Julia Preston: Hussein Says Bush Wants to Control Mideast Oil [in NYT International] - This is of course misleading. Why ?
American (read
ExxonMobil and
ChevronTexaco under their contemporary names) and European (read
BP,
Shell and
TotalFinaElf) companies already control the oil fields of the Middle East.
Indeed, the very countries discussed daily in the Media were created after the First World War as a direct result of those companies activities between the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the so-called 'mandates', delivered by the
League of Nations (a UN failed precursor of US origin) to Britain and France. This includes Saudi Arabia, Koweit, and Irak.
Such is the basis on which our Western countries wealth relies: a controlled supply of relatively cheap energy.
What we do fear is loss of control of this supply, should the current rulers of these countries (including Mr Saddam Hussein) loose their grip on power, in favor of radically hostile regimes and societies (as pursued by Mr Bin Laden and his terrorist associates all over the Middle East).
To any student of History, there is no danger of Irak, under current
leadership, menacing Western oil supplies, weapons of mass destruction or not.
The 1990 invasion of Koweit was an attempt by Irakian authorities to rectify what they perceived as an injustice when the borders of their country were drawn, dividing the oil fields according to European interests. This is one of the reasons why the Irakian military didn't drive all the way to Ryad, which would have been technically possible until the very last period of the US Desert Shield buildup. It occured at that time because the Irakian regime needed the additional oil revenue money to recover from a disastrous war with Iran, and because the American administration mistakenly delivered signals that the US would not react forcibly.
But what would happen if Saddam Hussein, or Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan got overthrown by radical Islamists, who would then have easier access to weapons of mass destruction ?
The irony of course is that, unless we, as Western societies, change our perceptions of and our attitude towards the rest of the World, making a dedicated effort at spreading our wealth, radicals created by Poverty - a poverty engineered by our short term interests - will eventually prevail, taking our world into their ineluctable fall.
Waging war in Irak or anywhere else will not achieve anything more than stirring up the whole process. If it went any different, the Roman Empire would probably still rule in the West.
