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155 comments on DrumBeat: August 25, 2007

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beggar on August 25, 2007 - 2:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

This is strange stuff.

I agree that many Americans have an abberrant sense of entitlement. This raw greed is always linked with noble ideas asbout American Exceptionalism -- we are the ones who know how to do things and can be trusted to be fair.

This American Exceptionalism is never far from the idea that we are chosen by God to lead the world into either a Utopian (pre?)Kingdom of Heaven future or into a Dystopian Apocalypse.

The US Military recently cancelled or altered a "Military Crusade" by a Christian Fundamentalist group that obviously offended many Americans as well as any Muslim who would have heard of it.

American Fascism requires a meta-narrative with which to conduct Resource War in drag. The meta-narrative must hook enough people in to provide political momentum for the increasing brutality with which the war is carried out, and also to cover increasingly oppressive policies at home.

Ultimately, "we the people" must be persuaded that we are in a long emergency which requires that we suspend -- or transcend? -- all of the old notions embodied in the US Constitution and in agreements like the Geneva Convention.

I think that oil will be a very big overt issue, but it will be clothed in arguemnts that fuse the oil war with a reliouss and cultural narrative to expand the powers of the political Establishment which dominates both big paties in the USA.

"Maintaining control" will be an increasingly brutal and essential matter.

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SacredCowTipper on August 25, 2007 - 3:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You certainly hit that nail on the head. I don't like having a doomsday cult driving our foreign policy.

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Twilight on August 25, 2007 - 6:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Beggar, I really think you've got a handle on it. You can see the constant probing for a narrative that will sell, as the excuses and explanations twist and change. There are plenty of people who would be fine with "look, we need the oil, it's us or them", but probably not quite enough - or it is still too soon. It either needs a tastier icing put on, or life will have to get a lot harder before enough people willingly take the final step (final step, because most of the changes are already complete). But I have no doubt we will. I just cannot see us turning back now - what could happen that would drive it?

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beggar on August 25, 2007 - 8:50pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Right. And as SCT noted, this amounts to being run by a "doomsday cult" whether the NeoCons are secularists or religious fanatics. Ain't nobody going to win another world war.

When things get really tough, the Religious and Cultural Meta-narrative gets easier to sell, because people are more desperate to believe that "we" are really in the right.

Many may know at some level what is going on already, but always many people will need a story to tell themselves that rationalizes atrocities into necessary acts of heroism.

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oilmanbob on August 25, 2007 - 10:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

beggar,

I'm as left wing as they come and protested the Iraq war 8 times before the war of conquest started. But, realisticly, the conservatives are right about the troops being necessary. They made it that way. After the torture at Abu Ghraib, and the kidnapping of "terrorists" so they can be tortured and "disappeared" in foreign prisons, do you really expect the US to be able to get back in the Persian Gulf after the US withdraws? If you were moslem, would you reguard the threats against Iran as proof that the US government hates Islam? I know I sure would.

If we leave I expect an immediate embargo by the oil producers of the US. We import 68% of the oil we use, and without oil the US military will collapse in a few months, so its a non-violent way to stop the U.S.. That's why Hillary Clinton supports the war, IMHO, plus Bill Clinton will be tried as a war criminal too after 2 million Iraqi's died in the invasion and air strikes between the two Persian Gulf Wars. That means with the 800,000 dead according to the British medical journal, the Lancet, we have killed close to 3 million people for this.

I still think we have to end the war, but we already have a huge Karmic debt to pay. The only hope is to start mitigation now, on a personal basis or we will all have huge personal problems.

So get a hybrid, and start work for Alan Drake's electrification of rail program right now. Its the only hope any of us has to survive this with any kind of prosperity. Bob Ebersole

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bmcnett on August 26, 2007 - 12:22am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Bob,

Even if we left Iraq, CENTCOM would have overwhelming military presence in the Persian Gulf. Here's a map:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/centcom.htm

Every Iraqi tanker of oil leaving the Persian Gulf floats past about a dozen U.S. Navy and Air Force coastal bases before it reaches the ocean. None of these bases is in Iraq.

If The Middle East embargoed U.S.-bound oil (the U.S. only gets 15% from there) we could easily blockade, sink, or pirate their tankers.

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WNC Observer on August 26, 2007 - 8:33am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If The Middle East embargoed U.S.-bound oil (the U.S. only gets 15% from there) we could easily blockade, sink, or pirate their tankers.

Sounds to me like the actions of a "rogue state".

I am doubtful that the US$ could retain its status as the world's reserve currency under that scenario. And once it is no longer the reserve currency and its value has plunged, then there would be little downside left for the rest of the world to punish us by imposing a total trade embargo on the US (until we cease and desist, pay reparations, and offer up our political and military leadership to the ICC - which won't happen). It woudn't be 100% effective, but it wouldn't have to be. We don't have a big enough military to engage in enough piracy to grab everything we would need to import. Besides, some of those other countries do have navys of their own and would start shooting back.

No, I think if we go down that path then we really are looking at WWIII in our future, followed by NO future worth thinking about.

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neutrino23 on August 27, 2007 - 3:12am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Sounds like you've been reading "Myths America Lives By" by Richard T. Hughes.

There are always many threads in these big narratives. I wonder if one idea has been that nudging Americans along the path of heavy dependence on oil will make them more willing to back military action in the ME when the time comes. If we had viable alternatives (solar supported PHEVs, solar powered water heaters, solar and wind powered homes), even just enough to offset most of the oil imports, Americans might be inclined to look to those solutions rather than a military solution. By keeping solar, wind, tidal energy, etc. as future solutions it leaves us dependent on oil.

If we started getting a substantial portion of our energy from the sunshine landing on our rooftops and on our deserts their is much less need for adventurism in the ME. No war profits in that.

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155 comments on DrumBeat: August 25, 2007

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