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Oil Wars: Fueling Both U.S. Empire & Ecocide
Rantburgers, please help me educate this gentleman. My brain hurts from reading the entire article. Comrade Brook can be reached at editor@dissidentvoice.org
by Dan Brook / August 20th, 2007
Dripping, spilling, spreading, burning. Welcome to the New World Chaos, what the Bush administration is now calls the long war.
| They've been calling it "the long war" since late 2001. |
The cost is mounting: over 3,700 Americans
| Still a smidgeon compared to previous wars. They'd have been barely noticed at Tarawa. |
and perhaps three-quarters of a million Iraqis,
| That number, we'd guess, would be based on the inflated Lancet figures, with a fudge factor addition. It would also include the number of dead the hard boyz have created. But even with their liking for mass casualties and mass graves, I'd doubt that we're close to the 750,000 dead mark except in the overheated imagination of Indymedia. |
as well as over 100 British and over 100 people from other countries not to mention over 1,000 privatized contractors, whose outsourced
| "Outsourced," you know is a bad word. When jobs are "outsourced" they're taken from honest Merkin workers, with lunch buckets and cloth caps and union cards, and given to shifty-eyed furriners, who go sniffin' 'round our wimmin... In this case, apparently the shifty-eyed furriners are from places like Texas and Kansas and even parts of southern California. |
| And some of those Texans and Kansans may have even...voted Republican. |
jobs were formerly done by soldiers now dead from this latest oil war,
| Oh. Gotcha. The soldiers are all dead now, so we had to hire the shifty-eyed furriners... |
in addition to the tens of thousands (or more) with physical and mental injuries, each one a human being with a family and friends;
| I'm not an expert in the field, though I do know quite a bit more about it than the writer, but as an educated guess I'd say we were running at just a smidgeon over one serious injury for each KIA, with a serious injury defined as one that gets the victim a trip home with a stop at Walter Reed or Bethesda. I don't have any figures on psychological effects; I don't think anyone does, since they'll be somewhat subjective. Probably everyone who'd ever been under any kind of stress feels its results for the rest of his/her/its life. Certain sights, sounds, and particularly smells can briefly put me in another place at another time. On the other hand, life with no stress at all is bland and tasteless and maybe even pointless, probably something like what the author leads. For the most part people deal with those stresses. As a compassionate society, we try to help those who can't. But the mere fact of stress doesn't negate the value of the effort that produces it, anymore than do the casualties. |
more international ill-will and terrorism,
| International ill will from Castro, Mugabe, Chavez, and the ayatollahs doesn't bother me in the least. In fact, ill-will from them is usually an indicator of the rightness of the action. |
| Count me as also unmoved by any approbation flowing from Brussels or Turtle Bay. |
due to U.S. aggression and arrogance,
| We were pretty much at peace with the world on 9-11-2001... |
as well as a raging civil war; fewer civil rights, due to the so-called Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act;
| If they're only "so-called," what is their actual designation? |
less privacy, due to domestic spying; hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps even a trillion dollars, in public tax money gone and at least $2 billion more each week; and hundreds of billions of dollars in private profits for giant corporations (ExxonMobil, the worlds largest oil company, announced soaring profits of $36 billion for 2005, exceeding any corporation in U.S. history, based on revenues of over $1 billion per day, which include continuing subsidies from the U.S. government).
| He's making the assumption that profits in and of themselves are bad, naturally... |
In his 2006 State of the Union speech, Kingpin Bush
| President Bush to you, bub... |
admitted the obvious: America is addicted to oil.
| We have a nation that's 3000 miles from sea to shining sea, about 1500 miles from 54-40 or Fight to the home of the Brownsville Tigers. Connecting our far-flung cities across the fruited plain is a transportation system that's based for the most part on long strips of concrete called "highways." Traversing those "highways" are things called "trucks," which carry "goods." Those "goods" can consist of anything from machine parts to the organic kohl rabi favored by people like the writer as a garnish to their tasty vegetarian meals of radishes and mushrooms. Making those "trucks" move is something known as "fuel." We are addicted to having our strawberries in March, instead of having to wait until July. We're addicted to having our stores' inventories up to date, rather than having to check on alternating Thursdays to see if the shipment of gingham's arrived by wagon train yet. "Fuel" still comes from oil, and it's that to which we're addicted. It would be nice to be able to grow organic gasoline in our urban balcony gardens, but it requires extraction, transport, and processing that's beyond the average citizen's means. Being "addicted" to oil means that it's one of very few absolutely basic requirements to run our society. |
What George Bush the Lesser
| Can we dock him 10 points for ad hominems? |
didnt admit, among other things, is that the U.S. military is the worlds largest consumer of oil and the worlds largest polluter.
| Really. If we just shut down the U.S. military all skies would be blue and the smog would lift... |
America is also addicted to war for oil,
| Which is why we're in Iraq and we've seen the price of oil double. It's a real pity we're not addicted to war for oil, because every fluctuation in the price of transportation has an effect on the rest of the economy. I think most of the public would gladly accept the return of 35 cent per gallon gasoline, even at the cost of imposing Wal-Mart on most of the Muddle East. Having gone without it since 1973 - a mere four years after Congress repealed the Oil Depletion Allowance, the start of disincentives to domestic oil production - the public would probably look with disfavor on those who might want to make it go away again. |
with the Bush Administration addicted to lying, deception, secrecy.
| Another 10 for ad hominem. |
Indeed, the warmongers and war profiteers have us over a barrel. As they say, to the victor go the oils.
| I don't think I've ever heard anyone outside Indymedia say that. Military people certainly don't think in terms of oil production, and diplomatic policy from what we can make out here isn't predicated on oil. Many of us wish it was, since that might bring back 35 cents a gallon high test. |
Prior to formally ordering the illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003,
| It was "illegal" because the author disagreed with it. |
self-declared war president George W. Bush
| ... since he's under the illusion that we've been at war since 9-11-2001... |
(who even the Washington Post repeatedly calls the worst president ever)
| ... and we all know what right-wing stooges the WaPo is... |
sternly warned the Iraqis: Do not destroy the oil wells. The war on Iraq was, reportedly, originally named Operation Iraqi Liberation, instead of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Someone quickly realized, however, that the acronym would be OIL.
| Sounds pretty apocryphal to me. What about Gog and Magog? Do they fit in? |
That wouldnt make for good PR not that it didnt clearly represent their interests, but not the interests the criminal Bush gang cares to advertise.
| Another 10 for ad hominem... |
In either case, they seem to have meant liberalization of the economy instead of liberation and free markets instead of freedom.
| Now there's an interesting statement, and I could probably spend the rest of the day dissecting it. To put it in the short form, rather than boring all and sundry with a 130-page disquisition on elementary economics and political theory, I'll point out that liberalization of the economy is liberation and free markets are essential for freedom. The writer obviously favors managed economies, like Cuba or Zim-bob-we or some other success story, and considers free markets harbingers of the return of the kulaks. To the totalitarian, freedom accrues to the state, rather than to the individual, whose place is to produce goods and services according to plan and of course to sacrifice him/her/itself in the service of the state. That's elementary Mussolini. |
We can suppose, therefore, that it was a concession as well as a salute to their Capitalist-in-Chief
| Capitalist is bad, of course. Capitalist is robber barons and plutocrats, not venture capital and startups and such... |
to name some of the U.S. military bases in newly-occupied Iraq after oil companies. (The 101st Airborne Division really did name a Base Exxon and a Base Shell somewhere in the deserts of Iraq!)
| Never heard of them, but if they existed I'd doubt they were named by the White House. I'd also doubt that they were named for the shadowy hands behind the war. For one thing, if the hands were shadowy, why would they advertise? |
While there are now reported to be over 100 U.S. bases in Iraq, both large and small,
| ... all of them named after oil companies... |
it appears that the long-term plans are to build and maintain four to six permanent super-bases each as large as 20 square miles and as sprawling as American suburbia
| "Suburbia" is bad. It evokes visions of Stepford. "Urban" is good. "Rural" is pretty much non-existent. |
with its requisite multinational fast food outlets,
| "Fast food" is bad. It will be replaced by tasty vegetarian meals of radishes and mushrooms, come the Revolution, garnished with organic kohl rabi. |
not to mention movie theaters
and golf courses costing several billion dollars.
| I'm already signed up for the Baqouba Open... |
Following the recent U.S. wars in former Yugoslavia,
| ... where we were defending Muslims, in large part. We didn't become involved when the Serbs and Croats were fighting it out... |
Afghanistan,
| Home of al-Qaeda. Was there a particular reason we shouldn't have been there? Or were we there to despoil the Afghans of their oil? |
and Iraq, U.S. military bases have mushroomed in these regions,
| Better to fly the troops in for operations from U.S. bases, after getting rid of their movie theaters and golf courses... |
adding to the already extensive empire.
| Have we received our tribute from Germany this year? And who's slated to become the next satrap of Korea? |
With occupied Iraq slated to have the largest U.S. Embassy staffed with more than three thousand personnel and costing $1 billion to construct in addition to the permanent super-bases, those immense material and human resources should be able to adequately guard their financial interests and liquid assets.
| At which point are they going to start turning a profit for us? To date it's been all investment with no return. |
In the first combat operation of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, navy Seals claimed a bloodless victory, according the New York Times (22 March 2003), seizing two oil terminals in the battle for Iraqs vast oil empire. Tellingly, administration officials are now referring to the long war.
| You said that. Y'know, one of the signs of senility is when you start to repeat yourself. And another thing: one of the signs of senility is when you start to repeat yourself, so watch it! |
The battle is fixing to be longer than a transcontinental pipeline.
| Boy. That's witty. Which continent? |
Even though Commander-in-Mischief Bush
| Another 10 for ad hominem... |
declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003, after landing under a giant banner on an aircraft carrier barely off the coast of San Diego announcing Mission Accomplished, and transferred so-called sovereignty
| Remember, it's only "so-called." It's actually something else, entirely different. The disignation is there to fool those who aren't privy to the secret knowledge... |
to Iraqis on June 28, 2004, the business-oriented Bloomberg News reports that The battle for Iraqs oil is just beginning (June 18, 2004). Whether speaking of insurgents, pipelines, or profits, in July 2003, bombastic Bush brashly declared: Bring em on!
| I'm sorry. This is not thought. It's pure regurge. |
--More (ad nauseum) at link...| Actually, I think it'd be post nauseum. |
Posted by: Marine0352 2007-08-21 |
