Commentaries: The Politics of Oil, War and Terrorism: Towards a New Obama Policy?

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Posted on Monday, December 01 @ 00:47:58 EST by greek_news


The pursuit of oil through war is not unique to the George Bush. Empires require imperial politics and leaders. Bush I declared the New World Order in the early 1990s in the dessert (oil) fields in Saudi Arabia, with the collapse of the former Soviet Union. This New World Order was like the Old World Order, with one exception. The US was the only superpower, with a license to plunder the world for spheres of influence, raw materials, markets, even encircle Russia with new NATO allies and bases. Will President-elect Obama escape this scourge of war? Most of his predecessors since the 1960s, except the accidental President Ford and the Iran-hostage President Carter, either inherited a war or declared war on an enemy, real or manufactured.

Obama, though committed to ending the war in Iraq and restoring US credibility in the world, will escalate the war in Afghanistan, even inside Pakistan, to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Escalating the war in Afghanistan and carrying out his economic and social agenda for change at home would be difficult, to say the least, if not impossible. This difficulty is reflected in the selection of the men and women who will form his administration and plan domestic and foreign policies. This selection was more on the side of ʽexperienceʼ than policy orientation. Experience is laudable, even necessary, as long as the policy makers in Washington are tuned into the new direction, which is projected to benefit the American people and the world.


We have a plethora of experts on the economy and foreign policy in Washington, in academic and think-tank institutions, Republicans and Democrats, whose only vision is to promote the ideas of Adam Smith to the world and to carry out their domestic policies in line with the free market dogma, including the privatization of the social security or subject any reforms on health to the laws of the market (Ronald Reagan and John McCain). More than two hundred years of preaching and practicing Adam Smithʼs gospel to the world did not offer even a hint to these ideologues that the market is very good for those who benefit, the capitalists, with millions of workers in the United States and the world falling through the cracks of competition, or waiting for the breadcrumbs to fall off the tables. Joe Lieberman, aside from his despicable comments trailing behind McCain, put his finger on this problematic of the market when he was the running mate of Albert Gore. He said, ʽthis is how the market works. If you want to feed the birds, you give more oats to the horsesʼ. The market fed the CEOs. We know the results.

Obama is committed to the market as well, but not as the formula for all economic and social ills in the society. Obama is also committed to a new agenda, for change, to end politics as usual. His head is in the right direction. That is why so many of us ʽpolitical junkiesʼ took this progressive message and run with it. Of course, there is the need for patience. Elected officials are not magicians. There are no miracles in Washington, only political paralysis, deadlocks, and bureaucratic incompetence—all systemic to what was structured by the founding fathers--the separation of powers, checks and balances (statements?), and the blaming of others for the failure of each administration or politician to deliver on the promises.

Formulating a progressive policy is easy. Walking it through the legislative maze and implementing it through the bureaucratic rigmarole (which is ¾ of the legislative process) is difficult enough. But, how does this progressive project square with the other Obama commitment to transfer the war from Iraq to Afghanistan, which seems to be the political mood in the ascending Democratic White House and Congress?

The war in Afghanistan brings to mind Santayanaʼs comment: “those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.” Hegel was more to the point: “the only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn anything from history.”

All one needs to do is to take stock of what happened to British imperialism in 1840s, 1880s, and 1920s. Follow this with the experience of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. If 160,000 Soviet troops and 240,000 Afghan soldiers sympathetic to the pro-Soviet government in Kabul did not defeat the mujaheedin, nor did the current 40,000 or 50,000 US-NATO forces in the eight years of the Bush administration turn the tide around (in fact it went the other way), how would the increase of the US military presence to even 100,000 (which will include NATO forces) succeed in ending the civil war and the controlling power of the warlords? How would this change the centuries-old tribal culture in Afghanistan into a democratic and free market society through the force of arms, plundering, death, and maiming of combatants and civilians, men, women, and children?

To win a guerrilla war, as the British learned the hard way in Malaysia and the United States in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it requires knowledge of the culture of the enemy, support from the local population, including a desire for democratic rule, prevent the guerrillas from having a safe heaven and sanctuary in the neighboring countries (or the Islamic world?), avoid bombing indiscriminatingly (with unmanned planes?) causing collateral damage to property and innocent men/women/children, avoid fighting a war with a volunteer military force, with the rest of the population going about their private affairs, and attend to the needs of those returning with physical and psychological problems. Every one of these rules was violated in the last eight years!

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are due to failed US policies and manufactured lies by the Bush White House. In the 1980s, Washington subsidized the Saddam Hussein war against Iran and the Taliban war against the Soviet Union, at the tune of $5-6 billion each, respectively. The events leading to the invasion of Iraq are well-known, yet 46 million Americans voted for McCain and the continuation of this war, until victory. The US involvement in Afghanistan is less known, or rather farther removed from memory. The first bombing of the Twin Towers in 1993 was referred to in an article “Blowback,” The New York Times Magazine (March 13, 1994) by Tim Weiner.

The words of Charles G. Cogan, the CIAʼs operations chief for the Near East and South Asia from 1979 to 1984 speak for themselves: “Itʼs quite a shock. The hypothesis that the mujahedeen would come to the United States and commit terrorist actions did not enter into our universe of thinking at the time. We were totally preoccupied with the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It is a significant unintended consequence.”

Weiner continues: “In the five years since the Soviets withdrew, tens of thousands of Islamic radicals, outcasts, visionaries and gunmen from some 40 nations have come to Afghanistan to learn the lessons of the jihad, the holy war, to train for armed insurrection, to bring the struggle back home. For nearly a generation, blood and bones were sown into the Afghan dust by the weapons of the superpowers, and now the land bears a harvest of holy war and heroin. The sole field of victory for CIA-backed “freedom fighters” in the 1980s has become an international center for the training and indoctrination of terrorists. The veterans of the jihad have taken their war abroad to Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Burma, China, Egypt, India, Morocco, Pakistan, Sudan, Tadzhikistan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Yemen—and the United States. Yes, the whole country is a university for jihad, exactly as they say,” Noor Amin declares proudly. As in any outlaw culture, guns, drugs and money are interchangeable here. Nonetheless, the unfailing wellspring of cash is the cultivation, sale and processing of opium from fields and labs controlled by rebel commanders.”

The majority of Americans have been reduced to ʽpay-as-you-goʼ living standards and expect a relief, a bailout, with the ending of the costly Iraqi war. Transferring this war to Afghanistan would be madness. If the Obama administration escalates the war in Afghanistan, it can be only for one reason: prepare the ground for a diplomatic solution to the conflict and a face-saving exist strategy. To get mired in a civil war, with more military personnel and more targets for the mujahedeen, more body bags and soldiers maimed physically and psychologically for life bound for home, and billions of dollars wasted at a time of a major economic crisis is a guarantee that the agenda for change will remain a campaign promise.

****George Gregoriou, Professor Emeritus
Critical Theory and Geopolitics, Political Science Department
The William Paterson University, Wayne, N.J. 07470