A half century ago, the proximity of a
Communist threat–to Western Europe or East Asia, for example–tended
to determine the stationing of U.S. forces abroad. Today, increasingly,
the profile of the American military presence abroad corresponds to the
location of large oil and natural gas reserves." Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism, p. 102***
The right-wing strategy was to use the American military to achieve economic and strategic goals in the Middle East: to gain control of the second largest oil reserve in the world; to place military bases right in the heart of the Middle East for the sake of economic and political intimidation; to open up Middle East markets and economic opportunities for American corporations; and to place American culture and a controllable government in the heart of the Middle East. The justification was 9/11 — to identify the Iraq invasion as part of the “War on Terror” and claim that it is necessary in order to protect America and spread democracy.
What has been the result?
Domestically, the “War on Terror” has been a major success for the radical right. Bush has been returned to office and the radical right controls all branches of our government. They are realizing their goals. Social programs are being gutted. Deregulation and privatization are thriving. Even highways are being privatized. Taxpayers’ money is being transferred to the ultra-rich making them richer. Two right-wing justices have been appointed to the Supreme Court and right-wing judges are taking over courts all over America. The environment continues to be plundered. Domestic surveillance is in place. Corporate profits have doubled while wage levels have declined. Oil profits are astronomical. And the radical rights social agenda is taking hold. The “culture war” is being won on many fronts. And it is still widely accepted that we are fighting a “War on Terror.” The metaphor is still in place. We are still taking off our shoes at the airports, and now we cannot take bottled water on the planes. Terror is being propped up.
But while the radical right has done well on the domestic front, America and Americans have fared less well both at home and abroad.
What was the moral of 9/11?
To Osama bin Laden, the moral was simple: American power can be used against America itself. This moral has defined the post 9/11 world: the more America uses military force in the Middle East, the more damage is done to America and Americans.–George Lakoff & Evan Frisch
Do you remember Carter’s "Crisis of Confidence" Speech? He gave it in July 1979, and although we look back on it now through the lens of Reagan’s "Morning in America" alternative fantasy, Carter’s was a speech that boosted his sagging approval ratings at the time. The key to the speech was to ask for sacrifice from the American people in a long term-struggle for energy independence. Bacevich says about it:
For Carter, the "crisis" facing the nation could not have a military solution. That crisis was at root internal rather than external. Resolving it required spiritual and cultural renewal at home rather than deploying U.S. power to create a world order accommodating the nation’s dependence upon and growing preoccupation with material resources from abroad.
Although Carter’ s stance was relentlessly inward looking, his analysis had important strategic implications. To the extent that "foreign oil" refers implicitly to the Persian Gulf–as it did then and does today–Carter was in essence proposing to arrest the growing strategic importance attributed to that region. He sensed intuitively that a failure to reverse the nation’s energy dependence was sure to draw the United States ever more deeply into the vortex of Persian Gulf politics, which could at best distract attention from but was even more likely to exacerbate the internal crisis that was his central concern.
This is, of course, precisely what has come to pass, with massive and problematic implications for the nation’s security and for U.S. military posture and priorities.
The idea, of course, that less is better is un-American, and Carter’s adversaries attacked Carter for his effrontery:
Those adversaries–Ronald Reagan first and foremost–offered a different message, not of need to cut back but of abundance without end. They assured Americans not only that compromising their lifestyle was unnecessary but that the prospects for economic expansion were limitless and could be had without moral complications or great cost. This rather than nagging about shallow materialism, was what Americans wanted to hear. Thus did Carter pave the way for his own electoral defeat a year later.
It’s ironic to say the least that the reefs of Middle Eastern politics that concerned Carter most were the primary cause of the shipwreck that became his presidency. In the October after his speech Carter allowed the deposed Iranian Shah Reza Pahlevi entry into the United States thus triggering enraged Iranian revolutionaries to storm the American embassy and to seize there 66 hostages. After the aborted hostage rescue mission in April, the only time Carter sent the military into action, Carter’s fate was sealed. The irony was doubly compounded by the release of the hostages on Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day, twenty minutes after he gave his speech.
Most Americans have very little interest in or knowledge about history. This is a trait that is easily exploited by political demagoguery because the real historical cause and effect can be disregarded and replaced with other explanations that have little to do with reality and everything to do with political expediency. People who actually know something and object to these distortions are easily dismissed as ivory-tower "intellectuals."
In a future post, I will get into a closer examination of the history of the central role that oil is playing in shaping U.S foreign policy. But the point today is to remember that we Americans made a choice about twenty-six years ago. It was a choice about oil and on another level about the projection of American military power, and it’s a choice that has had huge consequences–none of them positive.
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