EMPIRE

[Guest guest]

Why There Was No Exit Plan

By Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg

The San Francisco Chronicle

 

Monday 30 April 2007

 

There are people in Washington ... who never intend to withdraw

military forces from Iraq and they're looking for 10, 20, 50 years in

the future ... the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a

permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any

of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi

people that 10 years from now there will be no military bases of the

United States in Iraq.

 

-former President Jimmy Carter, Feb. 3, 2006

For all the talk about timetables and benchmarks, one might think

that the United States will end the military occupation of Iraq within

the lifetimes of the readers of this opinion editorial. Think again.

 

There is to be no withdrawal from Iraq, just as there has been no

withdrawal from hundreds of places around the world that are outposts

of the American empire. As UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers

Johnson put it, " One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is

that we didn't intend to leave. "

 

The United States maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries

across the globe. They exist for the purpose of defending the economic

interests of the United States, what is euphemistically called

" national security. " In order to secure favorable access to Iraq's

vast reserves of light crude, the United States is spending billions

on the construction of at least five large permanent military bases

throughout that country.

 

A new Iraq oil law, largely written by the Coalition Provisional

Authority, is planned for ratification by June. This law cedes control

of Iraq's oil to western powers for 30 years. There is major

opposition to the proposed law within Iraq, especially among the

country's five trade union federations that represent hundreds of

thousands of oil workers. The United States is working hard to

surmount this opposition by appealing directly to the al-Maliki

government in Iraq.

 

The attack upon, and subsequent occupation of, Iraq can be seen as

a direct result of the 2001 National Energy Policy Development Group

(better known as vice president Cheney's energy task force) that was

comprised largely of oil and energy company executives. This task

force - the proceedings of which have been kept secret by the

administration on the grounds of " executive privilege " - recommended

that the U.S. government support initiatives in Middle Eastern

countries " to open up areas of their energy sector to foreign

investment. " As Antonio Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change

International wrote last month in the New York Times, " One invasion

and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration

later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve. "

 

The people of the United States have indicated, in the national

election last November and in countless polls, that they no longer

support the Bush administration's war. The Scooter Libby trial

revealed that top administration officials, including the vice

president, " cherry-picked " and distorted intelligence in order to sell

a " pre-emptive " war to a spooked public. The squandering of hundreds

of billions of dollars, some billions of which, according to Seymour

Hersh writing in the New Yorker, is being siphoned into " black-ops "

programs being run out of Cheney's office (a stunning redux of Iran-

Contra carried out by many of the same actors), has also strained the

patience and credulity of the American people.

 

Another betrayal is the " contracting out " of " war-related

activities " to corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Chemonics

and Blackwater. Halliburton, Vice President Cheney's previous

employer, calls itself an " energy services company " but has tentacles

reaching into nearly every aspect of the war (originally dubbed

Operation Iraqi Liberation until some bright bulb among the Bushies

realized that " OIL " might not be the best handle for this venture).

Halliburton has also profited handsomely from no-bid government

contracts awarded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the construction

at the national embarrassment known as " Gitmo, " and most recently,

from the fiasco at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

 

Unfortunately, all this corruption, mayhem and death are good for

some (or it wouldn't go on).

 

The U.S. military budget, larger than the military budgets of the

rest of the world's nations combined, continues skyward, even without

all the " supplementals " passed regularly by Congress to fight the " war

on terror. "

 

The question we must ask as citizens is this: Is the United States

a democratic republic or an empire? History demonstrates that it's not

possible to be both.

 

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Lewis Seiler is president of Voice of the Environment. Dan

Hamburg, a former US representative, is executive director.

 

 

There is power in a factory, power in the land

Power in the hands of a worker

But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand

There is power in a Union

Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers' blood

The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for

From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud

War has always been the bosses' way, sir