The recent set of no-bid contracts to big oil corporations, gaining them cheap access to Iraqi oil fields, is Exhibit A. Yes, the Iraq invasion was all about oil all along. Here’s how Bill Moyers sums it up:
Perhaps those sweetheart deals in Iraq should be added to his proposed indictments. They have been purchased at a very high price. Four thousand American soldiers dead, tens of thousands permanently wounded, hundreds of thousands of dead and crippled Iraqis plus five million displaced, and a cost that will mount into trillions of dollars. The political analyst Kevin Phillips says America has become little more than an “energy protection force,” doing anything to gain access to expensive fuel without regard to the lives of others or the earth itself.
Watch this 6 minute video by Bill Moyers for enough evidence to make honest people irate over the high price Americans have paid to give a few big corporations cheap access to oil.
The group of skin-clad cave-dwellers glowered at the man in the center of the gathering. One of the glowering dudes stands, points a finger, and says—
"The attack on the next valley was all about mammoths! Admit it, this was nothing but a war to obtain mammoth meat and skins at the lowest possible expense!"
The man in the center shrugs. "Yeah? So? You all have full bellies and you have stuff to wear when you go outside. What's the problem?"
"You said it was about security!" another shouted.
"It is. Mammoths are security. Or would you rather run around naked and hungry?"
The trouble I have with such accusations is the implicit reduction of value the commodity under debate suffers in the equation. Like it or not (and none of us do) 90% of our civilization is oil based. The clothes we wear, the houses we live in, the hospitals we go to, the infrastructure we use to trransport food and ourselves, and on and on—oil plays a huge role. Now maybe there are alternatives and we've seen discussion of some of them here, but it is an error to argue this point with the modifier "only" everytime we talk about oil. Considering its importance it is one step removed from Food. No matter what we do, it will take years to transform the way we live and replace all the stuff we do with oil with alternatives.
Stop talking about oil as if it is simply one option among a suite of equal options. The fact is, this is where morality comes with a bill. I agree, we should not have gone into Iraq. I agree, we should find other ways to do business. I agree, we are too dependent on foreign oil. All that is a given. But it is disingenuous to the debate to imply that oil is not CRUCIAL and that its absence or abrupt shortage (through availability or price) would not cost lives.
This is one of the reasons liberals get so readily derided in such debates, because certain realities get a kind of benign neglect. In the calculus of some, the "price" paid to guarantee the supply of mammoths works the other way.
I merely point this out in the interest of securing a meaningful dialogue.
The house I live in was built without using oil. Well, the woodwork was varnished with Linseed oil, and the vintage Linoleum is linseed oil on canvas. The fuel to make the bricks was probably the wood cut to clear the area. Horses pulled the trucks, and manned shovels dug the foundation. The (square) nails were probably wrought using coal, as was the brass smelted for the hinges and locks.
Some of the renovations have used oil, like the 1990's roof shingles. It's a pity that the original slate roof was replaced in the 1950's.
It is possible to live without oil. Just much more expensive.
Unlike most Americans, I have followed the news concerning Iraq and Iran since the late 1970s. The war is about oil. to the point the war is about making certain that the oil is controlled by multinational corporations.
While under the rule of Saddam Hussein, the oil fields were run by the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government operated on the money provided by the oil sales. Iraqi citizens paid zero taxes. The Iraqi government paid for students to travel abroad and study medicine and engineering. Iraq was the most westernized country in the region in 1978.
It in fact the cheap price of Iraqi oil that stopped the gas crisis of the 1970's and competitive price of Iraqi oil that kept the oil priced down until just recently.
It is about oil, and it is more about guaranteeing high oil prices and profits for the oil industry.
I think Erich and Mark are both partly correct and partly incorrect. The Iraq invasion was not about oil; it was about Republicans in the White House and Congress greasing the palms of fellow Republicans in the oil and military industries. This greasing takes a very specific and well-used form — one that wealthy corporate types are *constantly* seeking to employ. The goal…and the way to make truly obscene income…is to *privatize* corporate income and *nationalize* corporate expenses. In past decades, it often took the form of environmental pollution: corporate executives would drain off corporate wealth for themselves, but dump corporate expenses (i.e., environmental clean-up costs) onto the public. Many companies today (e.g., Walmart) do the same thing with their healthcare expenses: executives keep corporate revenues for themselves while dumping employee healthcare expenses onto the public. We see it regularly in the sports industry, whenever a city pays to build an arena or sports stadium for its "home" team. That's how George W. got rich. He was invited to buy a share of the minor-league Texas Rangers baseball team, then he and his fellow co-owners used their political connections to get the city to build a baseball stadium. Instantly, the Texas Rangers became a major-league team, worth substantially more than W. and his pals had paid for it. Like many rich conservatives, they knew how to game the system. (I think it's part of the reason why they oppose social programs: they assume poor people are just as unscrupulous as they are.)
The Iraq invasion was just the latest version of this corporate rip-off: oil companies are raking in huge (indeed, record) profits while the American public is paying (via both its military and private security firms such as Blackwater) to keep the oil wells safe from attack. Privatize the wealth and nationalize the cost. It's how corporate executives get obscenely rich, and they all know it. That's why it's a theme that appears again, and again, and again in Republican-led politics, and will probably continue to do so.