PSAs - will Democrats dare to call it imperialism?

this is pretty big stuff ... i'm confident most DU'ers understand the entire Iraq insanity is about oil and imperialistic power in the Middle East ... i'm confident few if any DU'ers believe we are there to fight terrorism or to bring democracy to the Iraqis ... it's primarily about the damned oil ... we are like junkies breaking into other countries to feed our addiction ...

at some point, the grab for oil had to be made ... we could stay there ten more years fighting one group or another but at some point, we had to secure and procure Iraq's oil ... with pressure rapidly mounting to tone down the high profile military presence, time was running out on bush to "put in the fix" ... it's time to scale things back to a much less visible US presence and keep enough troops in Iraq to build bases, protect oil pipelines and let the pumping begin ... of course, a bullshit justification like "we have to maintain a small force until we're sure the government is stable" will be provided ... one wonders if those who have not called for TOTAL withdrawal of American troops (i.e. leaving no troops in Iraq at all) are supporting this "guard Halliburton's oil" agenda ...

so, the great year-end "wind down" is just around the corner ... the Iraqis will have their elections, the republican Congress will have convinced bush next year's midterms are in jeopardy, and the final screwing of Iraq (and the US) will have been signed, sealed and pumped ... the arrangements to bring all this about are called PSA's ...

if Democrats let this go on without the loudest and most forceful objections they can raise, i really have to wonder exactly what they do and don't support in Iraq ... if they stand in opposition to this blatant grab for oil, i would strongly applaud them ... this is where the rubber hits the road; this is the "real deal" about Iraq ... their silence, on the other hand, would raise serious questions about their complicity ... are Democrats part of the great imperialist conspiracy as some on the left allege? ... or are they "the good guys" standing up for international sovereigny and fighting against the abuses and excesses of trans-national oil corporations and their whorish relationship with the republican party? ... the next few weeks may very well provide the answer ... let's hope they don't remain silent; this stuff needs to go to the front page; it needs to be stopped ...

sitting just below the surface, btw, is the very disturbing question about why Iraqi officials would enter into such an agreement ... the article below makes an implication that much of the Iraqi government likely to be a party to these agreements are puppets installed to serve their US masters ...

... to such? Well, apart from the several thousand US advisors in the Green Zone nudging them along, there's also the problem of gross corruption--Chalabi is a con man and Allawi is a hit man--and, of course, that the Iraqis don't have that much money to invest in improvements (in part because Halliburton's been helping to steal the oil since we invaded the country). By reducing the amount of oil pumped and jiggering with the accounts through inadequate metering, we've effectively made it impossible for the Iraqis to have money to improve infrastructure and to also improve oilfield equipment.

PSAs will be offered to them as a means of quickly increasing capacity when they don't have money to invest in that right now. And, it will cost them hundreds of billions of dollars, depending upon the final terms.

My guess is that PSAs will not last--especially if the Sunnis get cut out of a share of the oil through provincial government arrangements--and if the word gets out to the general populace that the US and British firms are the ones making the money. Those eventualities will virtually ensure a civil war.

Cheers.

I don't use the "I" word. When I am engaged in long term educational efforts to awaken people to underlying unjust economic dynamics, then I will discuss Imperialism. That's number one. You are laying out a frame work of several weeks here, and the forces you want opposed are powerful. Undercutting those plans, and raising consciousness about them, are separate though related endeavors. I do not expect Barbara Boxer to stand up in the United States Senate next month and rail against "U.S. Imperialism".

I am not living in the utopian world of my choosing. I find my theoretical political inspiration more in the works of Bakunin ("We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.") and Kropotkin ("The two great movements of our century --toward Liberty of the individual and social co-operation of the whole community--are summed up in Anarchist-Communism.") than in Marx and Lenin, but Imperialism has always been my enemy. Still, Capitalism is not exactly at the tipping point toward extinction, and most people intuitively think it is a positive rather than a negative thing to have "influence" in the world, if the question is presented devoid of detailed explanations.

There are more precedents for having imperialist economic agreements later renegotiated and/or torn up and disregarded at the insistence of those who have been victimized, than there are precedents for getting a sitting oligarchy to voluntarily take strong actions against their own perceived self interests. If there ever was a sitting Oil Oligarchy, it is the Bush Administration. Step One is curbing their power. Step Two is removing them from power.

Americans will understand that Iraq must to be able to reap the economic fruits of their own resources in order for them to become self sufficient and stable as a nation, if reality is framed that way to them. They will not understand a position that seems to imply that companies with the technological resources and ability to efficiently extract and market Oil reserves should not be given any economic incentive to do so, if their resources and ability are needed to make it happen. Framing is always critical to any debate. If we think that the Oil deals being inked today do not serve either American or Iraq interests, then we need to get the pen out of the hands of those who are signing them, because otherwise they won't stop.

I will also state here that of course Oil is at the heart of all American interests in that region, but that economic competition is not always at the heart of all violent conflicts. Throughout history Religion also has caused more than its fair share of victims, to give another leading example. There would never have been this jihadist focus on the United States were in not for our ongoing interest in Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's most sacred shrines. "Our" interest is in the Oil, not the Shrines, but much of the growing resistance to an American presence in the region now is keyed to our supposed complicity in supporting "anti true Islamic" governments, not to our lust for their Oil. So there is a clear linkage between American interest in Mid East Oil, and the rise of radical Islam, but it is not always a simple direct linkage. Radical Islam is an ideological force and not just a Nationalist one. How we manage our retreat from Iraq at this point involves issues linked to Oil of course, but there are other dynamics now in play there also.

as it is about the dollar. When the US buys things from other countries it moves the dollar outside the US. The US has to get the dollar back. Dollar-denominated development loans (think IMF, Latin America, Indonesia, etc.) is one way to create a demand for dollars and force wealth to come back to the US. Military sales is another way. Construction contracts in Saudi Arabia was another way to force petrol dollars to be spent on America companies. Making the Chinese buy TBills is yet another way to get back the money we spend on Chinese goods.

Without all these strategies to create a demand for the dollar, the US dollar would collapse in value, which would make Americans suffer.

Now, having to buy oil is something that forces a lot of dollars overseas. So, the US would probably prefer that US companies control oil production and buy it cheaply from the oil rich countries (which makes no sense to the oil rich countries and requires a lot of oppression and injustice). And if the US does have to buy oil (ship dollars to developing countries) we're going to want to control those countries and privatize every service in the country so that they can ship their wealth back to the US when the buy their water from a US water company, or their architectural services from a US company.

Oil is definitely a major reason the dollar gets spent overseas, and it creates the imperitive for imperialism. However, from what I've read recently, it seems like the key concern in the US is trying to get all the wealth back that we ship out so that the dollar (and the American economy) doesn't collapse.

The solution is not imperialism (ie, Bush's solution). The solution is to make America competitive (FDR style). We can't have such a huge underclass (two Americas) and be competitive in the world. We're going to have to committ ourselves to education the poor and building up the middle class so that we have a society that produces goods and ideas and not just consumes on debt.

Also a single universal currency would probably help.