Iraq Update: 'Blood for Oil'

My eagle-eyed brother has drawn my attention to an excellent article in The London Review of Books: 'Blood for Oil?' in response to the post Condoleeza Rice's Pax Americana of March 18, 2006 (see archive).

The Blood for Oil? article, by a group of writers and activists collectively called Retort, considers whether oil was the reason for the invasion of Iraq. Their conclusion, that oil is only a minor factor, is similar to my own thesis, but much better argued. It's long, but is a veritable history lesson in US and Western policy in the Middle East since the 1920s, and a devastating look at the labyrinthine US oil/military/industrial/ construction/banking/ political complex. Here's a sampler question to whet your appetite (courtesy of LRB and the authors, see below):

"The first Gulf War had been a struggle over oil supplies. Saddam was furious that Kuwait and UAE, under US pressure, were producing over quota to keep prices low. His obvious oil-profits motive elicited widespread condemnation in the Arab world and provided a broad multilateral basis for the American military response. What was on offer to the industry in 2003, on the other hand, was unilateral adventurism in the face of a global Muslim insurgency, and the prospect of enraging the most numerous generation of young Arabs and Muslims in history. It risked over 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply, the entire Gulf strategy, the wider set of US interests in the region, the radical destabilisation of the entire Muslim world, the active promotion of the jihadi struggle, and blowback of a wholly unpredictable and uncontainable sort. Why do it?"©

For answers see the full article on the LRB website at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n08/reto01_.html

© The London review of Books and Retort, a ‘gathering of antagonists to capital and empire’, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. This essay was written by Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts. Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, which deals with many aspects of post-September 11 global politics, is due from Verso this summer.