Xymphora: It's Not about Oil: Bleier: It's Permanent War

Xymphora Half Right --

Here's Xymphora cogently dismissing once again the renewed idea that invading Iraq was about oil. Xymphora's right on oil; but only half right about the Zionists. Yes, as he says, the Zionists support policies which have created civil war in Iraq. But where Xymphora and Petras and Walt and Mearshimer and Christopher Bollyn go wrong, is they somehow leave out from the equation the radical extremist nihilists Bush and Cheney who are bent on a permanent war agenda. Powerful as the Zionists are they couldn't get Clinton to make war on Iraq and they couldn't have gotten Gore to do so. This is a US war driven by a clique of radical extremists, clearly out of establishment (James Baker, etc) control. The coming Iran attack is a way of continuing the Iraq war which by now has zero support. The attack on Iran is on unless we can stop it.

The attack on Iran is so crazy and reckless in so many ways, not least because it would endanger not only Iran and Iraqi oil but oil from the entire Middle East. That's perhaps why Xymphora argues it won't happen (see the rest of his blog for the same day). But here's an idea: the Iran attack could create such devastation and turmoil that it might put into question normal US electoral politics.

Back to oil. One of my colleagues likes to say that it's not about the price of oil at the pump (duh!) but about control of oil. What does this mean? The US controlled Iraqi oil up to April 2003 when Saddam was pumping as much of it as he could to the US and whomever else wanted to buy it.

Does control of oil mean parceling out the contracts to develop Iraqi oil? Is that why we have killed 3/4 million Iraqis and forced 2 million Iraqi refugees to date? Is that why we have made life impossible in many parts of the country, not to mention the scores of thousands of Americans killed and wounded and the costs estimates to the US of a trillion or more?

If it's not about oil, what's it about? It's about a permanent war agenda, and this includes a war against the people and the environment and the economy of the United States as well. Permanent war means the destruction of everything including eventually the warmakers. That's why they are called nihilists.

Ronald

http://desip.igc.org

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Comment from Dan E.
Well, I'm not quite ready to dismiss Petras, Walt/Mearsheimer, the Christisons, Jeff Blankfort AND Xymphora quite as quickly as good friend & acute observer Ronald does here. But I do think there may be something, or a clue to something, in what he says. Could it be that like myself, RB has been reflecting on Thucydides' account of the Athenian expedition to Syracuse? Jeff Davis et al's decision to fire on Old Glory flying over Ft Sumter? The attempt to re-occupy/recolonize French Indochina which culminated at Dien Bien Phu? That kid w/ the wax wings ignoring his papa's instructions? The Sorcerer's Apprentice, as per Walt Disney?

"What, Me Worry"?
by Dan E.
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Comment from Bill:
Ron, how many times do I have to say it? War is ALWAYS about control of
resources. You are right about us moving into permanent war, but your
assumption that this is just an arbitrary ideological thing is absurd--and
again, all the more ironic given how dogmatically you buy the peak oil
theory. If you are right about peak oil, how can you fail to see the
political implications?
by Bill
see www.ww4report.com
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Xymphora wrote:
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/

January 14, 2007

(Excerpt)

I’ve been reading that the Bush Administration is all about oil grabbing. This so flies in the face of all evidence to the contrary that I am now beginning to see articles wondering why the Bush Administration is unsuccessful at oil grabbing. Enough already! Put your big theories aside and look at the facts (for once). The only evidence that Iraq was about oil comes from Judicial Watch (nuff said). Now I’m reading over and over that the newest oil grabbing laws in Iraq prove that the war was about Big Oil obtaining Iraqi oil on easy terms. One inconvenient question. What oil? There is no available oil in Iraq for the oil companies to grab, no matter how exploitative the concessions that they can obtain. For the foreseeable future, sectarian unrest in Iraq, ordered by the Zionists, will mean that nobody is going to exploit anything. If it was about oil, they would have brought Iraq back into the fold just as they brought Libya back into the fold, and kept Saddam on to keep the peace enough to protect the oil pipelines. Big Oil never wanted the attack on Iraq, because it knew the consequences (and the even longer term consequences, a complete civil war across the Middle East, would end the gravy train for everybody).