“Sixteen tons of company coal, another day older and deeper in debt.”
If Mr. Bush had taken the “get of jail free” card offered him seven years ago by 9/11 and imposed a tax of $1.50 (gas was then $1.50), benefits today would include: Lower prices, cleaner air, more research into alternative sources, safer bridges – and, the U.S. would have denied a few billion dollars to repressive theocracies and villainous bandits, most of whom hate us and wish us harm.
Instead, he chose to invade Iraq. He must have had a reason. And that reason strikes one as revolving around Big Oil interests. The story seems to go like this:
The Turks ruled most of the Middle East for more than four centuries, dividing the natives into provinces mostly along tribal and sectarian lines. The Turks themselves were Sunni, but they generally allowed the Shiites to fricassee their own goats. In spite of slow rot, their system managed to function all those years – until World War I and the internal combustion engine. The Turks had the bad luck to back the Kaiser in that conflict, and once the war wore itself out, the winners gorged themselves on the Ottoman carcass. The British lion was among the first at the feast, choosing three provinces from which they created Iraq and in which they installed a king. He paid for his Rolls Royces with a 75-year exclusive oil lease for exploration, price and production rights to a London gentleman named Gulbenkian, who was soon joined by Royal Dutch Shell and Standard Oil.
Little attention was paid to the natives. The Brits apparently did not realize – or care – that tribal, ethnic and religious differences within this artificial “state” could only be bridged with a strong central government willing to use cattle prods. As a result, there was turmoil for decades during which Big Oil generally called the shots in that unfortunate “state” – until Saddam Hussein murdered his way to power. Once installed, he decided to run the oil business himself and he ousted Big Oil – specifically, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and BP (remember these names).
From the point of oil production, Husssein made a mistake. Camel drivers had trouble operating drilling rigs.
As if things weren’t bad enough in Iraq, about the same time next door, Iran began to get antsy. It, too, wanted its own oil. A gentleman named Mossadegh, a patriot who insisted on Iranian oil for Iranians, bubbled up through a more or less public choice and began nationalization of Iranian oil resources. Enough of this nonsense!! Big Oil’s handyman, John Foster Dulles, unsheathed the CIA to do what it did best in those days. Led by a grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, the U.S. paid for and managed an elegant coup that retired Mossadegh and installed a ruler pliant to Big Oil interests. He called himself Shah of Shahs – a bit of hubris that should have tipped off anyone less dense than Dulles. While he pleased Big Oil, he was a disaster for Iran, and the eventual payment for his misrule turned out to be a revolution that took the American embassy hostage and made the U.S. sit up and beg for a very long year.
The president by this time was Jimmy Carter – not the type of man to begin wars. The CIA, however, was still a world unto itself. Inexplicably, the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein lots of guns with which to shoot the Iranians. Exactly what the U.S. hoped to do is not really clear, but a long and expensive war ensued that ended not only in a stalemate, but also ruined what was left of Iraq oil infrastructure.
Frustrated, totally out of reality, Saddam Hussein turned his army onto oil-rich Kuwait.
That did it. Big Oil no longer had to rely on the CIA. It rolled out the full panoply of international armor. All those tanks produced a quick win but, unfortunately, the multi-force leaders were obligated to yield oil control to the U.N. – a wonderland of cuckoos and bureaucrats – and by 2000 Iraq was producing only 20 percent of its oil potential.
Big Oil had to find some other way to get its drilling rigs operating. Neither the CIA nor the Joint Forces in the Gulf were effective. What to do?
Fortunately (for them) the United States elected a “compassionate conservative” who had an unhealthy fixation on Iraq and its leader. A short season of manipulation and outright lies prepared a compliant Congress, and Iraq was “shocked and awed” – a strategy that so far has cost tens of thousands of Americans dead or wounded and uncounted billions of treasure, and has so far not accomplished a single one of its variously stated objectives.
But what about Big Oil?
Last month, 36 years (almost to the day) after being kicked out of Iraq, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and BP (names sound familiar?) were invited by the Iraqi “government” to submit no-bid offers to develop, produce and manage Iraq oil. They were glad to do so.
Who said the war was a failure? And who thinks we will be out of Iraq in our lifetimes?
Rodney Quinn, who lives in Gorham, is a former Maine secretary of state. He can be contacted at rquinn@maine.rr.com.
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