Oil Interests Not Defense, Are Motive Behind Bush's Iraq Policy
By Cory Forsyth
Opinions Staff Writer

Bush the younger, riding in the wake of his hugely popular retaliatory “freedom-securing” attack on Afghanistan, is looking for a new place to bomb now that there are none left in Afghanistan. He seems to have found that target in the familiar territory of Iraq. After all, except for Osama’s brief soaring notoriety in the past year or so, who has been the perennial least-favorite Middle Eastern dictator, the name on the tip of everyone’s tongue? Saddam Hussein.

Given the popular success of the Afghanistan massacre, the smart choice for Bush to raise his flagging public-approval ratings would be to wage yet another unnecessary war against a feared Islamic country. And it’s much easier to rally public support against someone we’ve already been indoctrinated to abhor than to start up the propaganda machine all over again with new unpronounceable names and unknown faces. The people of my generation spent their halcyon days hating Iraq and Hussein, while our parents’ generation has had a long-held (since the oil crises of the ’70s, at least) distrust of all things Middle Eastern. To return, then, to a confrontation with Hussein has a chilling nostalgic familiarity for much of the American populace.

The primary difference between the Gulf War and the younger Bush’s attempt to start another one is that, in the early nineties, Hussein provoked us by invading Kuwait (which in turn threatened our precious oil, which really provoked us). But these days, he’s done nothing wrong. Well, nothing new that’s wrong. He’s been teasing Bush for years about the apocryphal Weapons of Mass Destruction, a threat to which Bush has chosen to react only recently. As early as August 6 of this year, however, Sadoun Hammadi, the speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly, had extended an open invitation to the United States to inspect putative weapons-development sites, an offer that was reiterated in mid-September by Tariq Aziz, Iraqi Health Minister. Why hasn’t the Bush administration taken this opportunity to obviate a new war? Perhaps because there’s more to it than just the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Gore Vidal has said “war is the no-win all-lose option,” and before this country rushes headlong into a Gulf War II, we ought to examine Bush’s motives for such a war.

One reason, and the most important one, is money. Oil, and the accompanying money involved, is at the heart of this conflict just as it was during the Gulf War. It’s an ill-kept secret that Bush and Cheney both are good friends of big business. Halliburton, the company that Cheney led from1995 until the August before he was elected, had done $23.8 million worth of business with Iraq between 1998 and 1999, supplying it with parts and equipment necessary for oil processing. That enterprise lined Cheney’s pockets and kept the oil flowing smoothly. That oil is now, ironically, at stake. Why did we intervene when Saddam entered Kuwait? To keep our hands on the oil. Why are we not interested in attacking Saudi Arabia, another country with an oppressive regime, one that harbors terrorists and that trained Al Qaeda? Because we already have access to their oil.

Bush’s popularity has also been in a steady decline since a post-September 11 high, when his job approval rating touched exceeded ninety percent. In the year following the attacks it has dropped roughly 25 percentage points, and it continues to fall. Fighting the popular fight would stiffen those limp numbers. At the same time, it would improve, or at least divert attention from, a struggling economy. The United States of Amnesia, as Vidal refers to our country, has all but forgotten about the idyllic days when all we worried about was the size of our tax cut, but many are feeling the economic pinch right now and a war would—at the expense of a few lives—promptly halt that economic downturn and make Bush look like a hero again.

Luckily, there have been a few headlines lately that show Bush toning down his machismo and responding to the waning public support (now below 60 percent) for a strike on Iraq. There’s an increasing possibility that U.N. inspectors will be allowed into Iraq, and—maybe, hopefully, if no new weapons are found—a potential disaster will be averted.

At the same time, it seems unlikely that after all this macho posturing, Bush—the most bloodthirsty elected official in American history, presiding over more than 150 executions in five years as governor of Texas—who is clearly not an authority on the sanctity of human life, will be willing to back down and possibly save some of our fellow Americans’ lives. It’s important that we realize what a war in Iraq is about. It’s not about “terrorism” and it’s not about safety; more meddling by the United States would only draw the ire of millions of Muslims with whom we are already on shaky diplomatic ground after our military campaign against Afghanistan and possibly fuel even more anti-American aggression in addition to isolating the United States from the rest of the world. As the world becomes more interconnected every day, cooperation, rather than isolation, becomes increasingly important. We need to make it clear to Bush that the United States’ role in foreign policy is not to police other nations but to work together with them, and that war is not an appropriate stage for political posturing.