Big Cynic

Wes Clark on the neocons' foreign policy coup

Stop terrorism for good: U.S. out of Iraq and Saudi Arabia

Here’s how we can reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, lower the price of gas, and take a big bite out of terrorism: Put an end to the U.S. taxpayer-funded protection of the house of Saud.

There are plenty of existing domestic oil reserves that our oil companies could be pumping oil from but don’t because it’s more profitable for them to buy Saudi crude. It’s not just because of the kingdom’s cheaper labor or lax environmental standards but because the Saudis give our oil companies a discount — they sell it at a slightly lower price than they could get from buyers on the open market. (See? This arrangement is already anti-free market.)

This largess is the sheiks’ token of appreciation for protecting them from their own people: If we withdrew our hundred-plus-thousand troops from their country, the Saudi Arabian people would rise up and overthrow the tyrannical regime that hoards all the oil profits for itself.

We, the American taxpayer, pay for that military protection, but of course the oil companies that buy this discounted oil don’t pass on the savings to us; that wouldn’t be in the best interests of their shareholders.

So, other than the tiny minority of Americans who own big chunks of ExxonMobil and other Big Oil stock, we Americans gain absolutely nothing from our security-for-oil arrangement with the Saudis. So there’s one reason for discontinuing this arrangement.

“But all that oil would fall into the hands of terrorists,” some would say.

First of all, the House of Saud is already supporting terrorism. Why on earth would they fund religious extremists who attack their benefactors, the Americans? Why, to compensate for their opulent lifestyle with a fake show of religious piety, of course.

Second, our military presence in Saudi Arabia is why Al Qaeda still exists in the first place. Although Ronald Reagan first put Al Qaeda into business, and our occupation of Iraq has been a huge recruiting boost for them, most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, and for a simple reason: We're occupying their country and our propping up the hugely unpopular regime there.

Pulling out of Saudi Arabia would therefore eliminate one of the biggest anti-U.S. grievances in the Muslim world. No matter what kind of government the Saudis ended up with, if we ceased to be an imperial presence in the region, then they wouldn’t be so pissed off at us.

So there’s another reason for us to pull out of Saudi Arabia.

And let’s dispense once and for all with that completely bullshit “we need to protect America’s oil supply” argument. Our troops in Saudi Arabia aren’t protecting our access to Saudi oil; they’re protecting our oil companies’ ability to sell that oil. Some of it they sell to us; some they sell to other countries. It’s all sold on the open market to the highest bidder. That’s how the U.S. and Great Britain set up the global marketplace for oil way back when: All oil is sold through an international clearinghouse to the highest bidder.

That prevents oil producers from organizing an oil embargo against a specific oil importer. Iran, for example, couldn't withhold its oil from the United States (not that it would want to — the mullahs want the highest possible price for their oil, just like ExxonMobil does).

In other words, we’re occupying Saudi Arabia even though we already set up a system to eliminate the need for us to do so!

So there goes another reason for us to be occupying Saudi Arabia.

I mean, think about it. Countries like Japan and Germany have zero military bases in oil-producing nations, yet they get their oil the same way we do: by purchasing it on the open market.

That means our military might is preserving only the right of a bunch of wealthy Americans to sell Saudi oil to the highest bidder. They are under absolutely no obligation to give priority to American fuel producers.

And it is this occupation of Islam’s holiest country that has generated so much support for terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. If we had never had bases in Saudi Arabia, not only would there have been no 9/11, but Al Qaeda most likely would have disbanded after defeating the Russians in Afghanistan.

So here’s the plan: We announce to the world that we will be withdrawing our troops from Saudi Arabia and establishing a truly democratic regime. The House of Saud will have no other choice but to share power and oil profits with the people of Saudi Arabia. That will also let the air out of the terrorists’ tires by taking away one of their biggest causes.

Then again, the first step in recovering from imperialism is admitting you're an imperialist.

Iraq: rich traitors broke it, let them die fixing it

In the name of transparency, how 'bout we add to Iraq's oil laws a clause requiring them to electronically track every tanker of Iraqi crude to see which country it ends up in.

We'd see that "our" oil companies were selling all that crude to the highest bidder, whether American or foreign. So much for "securing America's energy supply."

Then again, these oil companies are only doing what they're legally required to do — put their shareholders' interests ahead of everyone else's, including America's.

Well then, if Big Oil shareholders benefit from higher stock prices and fat dividends from selling all that Iraqi crude, then does any of that trickle down to the Americans who died for and paid for the invasion?

I mean, that was the ultimate neocon justification for invading — to secure our oil supply. But if it doesn't matter who is selling Iraq's oil — the highest bidder is going to get it, no matter who is doing the selling — then the only logical conclusion is that we invaded Iraq for the right to sell that oil to the highest bidder.

At this point, I am incredibly curious to hear how anyone who supports the Iraq occupation would even think to justify it at this point.

There only remaining argument is Colin Powel's bullshit "Pottery Barn/we broke it we bought it" argument: we screwed things up royally there, so we've got to stay until it's fixed.

But since we know who is really profiting from America's breaking of Iraq, those same people should be the ones to fix it: Let's draft the children of Bush, Cheney, and guys like Ray Hunt.

I mean, if you questioned their patriotism, they'd claim to be the biggest America-lovers in the country, right? So let 'em do some fighting and dying themselves for a change.

The neocon "bomb Iran" plan: treason, not stupidity

Neocon pundits and politicians may be traitors who have sold out their country to the oil and arms industries, but they're not stupid or short-sighted: Sure, their plan to bomb Iran will have disastrous consequences for America, but they don't care about that. The neocons are promoting the agenda that stands to make big bucks for their constituents.

Whenever neoconservatives talk of bombing Iran, they are not only legitimizing the idea of Iranian weapons proliferation as a defensive measure, but they are making it virtually impossible for the non-aligned Iran to sit down with America to begin with. Conditions that Iran cease its uranium enrichment, as well as America's overt talk of bombing, only paint the Islamic Republic into a corner from which it can hardly get out, given its political structure. Iran may not be a democracy, but it is no dictatorship either. No political faction has a mandate to sell out the country's independence by overtly bowing to U.S. military and economic pressures. Iranian political leaders can afford to negotiate, but they cannot afford to appease.

Just as importantly, Iran knows that in the event of war, America cannot invade; it can only bomb. This means the regime's consolidation of power as the country rallies around the flag.

That's the whole point of the neocon plan: To keep the extremists in power in Tehran. The last thing that the neocons and their clients in the oil and arms industries want is what would be the best-case scenario for America—the ascendancy of political moderates who would eventually de-theocratize the country. Companies like Halliburton, Chevron, and Lockheed "We Never Forget Who We're Working For" Martin, don't want that! They want an excuse to invade Iran, build and run permanent military bases there, and sell all that Iranian crude to the highest bidder. 

Speaking of the highest bidder, neocons like William Kristol are intelligent guys who have chosen to sell their propaganda services to the highest bidder, and the corporate-funded right-wing propaganda business pays very handsomely. The may be traitors to their country, and they may be greedy bastards, but they're not stupid—unless you define treason as a form of stupidity.

5 Steps to Peace in the Middle East

1. Invade and occupy Turkey, Syria, and Iran.
   
   
2. Partition off the Kurdish parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and combine with independent Kurdistan.
   
   
3. Partition off the Shiite areas of already-occupied Iraq and combine with Iran. (For disposition of mixed-ethnicity area, see "Partitioning of India.)
   
   
4. Give the five nations of the Middle East Freedom Alliance (MEFA) nukes to aim at China.
   
   
5. Create bilateral hostility between MEFA and China by setting off bombs in apartment complexes in China, then blame MEFA. (See "Russian Apartment Bombings.")

In other words, we need to re-do the divide-and-rule strategy implemented 100 years ago.

Can Iranian nukes save American democracy?

Go ahead, call me a traitor — that is, if your definition of a traitor is someone who doesn’t go along with whatever our politicians tell us. If that's the case, you can go fuck yourself anyway.

Otherwise hear me out. If, at the end of this post, you still think I’m a traitor, then you can still go fuck yourself.

Now, before I discuss the link between Iranian nuclear weapons and American democracy, I have to say a bit about the incompatibility of democracy and imperialism.

No country in human history has ever had both democracy and empire at the same time for very long. The ancient Romans gave up their democracy to keep their empire. Julius Caesar proved himself so skilled at invading other lands and sending home slaves and treasure that the Roman Senate — the richest Romans, who also needed slaves to work their estates — decided to turn over the entire country to him. Caesar was killed as a tyrant, but it was too late — representative government was out for good, and the position of all-powerful emperor was here to stay.

The British, in contrast, gave up their empire after World War II and kept democracy (or at least a semblance thereof). The Nazis promised the German people a glorious empire if they would just give up their liberties (in the end, they got neither).

In these and other cases, there came a time in the nation's politics when people had to make a choice: Do we stay free, or do we become a military dictatorship in exchange for might and glory and riches that (sometimes) come with it?

We Americans are just about at that stage now.

We’re at the stage when we have to choose between democracy and empire — between liberty and dictatorship. It seems like a no-brainer to me, but the vested interests — America's version of the Roman Senate — that control our government will do everything in their might to steer us toward more war and less liberty: If you’re wealthy, and a lot of your wealth comes from shares in defense contractors or oil companies, then the idea of a president who can wage war freely and without restraint is a fantastic idea, an express ticket to more riches.

Of course, as the rationale for invasion gets more and more tenuous with each war, and as public opposition to these unjustified and economically ruinous wars gets stronger, the president needs more and more power to crack down on dissent, to make sure that only his propaganda is heard, in order to lie people into voting for him and his war party.

Well, if you thought Iraq was bad, wait until we invade Iran.

The same people who brought us the invasion and occupation of Iraq — the military–industrial complex, the oil and oil-services industries, and the re-construction industry — are just itching to invade Iran. Those companies have made billions and billions of dollars in profit from Iraq, and they want more.

Of course, the talk now is about bombing Iran, not invading. But the ultimate goal, as far as the corporate military machine is concerned, is to invade. And the way to get that done is to, say, drop a few bombs on Iran for now and thereby hopefully provoke the country into attacking us back, either by overt military action or (more likely) by supporting some terrorist attack.

(Bombing Iran will also make the Iranian people rally around their otherwise unpopular regime, thus decreasing the possibility of what for America's war party would be a worst-case scenario: the Iranian people overthrowing the mullahs and establishing democracy on their own, which would take away a very powerful excuse for invading.)

Even if this initial bombing fails to have the desired effect of prompting some sort of counterattack, the war party can also just patiently wait for the next terrorist attack — such as one by Iraqis outraged by our brutal occupation of their country. It doesn’t matter who attacks us, or why. With a mainstream media that has proven its willingness to go along with any White House lie, we’ll be able to pin the attack on Iran, providing the excuse for all-out invasion.

And that invasion will do one of three things: ruin the economy, turn us into a dictatorship, or both.

Look how much damage has been wrought on American democracy by everything the Bush administration has done under the guise of avenging 9/11 — the legal, quasi-legal, and outright illegal (but uncontested) precedents set in such fascist necessities as tapping our phones, torturing us, and keeping us in secret prisons.

All that our government needs now is a little bit more secrecy. The institutions  — both legal, bureaucratic, and bricks-and-mortar — are in place; all that's needed now is enough secrecy so that no matter who gets arrested, tortured, or detained indefinitely and in secret, no family members will have any way of finding out where their son, daughter, mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle or cousin is being held or why. ("We can't tell you where or why. That's national security information. Whose side are you on anyway?")

That's exactly where we'll end up if we invade Iran. Sure, there is some Congressional outcry (even if it is mostly talk and no action) against Bush's fascism, but if the next large terrorist attack on American soil happens on the watch of a reasonably popular president (as Bush was on September 11, 2001), and if the attack can be somehow pinned on Iran — and it will be, no matter the nationality of the attackers), and if enough troops have been freed up from Iraq (or we can always double the size of Blackwater), then the invasion will happen.

Our best bet for stopping that invasion is not — surprise, surprise — any institution within our government, or any institution within America herself. Who's going to come to Lady Liberty's rescue? The press? That'll be the day. The voters? Hey, if the war party can get its guy elected once, they can do it again (especially now that those wealthy bastards have even more money to devote to the cause thanks to sky-high oil prices and all those no-bid contracts to blow shit up and pretend to rebuilt it in Iraq).

No, the savior of American democracy, if it comes at all, can only come from outside the country. The United Nations? Please. We are the United Nations. No other nation or group of nations is going to stop us from invading and occupying Iran.

That leaves Iran herself.

Which brings me, at long last, to the point of this post: If Iran gets nuclear weapons and the means of delivery, invading that country will be off the table — that was the lesson that North Korea taught the world: If you wanna keep the U.S. military out of your country uninvited, then get yourself some nukes.

And don't give me any of that bullshit about Iran secretly giving nukes to terrorists. No country in its right mind would let terrorists have a nuke, which, given today's technology, would be 100% traceable back to the country of origin.

And those Mullahs aren't crazy; they know exactly what they're doing: Their number one goal is the same as that of any ruler — to stay in power.

I truly hope that someday the Iranian people will rise up and overthrow their repressive regime, just like they did in 1979, when they overthrew the U.S.-based shah. The Iranian people want more freedom and liberty, and they'll never get it from the mullahs. But they won't get it from the U.S. military–industrial complex, either. Just ask the Iraqis.

What every American should know about the Middle East—and why we're so unpopular there

Daniel Miessler wrote a great—if not entirely accurate—article that breaks down ten points "Every American Should Know About the Middle East." For instance:

2. Not all Arabs are Muslim. There are significant populations of Arab Christians throughout the world, including in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Northern Africa and Palestine/Israel.

4. Shia Muslims are similar to Roman Catholics in Christianity. They have a strong clerical presence via Imams and promote the idea of going through them to practice the religion correctly. Sunni Muslims are more like Protestant Christians. They don’t really focus on Imams and believe in maintaining a more direct line to God than the Shia.

Here's a comment that I tried (unsuccessfully) to post to his article:

Point 11 should be: They do not hate us because of our freedom. They admire our freedom — the majority do, other than a tiny minority of religious fanatics — and they'd like some of that freedom for themselves, but we keep invading and occupying their countries and propping up unpopular regimes [Saddam may be gone, but he's been replaced with a U.S.-supported corrupt and brutal regime, just like in Saudi Arabia], thus depriving them of their freedom. That's why they're so pissed off, and that's what creates support (financial and moral) for the religious extremists.

Cheney to visit Mideast to promote peace (no, this isn't The Onion)

Does any reasonably coherent person at this point seriously believe that anyone in the Bush administration, let alone Dick Cheney, wants or is capable of bringing about peace in the Middle East?

President Bush, dispatching Vice President Dick Cheney to the Middle East, said the goal is to get Israelis and Palestinians to hold firm to the promises they've made toward peace.

I mean, come on. The Republican definition of "peace" is that you've killed off the opposition. In Gaza, Bush tried helping Fatah kill off Hamas (you know, the ones who won the much-heralded election), but that didn't work:

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. . . . President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

In Iraq, the Bush people tried to help the Shiites kill off the Sunnis, but when that didn't work, they tried helping the Sunnis kill off the Shiites.

Sending Cheney somewhere to promote peace is like sending John McCain to promote family values.

These warmongers want peace in the Middle East about as fervently as they want to free us of dependence on Mideast oil.

How to invade and occupy an oil-rich nation

Step 1: Overthrow the ethnic/religious minority-ruled regime and put in power the majority, which is allied with a hostile enemy nation.

Step 2: Send your troops to die (i.e., “support the troops”) in the majority-ruled government’s battle against the minority militias (i.e., “insurgents” or “Al Qaeda in Iraq”).

Step 3: Using bribery liberally, convince the minority militias to join your side. Rename them “Iraqi Security Volunteers” and give them back the weapons you previously confiscated.

Step 4: Send your troops to die (i.e., “support the troops”) in the minority militia’s fight against the majority-ruled government's death squads.

Step 5: Repeat steps 2 through 4 until the country runs out of oil or all of your troops have been killed (i.e., troop-supporting is maximized), whichever comes first.

To wear the Bush crown, no real soldiers need apply

The third in line for the English throne, Prince Harry, is returning from his tour of duty in Afghanistan (i.e., the only country we were supposed to invade after 9/11). The prince said he is proud to continue the royal family's tradition of military service.

The third in line for the Bush throne, George Prescott Bush, commented from his Texas real estate office that he plans to continue serving in the Navy Reserve to uphold his family tradition of avoiding real military service and staging fake military photo-ops after becoming president.

Guys like George W. and George P. Bush must be the ones Rush Limbaugh was referring to when he coined the phrase "phony soldiers" (which also applies to himself).