback and e-book versions, but you have to tell them a bit about yourself (things like credit card numbers, for instance). Powell's Books right here in Portland deserves special mention. Powell's will sell you the book, but their website states that the book is “available for shipping only. Not available for In-store Pickup.” (Powell's has made a name for themselves as “progressive” and “locally owned,” but as far as I am concerned they are just as evil and consumerist as Starbucks.)

Anyway, I circumvented a few roadblocks by getting a very small, locally owned bookshop to order me a couple of copies. The bookshop was happy to take my cash in return. These books are thick (as a former boss of mine used to say, “Enough paper to choke a horse), and chock full of U.S. and British government and industry documents obtained from the British government under their version of the Freedom of Information Act, which is a lot freer than the U.S. version of the FOIA has become. Now that I have them, I'll be sharing some highlights from my reading over the next several months, as well as discussing and reviewing a couple of other books that are pertinent to adaptation to economic contraction and energy descent.

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P.S. I am sad to report that Naomi's Organic Farm Supply will be closing soon. Neil and Naomi Montacre are the proprietors of the place, which includes a large organic garden and greenhouse as well as an organic gardening store. They are situated on a plot of land that is owned by Les Schwab's Tire Stores, and Les Schwab wants to build another store on that plot of land. A Les Schwab store seems a very poor substitute for Naomi's. Wherever Neil and Naomi go from here, I am sure they will enrich the place of their sojourning, as they have done up to now.

Iraq: A Good Heist?

A couple of weeks ago I read a bit of the December edition of the Oilwatch Monthly, an oil production newsletter published by Rembrandt Koppelaar, President of ASPO Netherlands. (You can get a PDF download here: “Oilwatch Monthly December 2009”; click on the link I have provided, then click on the link that says, “November 2009 – 1.24 MB – 33 pagina's” in the target page.) I came across a very curious statement under the discussion titled, “The Importance of Iraqi Oil Production,” which I quote as follows:

“European, Russian and Chinese oil companies including Shell, Lukoil, CNPC and BP are having a field day winning auctions to develop big Iraqi oil fields. Shell and Petronas have obtained the right to develop Majnoon with 7 billion barrels of reserves, Lukoil and Statoil the West Qurna 2 field which in total holds 9.75 billion barrels, and Total and Petronas the Halfaya field with 0.5 billion barrels. The only US company that secured a deal is ExxonMobil over the development of West Qurna 1, quite a disappointment given the amount of money the US has invested in Iraq through the Iraqi war...

“As demand is the driver of oil markets, and a continued shrinkage of the economy under a W or L shaped recession is more likely, the development of Iraqi oil is even more important due to its low cost structure. The costs to develop these fields are in the order of 10 to 20 dollars per barrel excluding war subsidies already incurred. Low cost Iraqi oil that ‘floods’ the market bringing oil prices down as supply vastly outmatches demand can give a huge boom to the economy. Albeit temporarily for only about five year as continued declines will eventually outweigh increases, it can create the breathing space to make some swift decisions to add resilience to national economies. In that sense the Iraqi war may not have been fruitless but create a boon for the global economy...”

Note the last sentence: “...the Iraqi war may not have been fruitless but create a boon for the global economy...” Frankly, I choked on this statement. I'd like to present a rather different view of things in today's post.

First, a minor unrelated criticism. For over a year I have been less enthusiastic about accepting the production figures in the Oilwatch Monthly, not because I think Mr. Koppelaar is not competent, but because those figures are based on figures published by the International Energy Agency. Since the middle of 2008, I have suspected the IEA of cooking the books a little to hide the reality of global oil production declines. I still think that 2005 was the year of maximum global oil production.

Secondly, a technical criticism of stated Iraqi reserves. It is common knowledge that many OPEC nations grossly inflated their proven and probable reserve numbers in the 1980's in order to boost their production quotas. Thus Iraq went from declared reserves of 30 billion barrels in 1980 to 100 billion barrels in 1987. (Source: “Oil reserves,” Wikipedia). Lately a figure of 115 billion barrels has been tossed around. It is very possible that such high numbers are a mere fiction.

In making these minor criticisms, I freely admit that I'm not a petroleum geologist or oil industry expert, but an average ordinary guy trying to make sense of things. I'm sure the experts know much more that I do. But on to my third criticism, which has to do with morality. Here I think I can speak with more confidence. The Iraq invasion was not “worth it” from a moral standpoint. Here are my reasons for saying so.

1. All of the “terrorism” and “weapons of mass destruction” excuses for the war have turned out to be false. It has been conclusively proven again and again that both the American and British governments fabricated evidence of Iraqi involvement in terrorism and continued Iraqi attempts to build WMD's, in order to build a case for invading Iraq. (Anyone want a little “yellowcake” to go with your coffee while you're reading this?) Further, no weapons of mass destruction were found after the invasion. None.

2. There are no moral justifications for attacking a country that was not planning or preparing to attack us. Some have attempted to justify the invasion on grounds other than American access to Mideast oil, but these justifications hold no water and are often mere attempts to deflect attention from the real reason for the invasion. I think in particular of how one prominent writer has stated that America invaded Iraq in order to “modify and influence the behavior” of other Arab powers in the region, in addition to sending a message to the Arab world in response to 9/11.

To me, this justification is unrighteous. So, Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with terrorism, Al-Qaida or the events of September 11^th, yet we destroyed that country in order to send a message to the rest of the Arab world? How would you like to be punished for a crime committed by someone else? Does that seem fair? Two wrongs do not make a right.

3. I agree with Rembrandt that it is obvious that the Iraq war was all about oil – specifically American access to Iraqi oil (and anything else of value that belonged to the Iraqis). Abundant proof of that is seen in the actions of Lewis Paul Bremer, the governor of Iraq appointed by President Bush in the aftermath of the American invasion. We went to Iraq in order to jack that country – all so that well-fed Americans could continue to drive outlandish, super-sized vehicles wherever they want, as fast as they want.

4. In the process of jacking Iraqi oil, we killed a lot of people. In considering this, some will think only of the American soldiers who died. That's typical of American self-centeredness. But how about all the Iraqis who died? (By some counts, this figure is over one million.) It just hit the news that a Federal judge recently dismissed all charges against five Blackwater operatives who massacred seventeen unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007.

5. Having stolen our way to Iraqi oil, we have not used our access to that resource in order to buy time for an orderly transition to more sustainable societal arrangements. Instead, we have done our best to keep industrial expansion and the concentration of wealth in rich hands going as smoothly as possible. We are indeed like a heroin junkie who, having just murdered and robbed a victim, is using the money not for rehab, nor even for methadone, but for another fix.

These are difficult times, and we will have to work together to insure that resources are allocated fairly to all the world's people. In times like these, it is dangerous to lose one's moral compass, and even more dangerous to decide that one does not need a moral compass.