If War It Is... Here's Why

by Alexander Cockburn

Was it Hitchens or Kissinger who wrote the following? "An opponent might argue that the inspections offer a better chance on containing the deadly weaponry, and also of observing the rights of sovereign states. Invasion might cause much death and destruction, and exert a destabilizing effect on the region in general. It might also trigger the use of the very weapons whose removal was its ostensible justification ... "

Hard to decide, isn't it? But you're right, Kissinger is simply incapable of expressing any disquiet on the imminence of death and destruction, whereas Hitchens raises the matter, if only to discount it as a matter of any serious consequence.

The on-again, off-again noises from the White House about the desirability of "a regime change" in Iraq have become like white sound, always in the background, then intermittently rising to oppressive levels. What's it really all about?

We can dismiss the proclaimed reasons, starting with the "weapons of mass destruction." I buy the verdict of Scott Ritter here. Ritter, you'll recall, was formerly one of the most hawkish of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. He has stated repeatedly that Iraq is "qualitatively disarmed," and as of December 1998, was in no position to develop biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.

Even the rabid pro-war panel on the first day of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearings on Iraq was unable to produce any reason why Saddam would be crazy enough to try and offer the pretext the United States has been yearning for. Beyond this, the United States has systematically sabotaged arms control in Iraq and worldwide.

It was Clinton who pulled out the arms inspectors in 1998. It was Bush who killed off the proposed enforcement and verification mechanism for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, originally passed in 1972. The enforcement mechanism could have been used as a lever to prise open Iraq for arms inspections. In March 2002, the United States removed Jose Bustani, head of the Organization to Prevent Chemical Weapons, from office. George Monbiot of the Guardian has written that it was because Bustani's efforts to include Iraq in the Chemical Weapons Convention, thereby opening it to weapons inspections.

Other rationales for attacking Iraq have come and gone. A few months ago, former CIA Director James Woolsey, buttressed by the writer Laurie Milroy, were pressing Iraq's implication in 9/11. Few now raise that excuse, though it does remind us that the nation that was host to most of the 9/11 perpetrators is Saudi Arabia.

This offers us the necessary pointer. Remember, where the Middle East is concerned, everything revolves around oil. The conspiracy mongers mumbling about the UNOCAL natural gas pipeline scheduled to run through Afghanistan and about the Kazakh oilfields are looking at the wrong page in the atlas. In Afghanistan, it's not "all about oil." When it comes to Iraq and Saudi Arabia, it is.

Figure it. In the wake of 9/11 it becomes clear that Saudis, starting with Osama bin Laden, were at the heart of the attack, with some members of the ruling family probably involved or at least tacitly approving. Furthermore, America's local supervisors, the Saudi dynasty, face increasing discontent. The Bush administration is led and advised by people trained by origin and business proclivity to see everything in terms of the availability and price of oil, an optical vantage point far more powerful than the influence of the pro-Israel zealots or even the cowboy desire to whack Saddam because George Bush Sr., held off in 1991, having decided that leaving Saddam in place was the best way forward.

Now, Saudi Arabia is the world's "swing producer," meaning it controls the world price by either restricting or expanding supply. Would it not be rational in the wake of 9/11 to seek urgently another "swing producer" option, and to see such an option in the form of Iraq? Iraq nationalized its own huge reserves back in 1972, taking control over sale and pricing. Either upon his own initiative, or conned by the United States, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, thus setting Iraq on the path to utter ruin and permitting the United States, via sanctions, to control once more Iraq's oil exports, drastically restricting its supply.

So the U.S. game plan could be to continue with the present "strategy of tension," or to gradually ratchet up the level of military harassment, without all the trumpet blares that accompanied the formal onslaught of 1991. More bombing raids, more attacks from the Kurdish protected areas, more thundering about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Saddam can be counted on to play his own weak hand badly. Last week, for example, he chose to divulge his apparent agreement for new weapons inspectors to a British Labor MP, George Galloway, who reported as much in a newspaper column. Result: The concession, if such it was, made about as much noise as a crumpet falling on a carpet.

It probably would not take much in the way of armed intervention for Saddam to be overthrown in an internal revolt. Then the United States could substitute a suitably brutal successor and then have Iraq available as the swing producer, and Iran as the next target of opportunity.

So it does all make sense, and even if a full invasion ultimately does not occur, there's no downside risk in constantly raising and lowering the level of white sound. Oil rules!