Prior to formally ordering the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, self-declared 'war president' George W. Bush sternly warned the Iraqis: 'Do not destroy the oil wells'. The war on Iraq was, reportedly, originally named Operation Iraqi Liberation, instead of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Someone realized, however, that the acronym would be OIL. That wouldn’t make for good PR—not that it didn’t clearly represent their interests, but not the interests the Bush gang cares to advertise. I suppose it was therefore a compromise, and a nod to their Capitalist-in-Chief, to name some of the US military bases in Iraq after oil companies. (They really did name a Base Exxon and a Base Shell somewhere in the deserts of Iraq!)
Even though Bush declared an end to 'major combat operations' on May 1, 2003, of all days, under a banner on an aircraft carrier announcing 'Mission Accomplished,' and transferred so-called 'sovereignty' to Iraqis on June 28, 2004, the business-oriented Bloomberg News reports that 'The battle for Iraq’s oil is just beginning' (June 18, 2004).

Oiloholics Bush and Cheney both have deep and dirty connections to the oil industry, not to mention National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, who actually had a Chevron oil tanker ship named after her. It is not just that so many in the Bush regime have closely worked for—and with—oil companies or in the energy sector more generally. There is also the issue of the legalized system of bribery called campaign contributions. With millions of oil dollars pouring into mostly Republican coffers, and with favorable legislation and tax laws for oil companies, the slick and symbiotic relationship is powerful and sickening. Oil kingpin Bush and his gang are economically—and therefore politically and militarily—addicted to oil. They have been lusting after oil for years, as the Bush-connected Project for the New American Century has made clear since its founding in 1997, fantasizing about a 'new Pearl Harbor,' which they—and we—got on September 11th, 2001.

Iraq has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world (after Saudi Arabia), but with newer technology engaging in further exploration and analyses, Iraq may very well prove to have the most oil. That has made Iraq a favorite target for the 'oiloholics,' as Rabbi Arthur Waskow describes them ('Oiloholics and the Burning World,' Tikkun, March/April 2003). Though Bush’s wars are about oil, it’s not just about controlling oil, what the Bush administration calls 'energy security.' It’s also about controlling the price of oil, controlling those prices in U.S. dollars instead of Euros, and controlling the flow of petro-dollars, the money made by selling oil which is then invested abroad—so as to more efficiently grease their palms. The Kuwaiti royal dictatorship, for example, makes more money from their oil-funded overseas investments, primarily in the U.S. and Britain, than they do through direct oil sales.

Although Secretary of Offense Rumsfeld quipped, with a perfect poker face, that the war against Iraq has 'nothing to do with oil', other political and military leaders made much about securing Iraqi oil wells very early into the invasion. 'It is no mere coincidence,' the Amnesty International Annual Report states in May 2004, 'that, in the Iraq war, the protection of oil wells appears to have been given greater priority than the protection of hospitals.' Documents from Bechtel and the US government further evidence an obsession with Iraqi oil, and the Aqaba pipeline to carry it to Jordan, at least since Rumsfeld’s 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein. The record also shows absolutely no concern—let alone obsession—with Saddam’s disgusting use of torture or chemical weapons or his infringements of civil and human rights. When asked by talk-show host Charlie Rose how the war was going on April 1, 2003, General Joseph W. Ralston, former Supreme Commander of NATO, didn’t hesitate, stating 'We own the... oil wells.' As with corporate leveraged buyouts, Bu$hCo. seeks to pay for its war and the privatized reconstruction of Iraq using revenues from future Iraqi oil sales. The U.S.-run regime in Iraq, whether a military or civilian dictatorship (the first thing the new Iraqi 'civilian' president did was to declare martial law), will undoubtedly promote promiscuous privatization as a key plan—of oil, of course, but also of other 'commanding heights'—i.e., transportation, communications, water, and other prime resources and infrastructure—what Naomi Klein describes as 'privatization without representation.' According to recent polling, some 92% of Iraqis seem to realize what only a little more than half of Americans do: that the US is an occupying force in Iraq, not a liberating one.

As feminist Grace Paley says, 'today’s wars are about oil. But alternative energies exist now—solar, wind—for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work than cannot be done without oil is war' (Ms., Spring 2003). Therefore, she concludes, 'men lead us to war for enough oil to continue to go to war for oil.' This vicious cycle is like a well-oiled imperialist machine, doing different types of damage at home and abroad, while benefitting pathological, parasitic, and GOP-connected mega-corporations like Bechtel, Halliburton, Enron, ExxonMobil, Unocal, the Carlyle Group, and their greasy associates.

During Gulf War I, Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times essayist Thomas Friedman remarked that 'the U.S. has not sent troops to the Saudi desert to preserve democratic principles... This is about money, about protecting governments loyal to America and punishing those that are not and about who will set the price of oil' (August 12, 1990). It becomes less surprising, then, that the Bushies have tried to get their unguinous hands around the necks of oil-connected countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Colombia, Liberia—and cozying up to others—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Uzbekistan—while virtually ignoring other (dryer) locales. Reflecting on the intimate—'embedded'—relationship between state and corporate power, what Mussolini reportedly referred to as fascism, Friedman laid it plain in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, his intellectual love letter to corporate globalization and U.S. imperialism: 'The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.' Free markets? Not quite. The unspoken capitalist mantra has always been 'free markets for thee, not for me.'

In 'The American Empire (Get Used to It)', (NY Times Magazine, January 5, 2003, cover story), Michael Ignatieff states that 'because [the Persian Gulf region] has so much of the world’s proven oil reserves', it is 'the empire’s center of gravity.' Ignatieff refers to this as 'the burden of empire.' The following day the London Daily Mirror, also with a cover story, pictured a graphic showing a tough-looking Bush with his tough words interspersed with oil company logos. Underneath, the tag line reads: 'Now can you guess why George W. Bush is hellbent on a war with Iraq?' It shouldn’t surprise anyone—though it may disgust them—that while the U.S. military allowed the Baghdad library and museum to be looted of priceless Mesopotamian antiquities that epitomize human cultural history, it very carefully guarded the Oil Ministry with heavily-armed Marines and razor wire.

Yes, there is an empire and there is a burden of empire. It is not, however, that the U.S. must 'reluctantly' (as Bush says) be an imperial power—it has quite often rushed to the occasion. Unfortunately for the misfortunate millions (and billions!), it is the citizens of the world who bear the burden of empire by paying its tremendous costs while the élite reap the tremendous profits.

'The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is a war not only for the maintenance of U.S. hegemony, but for the strengthening and enlarging of an Empire,' Steven Rosenthal and Junaid Ahmad declare ('The Problem is Bigger than the Bushes: Reviewing Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11,' ZNet, July 1, 2004). 'That is something much bigger than the corrupt war profiteering of Halliburton or the sleazy relationships between the Saudi ruling class and the Bush family. It is much bigger than the ideological fantasies of the clique of neo-conservatives in the Bush Administration.' Now, as Baghdad smoulders and the survivors continue to dig themselves out, the bells of Operation Iraqi Freedom are ringing in the ears of Iraqis like the sound of night time air raid sirens.

Investigative journalist Jim Valette, author of a report called Crude Vision, reflects on U.S. policy in Iraq: 'Is this pursuit of oil or the pursuit of empire? ... Right now it’s really two sides of the same coin' (CounterPunch, April 9, 2003). While it may seem that the U.S. empire is increasing its reach and strength with military victory in Iraq, it is also following in the footsteps of all other historical empires. Excessive military budgeting (equal to the rest of the world combined), rising deficits (contributing to a public debt of over $7 trillion), imperial overstretch (with as many as 1,000 U.S. military bases in over 130 countries and territories), the disregard and disrespect of allies and others (including France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Mexico, in addition to the UN and international law, while enraging world opinion) and outrageous arrogance (the many offensive words and deeds of Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al.) all lead to an unsustainable system of oppression that frays from the edges inward and rots from the top down. The revelations of torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib prison by U.S. soldiers and 'private' contractors further inflames this increasingly explosive 'theater of operations.'

Professor and social critic Cornel West, speaking of the necessity of 'Finding Hope in Dark Times' (Tikkun, July/August 2004), begins by saying: We are living in one of the most frightening and terrifying moments in history. In this age of the American Empire, imperial policies and imperial mentalities are becoming pervasive in a variety of different forms. America has become a superpower, a hegemon, a leviathan, a colossus, with no competing or contesting power. Becoming an empire is always dangerous because every empire in history ... has been filled with hubris, arrogance, and nihilism. Every empire we know of in human history has succumbed to the idolatry of power. West concludes that we need to speak truthfully, act courageously and democratically, pursue justice, be loving—in short, we need to create communities of resistance. We must be that 'second superpower', as a front page New York Times news analysis described the millions of anti-war protesters who rallied around the world (Patrick Tyler, 'A New Power in the Streets,' New York Times, February 17, 2003).

Much is the same in this imperialist 'game' (as one military leader called it) of conquest—old oil in new barrels, so to speak—though a tragic line has been crossed: first-strike unilateralism by the US—with mass manipulation and mass media warnography, mass murder, mass public expense, mass private profits, mass ecocide, mass terror, and mass destruction—including the US use of weapons of mass destruction, such as napalm, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, Daisy Cutters and other massive bombs containing chemical slurries. The Bush regime also threatened to use nuclear weapons, while continuing to research, build, and modernize nuclear weapons, including so-called 'tactical' or 'mini' nukes. The consequences of acting in these ways will reverberate in very painful ways, as history will undoubtedly demonstrate.

In the seventeenth century, the famous Japanese Zen poet Basho wrote a time-honored haiku:

Summer grasses: all that remains of great soldiers’ imperial dreams

Public health advocate Susan Clarke, though, recently adds:

Not even grasses remain when toxic war waste undermines their very nature

But at least the Bushies will get their oil fix. They—and we—need to kick the habit. No one fights over the sun and the wind.



--Dan Brook is a freelance writer and can be contacted via CyberBrook’s ThinkLinks.