Good post, Paul, though we could get off the anti or un American talk. That doesn't get us much down the road.
I disagree with your premise. Can you provide evidence to back up your claim?
The premise being that the US action in Iraq is, partially, an attempt to act militarily to manage oil prices based on control of those resources in the Gulf.
1. Jim Baker and the Bush I folk made it quite clear that the first Gulf War was about oil. Nothing necessarily wrong about that. It was what it was. There was a great deal of rhetoric about saving Kuwait but it seems to me starkly clear that we would have done zip in that case if there weren't oil reserves at issue.
2. Ken Pollack makes the only argument about an invasion of Iraq that makes sense to me which is that Saddam with nuclear capabilities makes it possible for him to blackmail other countries in the region into increasing the price of oil. That leaves a country and a ruler in charge of the price of oil which the global economy cannot accept. Now that's a sensible argument, one that makes the Iraq invasion a reasonable exercise in a country's self-interest and, if defended rhetorically correctly and coupled with multilaterial actions along with serious attempts to slow demand for oil, is a strong argument.
I gather the Bush folk have not availed themselves of this argument because they sense their chief weakness on this point which is Bush and Cheney's background in the oil industry. It would too easily be read as their acting on behalf of the US oil industry rather than a wide range of multi-national economic interests.
The difference between Iraq and the rest of these countries is simple. Iraq attacked Kuwait. America was allied with Kuwait. American went to war against Iraq to protect Kuwait. America won the war. Iraq sued for peace, signed a peace treaty and then never complied with that treaty and never accept the burden of peace.
Well, at least you should be able to see the way we read the motives for Gulf War I differently.
By anti-American, I mean you assume that America is in the wrong. You assertion above that the American intent in the Gulf is to manage the price of oil. I consider this an anti-American (but not un-American) statement.
If offering a fairly honest assessment of motives and doing so on the heels of Ken Pollack's argument is "antiAmerican", well I'm a bit at a loss for words. Last time I checked it was the Bush administration's actions in foreign policy I was criticizing and the last time I checked to exercise the right of criticism is to act as an American.
Again, we are on different wave lengths. Any chance you would be prepared to argue the pros and cons of American imperialism rather than this?
For the past 60 years, the paradigm has been economic self-interest OR democratic commitment. I believe that 9-11 shifted the paradigm to economic self-interest AND democratic commitment. It is no longer acceptable to sell one out for the other. This is exactly the paradigm shift which I believe Bush made on the morning of Sept. 11.
I don't know whether it is acceptable to trade one for the other nor would I agree with the sweeping generalization about the tradeoff between the two as marking the past foreign policy behavior of the US. Let me see, on this latter point, I don't think the Reagan folk thought they were doing economic self interest with their actions, however misguided, in Central America. I think they thought they were doing the cherished work of "freedom." I don't think the Clinton folk thought they were doing economic self interest when they were taking actions in Bosnia and in Kosovo. I think they wished to stop ethnic cleansing and offer the right of self determination to folk. YOu can, to go backward, make the same claims about Vietnam.
In short, those two goals seem to me marks of the actions and rhetoric that has moved American foreign policy. I think some of those moves were good ones and some were not but all came with same dual justification.
As for the Palestine-Israeli clash, we can argue the wisdom of the Bush hands-off approach all day and not agree on the premises, let alone the conclusions. I think the inactions of the Bush administration has contributed to a difficult situation getting much, much worse. Apparently, you think those are steps to a better future. I hope you are right; I deeply fear you are wrong. |
