Smells Like Vengeance

In his piece The Iraq Oil Grab That Went Awry, author Dilip Hiro takes one quoted line from Alan Greenspan’s book, The Age of Turbulence, and then presents his case that Iraq is in fact all about the oil.

The Greenspan quote:

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Not having already written books with exciting prefaces titled “Secrets and Lies” or “Blood and Earth”, I had a different response than Dilip Hiro. Instead, I was dumbstruck by a sudden depressing thought that the bureaucratic Greenspan might be truly saddened by any political inconvenience.

But I admit that sometimes I have all the informed insight and Wall Street compassion of your average Kansas wheat farmer.

It is curious though how some folks have been trained to respond quickly to any casual comment by Greenspan. And I suppose he’s accustomed to people hanging on his every word. But it seems people everywhere are waiting anxiously for someone, anyone close to the halls of Washington power to admit some painful truth.

Well, technically speaking, Greenspan wrote “largely about” not “all about” oil.

Still, I suppose what he wrote is relevant to some degree. I can’t forget the common fear of Iraq being a speed bump on the road to American oil access as it was expressed on the Arab Street in 2003, a boulevard known for submission to wild speculation and conspiracy, perhaps only matched by Wall Street itself, not to mention the selfish demand for cheap gas by industry and angry Americans like me over the last 30 years or so.

In fact, I knew people in 1991 who openly questioned whether the Kuwait Imperative was really about Purple Hearts more than it was about the crazy dream of $1.50 a gallon.

I haven’t read the whole thing but I get the impression from the general summary of his book that Greenspan, who I obviously hold in no remarkable regard, was in no better position to know what Iraq was/is truly all about than you or I.

And perhaps there lies the problem.

The tired indictments of the faithful opposition--Bush lied about Iraqi WMD, access to oil is a matter of U.S. national interest, plundering of Iraqi antiquities was overlooked while the Oil Ministry was secured, etc-- all of these oil grabbing justifications may indicate misguided, mismanaged or even deceptive actions committed by our government.

On the other end, I don't dismiss the hint that the Bush/Cheney neocons truly believe they are engaged in a Biblical experiment to save the free world from itself. If so, then Condi’s threat of mushroom clouds becomes less based on common Western empiricism and more justified in the symbolical terms of the classical fear of an unknown future. That might motivate even such a widely respected man as Powell to take one for the Gipper. That could explain the Strangelovian “no holds barred” attitude of Rummy. That might even help mitigate Feith’s practically criminal attempt to tie together Tenet’s slam-dunk evidence which existed only in the frenzied realm of institutional group-think.

But even these curious extremes are only supported by hearsay and more speculation. Oil money, God’s plan, or even the MAD Saddam excuse we’ve been offered doesn’t seem to pay the full bill in any case. (Other than beneficial retirement implications, I can't explain why Tenet and Greenspan wrote their books unless it was to muddy the waters even more.)

Is demonizing Cheney’s hunting buddies akin to Hitlerizing Saddam’s Republican Guard? Do French and Russian business revenues help explain their acquiescence? Does British sea-locked dependency help account for their more direct support? Is Bush or UBL the chosen one or the false prophet? Well, all these mysterious versions do sell ad space in the papers, don’t they? But there exists a naïve, 20^th Century sentimentality to both dramatic ends and in my small philosophical world, forgive me, there’s an argument which suggests the truth is typically hidden somewhere nearer the middle of these extremes.

Maybe we’re still too close to the sequence of events. Maybe not enough history has elapsed so that the reasons become obvious. Or maybe, as I’ve already accepted, this administration failed in every way possible to explain it to us clearly in the beginning (a frustrating aspect that still exists today). I can’t say for sure why but I know we continue grasping for some logical truth, leaping to any odd conclusion based on the latest rumors, insider revelations and tell-all memoirs.

But it is that original uncertainty which leads us to the unsatisfying definition of our present situation. Adding fuel to the blaze, next we may be jumping headlong into Iran for reasons that can best be described as “to be determined.”

Today, I’m quickly growing irritated by the “war” characterization of our occupation in Iraq but I don’t know how else to name it or how else to possibly justify the billions it costs every month. Is it a political or military-police action? Does it linger as a half-hearted response to the religion-based genocide we unleashed? Is it the essence of the vague Military Operation Other Than War made blandly famous in 90’s military terms? Why do the shadowy priorities of victory, success and benchmarks seem to regularly change direction with the unpredictable blow of the desert wind? How did we go from the honorable crusade of GWOT to a crude street fight for power in Baghdad? If it’s so goddamned important to the future of the free world, why should we care how many innocent lives are sacrificed in the process? Why are we not convinced of the necessity and why isn’t every facet of our combined strength completely, strategically leveraged toward its resolution?

Thanks primarily to a befuddled Bush administration, I believe, we certainly have no better answers for those questions than we did 4 years ago. It seems we are reduced to sifting the ashes of polished memoirs of the recently retired and searching through Cold War spy novels for any relevant reply.

But if I were an average Kansas wheat farmer, I would take a step down from the perch of my John Deere and coolly twist the kernels of truth between my fingers in plainer terms. I’d probably mutter something about it being as obvious as the dried mud on your boots and the smell of warm manure in the field. I might even say while international investment in Iraqi oil fields and secular democracy in the Middle East all sound like lofty ideals, making good business sense if not wily headlines for the latest tabloid, there’s a simple reason why the death photos of the Hussein boys were once splashed rudely across the front pages and all that had little to do with marketing strategies, defeating Satan’s armies or even the unstable price of gasoline in Hooterville.

Once we separate the shady chaff of self-important creatures like Cheney and Saddam, rejecting the hastily propagandized match pitting classical good versus unthinking evil, then the consequences of our actions become less confusing, the original man-made intent less obfuscating, and everything more perfectly in tune with the naturally dog-eat-dog design of this cruel world. Then the slightly more unsophisticated among us tend to reckon that maybe somebody just wanted to teach somebody else (and his brother) a lesson in old-fashioned revenge, a lesson that nobody would soon forget.

The question, asked in every Greek tragedy but omitted from the latest biographies and ironically unspoken in the wheat farmer's analysis, is who learned his lesson better?

Cheers,
Mb