The Two Elephants

Doomed from its inception, the Bush administration’s
crusade to "liberate" Iraq has become a violent
conflagration of conflicting intentions and discordant
ideologies, with the casualties and the potential for
disaster increasing daily. The wildfire of nationalism
has begun to sweep the land, uniting Sunnis and Shiites
for the first time in centuries against a common enemy,
the Americans. Already, more troops are being injected
into the equation, and the repeated American mantra is
that we must "stay the course and prevail," always
accompanied by threatening assurances of civil war and
regional chaos if we do not.

Underlying all of the failures of this war in Iraq,
however, and all of the deception used to get us there,
is a flawed ideology that obsesses a small cabal of
neoconservatives currently sitting in the highest
reaches of power. The ambitious and grandiose plan of
men such as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul
Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, to name but a few, is
well-documented in the writings of the Project for a New
American Century (PNAC). In short, it seeks to maximize
American hegemony, prevent any other nation from
competing with that global dominance - both militarily
and economically, and it begins with the ousting of
Saddam Hussein and the creation of a puppet democracy in
Iraq.

According to this plan, Iraq would then become a
strategic center for American military power and
dominance from which the entire oil-rich Middle East
would be policed and controlled. It is important to
understand that any significant transfer of authority to
the United Nations during the current Iraqi transition,
any allowance of the UN to supervise the creation of the
new government and its economic foundations, is to
relinquish the heart of the neoconservative agenda. This
is why the Bush administration has thus far refused.

But this refusal has grave consequences. It is
increasingly clear to the Arab world, and to Iraq in
particular, that America plans to keep huge military
bases in Iraq and control its oil resources. The grip of
the multinationals on the recreated economy of this
devastated land is all too clear. Such actions only feed
the resentment and simmering anger of the Islamic world
and strengthen the accusations of the terrorists,
swelling their ranks.

This neoconservative ideology is like the proverbial
elephant in the living room. It has recently been buried
under a lot of distracting rhetoric about making Iraq a
beacon of democracy, just as it was initially hidden by
all the lies about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction
and the coming mushroom cloud. But it stands as the true
reason for our invasion, and it is the fatal flaw that
underlies all of the mistakes, the unrealistic
expectations, and the deceptions of the Bush
administration’s Iraq policy. Any sane plan to extract
the United States from Iraq and from the current fiasco
must first and foremost define and then repudiate the
entire neoconservative doctrine.

The human race is ever-evolving, and one of the signs of
that evolution is the increase in attempts at global
cooperation and ideals expressed in the 20th and now the
21st Century. The League of Nations, the United Nations,
the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Treaty, and
numerous other international treaties, are all examples
of this growing phenomenon. The Bush administration’s
attempts to unilaterally establish our power over other
nations and at their expense, while refuting
international cooperation, is a throwback to the
failures of the imperialism of the past and ultimately
will lead to disaster. Iraq stands as the signature of
the failed neocon agenda, and the grip of that agenda
must be removed from our Iraq policy, or this nation
will continue in the downward spiral that has already
begun.

But there is another elephant in the living room that
must also become a central theme in our national
discourse. And this is America’s addiction to oil. In
reality, this elephant helped spawn the first. Without
our rapidly growing consumption of a finite resource,
would we be establishing a ring of military bases around
the Middle East? Would we need to aggressively ensure
our oil supply as the likelihood of decreased output
rushes toward us from the future?

In the life of an addict, the landscape is strewn with
the casualties of his addiction. His family, his career,
and his finances are all riddled with chaos, but the
tendency is to blame his wife, his mother, and his boss
rather than to face the truth about his addiction. In
reality, it is his substance abuse, including the
changes it creates in his behavior and the desperate
measures he takes in order to satisfy his dependency,
that is the ultimate source of his ever-increasing
problems.

America’s rapidly growing oil consumption is obscenely
out of proportion with its percentage of the world’s
population. But even worse, American military actions,
foreign policy, and environmental policy have all been
hijacked by this addiction, wildly twisted onto a self-
destructive collision course by the contortions
necessary to feed a reckless dependency on oil. The
neoconservative plan for global dominance is only one
example.

Our environmental policy is another casualty of our oil
addiction. As with the addict who denies as long as
possible the ravages his addiction causes on his health,
the current administration is resolutely ignoring the
coming environmental disaster caused by global warming
and the increased pollution in our homeland. Instead, it
is focusing on increasing the supply and the out-of-
control burning of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the toxicity
of our land and water supply increases, and severe and
irreversible climate changes are imminent.

What is called for is no less than a paradigm shift in
our policies and our world view. The Bush administration
is incapable of such a shift, being joined at the hip
with the oil industry. Our current government is
essentially in bed with our "dealer", the oil companies.
And it is the "dealer" who is enriched by our continuing
addiction. Talk about conflict of interest!

From this point on, our energy policy must be seen as
inextricably connected to our foreign policy. Some of
the huge sums of money being used to sustain numerous
military bases now ringing the Middle East need to be
siphoned off in a war on our oil addiction. This would
benefit national security, eventually weaken what
motivates the terrorists, benefit the environment,
create numerous new jobs, etc. We could start with
mandating solar panels on all government buildings and
public housing. The factories could be located where the
most manufacturing jobs have been lost.

There is a whole host of polices that can be
implemented, but the public must be educated on the
connection between our irresponsible consumption of
resources and our foreign entanglements. The terrorists
don’t "hate our freedom." They hate us being in their
world, supporting their repressive regimes, so that we
can ensure a steady supply of the black gold into our
national bloodstream. It is time we took some
responsibility for the mess we are in.

This is not to say we don’t continue to utilize police
and intelligence work and military strikes when
necessary to remove terrorism as a threat. But it is to
suggest that we had better look at how our own behavior
has incited much of the hatred and begin to radically
change it.

Continuing the Bush/neocon pre-emptive, aggressive
policies is a recipe for disaster. It is a policy that
dominates, manipulates, and lies in order to control the
world’s resources as a way to ensure an adequate supply
for an inordinate appetite. It alienates and enrages
other countries, it empties the treasury, creates wars,
and pollutes the world. It is time that our policies not
be tainted and distorted by an unhealthy addiction to
oil and a corresponding compulsion to control others.

When the construction contracts in Iraq and the national
resources are returned to Iraqis, and the UN oversees
development in a dispassionate way, much of the
resentment will dissipate. When our government focuses
on developing alternative energy sources and moves away
from a need to control and bully the rest of the world,
alliances will again be possible. In a globalized world,
the goals of our nation - economic, environmental, and
even military - will increasingly necessitate
coordination and cooperation with international allies.
The alternative path will only lead to more and more
Iraqs.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/04/16_elephants.html