Posted by Alli (160.129.27.22) on November 26, 2001 at 14:57:07:
In Reply to: Noam Chomsky's statement, Jan 30, 1999 (i love this man) posted by Alli Antar on November 26, 2001 at 13:05:29:
It's plain that there cannot have been any moral or humanitarian motive behind anything that is going on. It cannot be Saddam Hussein's crimes that are motivating US policy in Iraq.
What about the threat of weapons of mass destruction? Again, there are a number of problems. Suppose they're concerned about weapons of mass destruction. Then one question is, how come they weren't concerned in 1988, when the threat was more serious than it is today? A second question has to do with the December 1998 bombing. Part of the justification was to reduce Hussein's capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction. But it was conceded at once that the bombing would have the opposite effect, that the major effect would be to eliminate Unscom inspections, even though the inspection regime is the only thing that has cut back weapons. It's been very successful, and could remain so.
There is indeed a way to eliminate the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction, only one way, and that is the Carthaginian solution: you totally destroy the society. If you do that, they won't be able to produce weapons of mass destruction. If you leave an infrastructure, if you leave educational and scientific facilities of any kind, if there's a revenue flow, then you have a capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction. So, the only way to end that capacity - we talk about "terminating" it - is to wipe the place out. That's not going to happen, for a simple reason: Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in the world, and it's much too valuable to wipe out. But you can wipe out its population. In fact, it's in a way beneficial to do that. If you look at the history of oil production around the world, you find that it mostly takes place in areas where there aren't many people. Then there's little pressure to stop the profits from going to the people who really should have them: Western oil companies and the US Treasury. So, if the population of Iraq were reduced or marginalized, maybe even reduced to such a level that they're barely functional, then when the time comes - and it will - to bring Iraqi production back on line, they'll be less of an impediment. Iraq will be more like, say, Saudi Arabia, where there's a lot of oil but not many people around pressing for economic development and educational facilities and so on.
Without proceeding further, it seems to me you can eliminate the standard reasons from consideration on pretty elementary grounds. What is left? What is left is what should come to mind at once when anyone mentions the words "Middle East." When you mention those words, what comes to mind is oil. It should come to mind. Back in the 1940's the US recognized the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, in particular Saudi Arabia, to be what they called "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history." That meant our rivals had to be removed. France was essentially kicked out and Britain was to play a secondary role, as long as they were properly obedient, as attack dog. But essentially the US was going to control the region.
So, the US has to control the Middle East. But there's a problem, which is that there are people in the region. They get out of hand and sometimes they want to benefit from their own resources. So, there's constant conflict. At the moment, there's an oil glut. That's one reason why it's beneficial to the US to keep Iraqi oil off the market. The US doesn't want the oil price to go too low. It's always wanted it to stay within a range, not too high because of the harm to US manufacturers, but not too low because that's harmful to the energy producers, which are mostly US-based, and their profits would go down. Temporarily, at least, it's a good idea to keep Iraqi oil off the market because the price would go even lower. The other problem with Iraqi oil is that the inside track on developing Iraqi oil is held currently by France and Russia, not by the US-based majors. We don't want that. So, for the moment at least, keeping Iraqi oil from being developed is a wise project. James Akins, an old oil hand who is the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, recently said, as only a semi-joke, that when the price per barrel of oil gets up to $30, Saddam Hussein will turn into Mother Teresa. That captures the point, I think.
The Middle East is a region of a lot of crises and conflicts, many of them related to just this fact. People in the region have never accepted the fact that profits from their sole resource should go to the West. That leads to all sorts of problems. To maintain control, it's necessary to have brutal regimes around that will suppress their own populations. The family dictatorships in the Gulf are too weak to do that. They have to be kept weak so they'll do what they're told, but they can't count on force to repress their population. There have always been what Melvin Laird, Nixon's secretary of defense, called "cops on the beat," a local police force of tough guys to keep order around the region. That was the main role of Iran as long as it was under the shah. It is the main role of Israel, particularly since 1967. Turkey is another one. Pakistan another. This ring of non-Arab states is supposed to keep order.
You have to bear in mind that the United States and Britain are isolated now internationally and regionally, not only on the issue of Iraq, but also on the issue of Iran. How is the US going to handle this? The US has a comparative advantage in one area: force and violence. In force and violence, it is unparalleled. So, it makes good sense for planners to try to play that hand, shift everything into that arena, and that is exactly what we're seeing. That's what we saw when the US bombed Sudan, for example, destroying its major pharmaceutical plant. It's interesting to notice how little attention was given to that in the United States.
I think that the message was understood by the people to whom it was likely sent, namely people in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Washington is saying, "Look, we're a violent, lawless state and we're going to use force to get what we want." I think that's probably the prime reason for the December 1998 bombing of Iraq, too. The one area where we have overwhelming advantage is force, and it doesn't matter if the effect of the bombing is the opposite of what we claim we're after. "What we say goes" - George Bush's definition of the New World Order while the bombs were dropping in 1991.
I think that also accounts for the very clear and open contempt for international law. That's been pretty dramatic in the case of Iraq. Not that it's anything new, but the flaunting of it is dramatic. There's just no doubt at all that the bombing of Iraq and Sudan are outright violations of the UN Charter - war crimes. It's striking that the issue of whether this violated UN Charter was barely discussed. It was discussed to some extent in England, and condemned there in the mainstream, but not here. Here there's much more discipline; when the issue was mentioned at all, which was rare, it was dismissed as a kind of technicality. That's important. There's an interesting record of explicit doctrine saying that we are not subject to international law.
In the Clinton years, US contempt for international law has become totally open. Madeleine Albright, when she was UN ambassador, simply told the UN, "We will behave multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we must." If you don't like it, get lost. In fact, the timing of the December 1998 bombing was selected to make this very plain. The press reported that the bombing began while the Security Council was in a special session to deal with the issue of Iraq. The members of the Security Council weren't notified prior to the US/UK decision to launch an attack. That's a message of contempt for the UN.
It's quite important for us to decide whether that's the "national persona that we [want to] project," as internal documents put it. Of course, for a rogue state, international law and the UN Charter don't mean anything - especially for a rogue state that's violent and lawless and that's projecting that as its "national persona." That gains particular significance when that rogue state happens to be the most powerful state in the world.
Unless that's reversed, I think you can be pretty confident that there are ugly times ahead, particularly if the anticipated oil crisis in the Middle East becomes reality. The answer to how seriously we take that depends not on what happens in this room, but what happens afterward. That's where the important things will happen. I really urge you to participate.