Defining Defeat - It's Still About The Oil

I am struck by how when I listen to the pundits discuss the war in Iraq that to a man nearly everyone of them is too polite to mention that the fact that the reason we embarked on this war was the oil reserves in Iraq.

If you repress this fact, you can't even realistically analyze what is happening in Iraq right now. As the conditions worsen the common wisdom is that a civil war has erupted between the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Americans find themselves caught in the middle. It would be more precise to view the conflict in Iraq as a fight over the oil reserves in the ground and the United States is one of the factions fighting over the oil along with the Shiites and the Sunnis.

How can I justify such an accusation?

Iraqi oil was nationalized in 1972. This meant that Iraq was entitled to all of the profits for each barrel of oil that came out of the ground. Outside corporate interests were virtually limited to the role of being contractors building providing oil services. Even under the oil for food program it was still Iraqi oil. The war has changed all of this, at least in theory.

The new model for dealing with Iraqi oil and foreign interests uses what are called profit sharing agreements, or PSAs. The agreements being hammered out last for as long as 30 or 40 years and share profits with outside corporate interests well beyond international norms. At least they would, if Iraq ever becomes safe enough for these corporate interests to venture into Iraq. It's a round about way of defacto oil privatization that is probably doomed to fail with the rest of the war effort.

But that brings me to the last point. When you lose a war, you don't get to define the terms of defeat. These PSAs will go the way of the Maliki government after the last helicopter leaves the green zone. A more properly defined civil war will ensue at that point without the presence of an occupying force. The oil will most likely be nationalized once again with the French, Germans and Russians providing the oil services to the emerging Iraqi Theocracy and the united states licking its wounds.

But Seriously Folks

I have a hard time thinking up a better candidate for execution than Saddam Hussein. Not only was he a brutal monster of a dictator, but his continuing existence perpetuated the risk that he might one day return to power and restore his brutal regime.

Having said that, the release of the bootleg video of his execution onto the Internet has only served to remind me that I am against the death penalty. I always have been against it, even as a child. It must have been that catholic school education that gave me so much time to think about how the Romans wrongly accused and executed the Son of God.

Even if you held out some hope that the trial Saddam was subjected to was a fair one by international standards(many international groups say it wasn't), the video of the hanging came off like a lynching by a mob.

When justice becomes revenge, that revenge contaminates us all. We are all members of a weakened and tainted society because of it. A society that wields brutality ultimately teaches brutality as the final arbiter of all things. It should come as no surprise then when brutality is to be found everywhere.