Iraq Now As I See It

…If the American empire is to continue it will have to maintain control of the other oil riches of the Middle East. These are the crown jewels of the empire, and with peak oil here or coming soon, control of that oil will be essential to world domination. But the United States will have a hard time maintaining control of the rest of the Middle East when it withdraws from Iraq. Iraqi bases were meant to substitute for bases in Saudi Arabia when the Saudis objected to bases so close to their holy sites. So where will the United States put the bases now?


The United States will still have air bases in Qatar, Bahrain and further afield with which to threaten the rulers of other states and to compel their obedience. But the Iraq War will have compromised the American ability to threaten the Gulf States. Prior to the Iraq War the United States threatened Saddam Hussein with annihilation if he didn’t meet American demands. But when he capitulated they annihilated him anyway. The phony American diplomacy taught everyone that there is no safety in capitulation. Irrational American foreign policy and frequent American double crosses make it almost impossible for the United States to even articulate its interests in the Middle East. What are we trying to do, really? Why did the United States turn against its ally, Saddam Hussein, who was a relatively obedient American vassal? Did the United States want to dismember Iraq or didn’t it? Are we allied with the Shia or the Sunni? Did the United States ever try to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians? Why, after the Cold War, when Russia embraced American ways and American friendship, did the United States destabilized their ‘near abroad’ and began ringing them with military bases? American foreign policy, vaguely directed towards the obedience of our vassals, is completely incoherent. Of course it is vaguely directed at world domination, but what it demands of the leaders of other countries is opaque. Saddam’s famous meeting with April Glaspie, the US ambassador to Iraq, in which she seemed to sanction his invasion of Kuwait, illustrates the point.

The actual history tells us that the American goal is to pulverize all the Arab states and Iran regardless of what the regimes do. So capitulation will gain them nothing. Instead American threats are likely to force Middle Eastern rulers into the arms of our enemies. The Russians and the Chinese have powerful antiaircraft weapons that seem to be capable of shooting down American aircraft. They also have the deadly “Sunburst” anti-ship missile. The war in Iraq was directed ultimately against China and its energy needs. New American threats against Russia have made them more likely to offer their best war toys to Iran, for example. Iran has chosen to strengthen its defenses rather than pointlessly capitulate to irrational, vague, and phony American demands. The United States still may bomb them, but if so it was inevitable and they could not have avoided it by capitulating. In short the loss of the Iraq War has destroyed the effectiveness of the American threat, and therefore hastened the destruction of the American Empire. North Korea, and now Iran, have shown the way. Better not to bend in spite of the enormous destructive power the United States retains.

Swans