Payoff

Iraq is in chaos, but what if the ultimate goal of the conquest isn’t stability at all? The provocative London Review of Books has a short article by Jim Holt suggesting that the U.S. could be quite content to let most of what’s left of the country continue to slide towards hell in a handbasket as long as enough territory can be secured to permit oil drilling and exploitation.

Under this line of thinking, the vast untapped and unexplored oil reserves lying under the Iraqi desert more than justify a continued occupation especially if U.S. forces can be reduced substantially and casualties minimized by essentially giving up on the place. Under this approach, the U.S. lets the three main ethnic factions go their respective ways, and signs oil deals where necessary with willing partners, which won’t be in short supply given the staggering opportunities for bribes and kickbacks. The control of Iraqi oil would shift the geopolitical balance of power significantly by enabling American overlords to dictate the price of oil on the world market, bypassing the Saudis and keeping the oil-dependent Chinese on a short leash as well.

This makes eerie sense if you take Bush’s repeated references to the 60-year U.S. military presence on the Korean peninsula. Furthermore, it’s exactly the kind of halfway solution that would fit into a new Democrat-led administration. Madame Hillary would be more than comfortable defending a low-intensity war there and finding convincing justifications, starting with keeping her constituents happy at the pump.

Two other bits of evidence support this analysis: Greenspan, aka Our Lord, blurted out an inconvenient truth the other day when he said the war in Iraq was always about oil (he admitted to being embarrassed by that fact although I can’t imagine why). And then there was the fierce battle, successful so far, to keeping the deliberations of the Cheney commission on energy policy secret seven years after the fact? Did they include a plan for conquest?

I have great faith that the great majority of Americans will forgive all and abandon their opposition to the war if it leads to cheap gasoline flowing lovingly and forever into their tanks. Now there’s a chilling thought—Bush proved right.