WHO WILL GET THE OIL?

Let my message be perfectly clear: the primary driver for U.S. presence in the Middle East is oil. Humanitarian considerations, the status of Israel, and the noisy president of Iran are irritations, it's true; but the United States is thirsty for oil, the Middle East is sitting on top of billions of barrels of it, and concerns are beginning to surface that supplies might get tight in the next decade.

There are some reasonably obvious indicators that point to this huge American oil interest. The first, and most glaring, is the stated intention of the U.S. to maintain military forces in Iraq for an undetermined period of time. Despite the fact that the military action against insurgents, militias, and disgruntled Iraqis alike is going badly, for some reason the American administration seems unwilling simply to cuts its losses and leave the region. Why is this?

The simplest explanation is usually the best one, and that could include the fact that military bases of a non-temporary character are being or have been built in close proximity to five of the potentially most productive oil fields in northern Iraq. If America were simply fielding an expeditionary force for the limited duration of a successful war effort, semi-permanent bases would be unnecessary and a wasteful expenditure of increasingly scarce U.S. resources. The U.S. clearly has its eyes on future oil production at those sites, perhaps looking toward a time when resource conflicts could be expected.

Less simple, but even more obvious even to the untrained eye, is information that the U.S. government is building what may be the world's largest embassy in Iraq. Not in the U.K. or Japan or Germany, this embassy, reportedly to cost around $650 million, is being sited in a country this nation presently occupies militarily. This is a country with only one export product of value to the government of the United States: oil.

Without oil, our largest consumer, the U.S. Air Force, doesn't fly. Without oil, American consumerism comes crashing down around our ears, and our SUVs and airliners simply sit in garages and hangars, because we have nothing with which to fuel them. Without oil, we experience rising tensions and a falling stock market, leading to conflict around the world and a more difficult way of life for those people who were not rich to begin with. Trouble follows shortage in this market, and Iraq's oil fields seem handy for the administration.

The President made it clear in his address to the country on 13 September 2007 that U.S. troops will maintain a "strategic" presence in Iraq for years to come. He gave no further justification for this presence than that they will attempt to "stabilize" the situation in that war-ravaged country. Strategic presence is, to my way of thinking, code for a presence meant to give the U.S. easier access to billions of barrels of oil there for the taking. Our presence militarily on top of those fields makes less likely an encroachment by any other thirsty country, such as China, seen recently making deals for oil all over the world.

Some might ask why Afghanistan doesn't get the same attention from the U.S., given that Osama bin-Laden is rumored to be living comfortably in the mountains of that nation. An acquaintance and I were discussing this, and he mentioned simply that there is no oil in those mountains. It seemed prophetic somehow.

Learn more about this author, Jon Dainty Sr..
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