Can You Spell Withdrawal without O-I-L?

[Thom Little]

Neither Jack Murtha, the congressman who set the cable news networks afire this weekend, or Frank Rich, the lead dog on the New York Times Sunday op-ed page, mentioned the word "oil" once. I only mention it myself because it would be nice if we could have a coherent public discussion about staying or going in Iraq, and you can't do that without talking about the oil of the Middle East.

But it does illustrate how deep the national denial runs and how foggy the debate gets. Even poor George W. Bush seems to think we're in Iraq in order to turn the people into Jeffersonian democrats, so the only issue for his opponents is whether that is possible or not.

Maybe we ought to ask: what happens to the oil supply of the Crusader West when none of its representatives maintains a garrison in the Middle East? I use the term Crusader not to be cute, but to remind you how Europe and America are viewed by many people of the Middle East. They don't like us. They have a longstanding beef with us. Some of them would like to punish us.

America is leading the current crusade because we are the society most desperately addicted to oil, and the Middle East is where two-thirds of the world's remaining oil lies. The one thing that we apparently cannot bring ourselves to talk about is our addiction itself. The commuters whizzing around the edge cities and metroplexes of this land probably got a big charge out of Congressman Murtha's anti-war blast taking over drive-time radio last Friday. I wonder if they thought about how it might affect their commuting.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/28630/

[FloridaPat]

1. Government won't let us talk about it. It's our lifestyle, so there's no

debate. There has to be something else though. It has been the government's policy for 55 years now to threaten oil coutries to give us oil. Someone somewhere is making a lot of money besides the oil companies. We have spent a fortune sending our military into foreign countries with oil. We've spent another fortune sending CIA into countries to destabalize them so they won't be able to unite and put their citizens first instead of us. And when you consider Europe is paying $4-5 a gallon, and their economies are doing OK, one has to wonder what universe our government is woking in.

[yurbud]

2. If they don't talk about oil, they are open to more oil wars...

they just think Bush did a poor job on this one.

[yurbud]

3. We have to force OIL and energy policy into the withdrawal debate.

If they aren't honest about the causes, they won't be honest about the solutions and leave the door open to lying to us in the future.

Most Dems aren't so stupid that they believed Saddam was a threat to us even if he had a handful of nukes. They had to buy into this as an energy policy or worse, as a favor to oil companies. The only other plausible explanation is cowardice in the face of GOP bullying.

[PurityOfEssence]

4. The two driving factors are NEVER talked about: Oil and Israel

I remember when Democratic Representative Jim Moran flatly said that the pro-Israel maniacs had way too much say-so in this administration's policies; he was almost lynched on the spot.

The PNAC should more appropriately be called the PNIC, but the point is never made. At least whispers about oil are occasionally heard in dark corners, but this other issue is pretty much forbidden.

Oil is the biggest issue, and fear of the Saudis collapsing is definitely a major motivation for taking over Iraq.

The very idea of a withdrawal is hilarious if it wasn't so sad: it's now becoming "common wisdom" in Washington that we'll be withdrawing at some not-so-remote point in the future, but that's ridiculous. They'll announce a reduction of troops to make it look like this is happening just before the next election, but we're staying there. As long as the corporatists are in power, we're staying there and that's that.

Yes, oil is the big reason for the corporatists and other fiscal conservatives (although that's an oxymoron now), but the neocons are going to go through hell and high sands to make sure Israel's enemies are neutralized. Hell, they're even more vehement about this than Israel seems to be itself at the moment; it's beginning to sound like many powerful people in Israel don't want to mess with Syria, but the neocons are champing at the bit.

Can't talk about these things, though. Nope.