The great game,oil and economic war via war on terror.(Examples Afghanistan and Iraq)

[ghumbasa]

The Petrodollar Wars: The War in Afghanistan and the New Great Game



As we have learned from the previous articles in this series, the petrodollar system that was cleverly crafted in the 1970’s has served America well. What began as a way to drive more demand for the U.S. dollar, in the wake of a move away from the international gold standard in 1971, has provided benefits that few could ever imagine. America’s ‘dollars for oil’ system has greatly enriched our nation at the expense of other nations and their potential prosperity. It has also helped solidify the U.S. dollar as the global currency of choice, following a temporary loss of credibility after President Nixon’s decision to close the gold window.

In this fourth installment of our series, I will explain how the petrodollar system has led the U.S. into a perpetual state of war in the Middle East and Central Asia. In particular, this article will focus on the rise of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, along with what I believe may be the real reasons for the War in Afghanistan.

I have entitled this piece,*The Petrodollar Wars: The War in Afghanistan and the New Great Game

[ghumbasa]

http://ftmdaily.com/preparing-for-the-collapse-of-the-petrodollar-system-part-4/

[ghumbasa]

Why is the United States in Afghanistan?

On October 7, 2001, the Bush Administration launched the U.S. war machine into the rugged mountains of Afghanistan under the banner of*Operation Enduring Freedom. The official aim of the military aggression was to “liberate” Afghanistan from the terrorist network, Al Qaeda, find Osama Bin Laden, and dismantle the reigning Taliban regime. Within weeks of the invasion, the U.S. military had driven most of the top Taliban officials into the neighboring country of Pakistan.

Three years later, the newly formed Afghan government held democratic style elections and voted in their current president,*Hamid Karzai. While there have been ebbs and flows in the violence, Taliban insurgents operating from their base in neighboring Pakistan have sought to regain control of Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan has become America’s longest running war and has served to drain troop morale. Over 20,000 Afghans and 2,000 U.S. troops have died in this 11 year struggle. This is not to mention the number of amputees and others who have been permanently wounded in this war. The number of U.S. troops who are now suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is skyrocketing and thousands of veterans are waiting for their promised benefits.

How can a bankrupt government like the United States justify a never ending war on the other side of the world when it doesn’t even have money to pay for the obligations that it has promised to its own citizenry?

As we witnessed in the 2012 Presidential debates and election, asking questions of this nature is futile. The media never once asked either candidate how we plan to fund our ongoing military conquests. Nor was the phrase “Federal Reserve” ever mentioned once during the debates. Considering that the Fed serves as*a vital funding source*of the Federal government, this should have been appalling to the American public. Instead, most Americans blindly fell for the*right-left paradigm, refusing to see the truth that*both political parties operate in a state of denial*about America’s real problems.

Most Americans have grown weary of, and apathetic to, the occupation of Afghanistan by the U.S. war machine. A*recent public opinion poll*in the U.S. showed that 69% of Americans believe*that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan, and even the U.S. military has recently appeared toabandon hopes of reaching a peace deal*with the Taliban, its stated objective for the last several years.

The Obama administration has announced plans to formally end combat operations in Afghanistan at the end of 2014. But according to*a November 2012 report*released by the Wall Street Journal, 10,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014 to provide “counterterrorism and training support.”

At this point, we should ask ourselves a few important questions:

1) Why did the U.S. invade Afghanistan in the first place?

2) How much safer is America after its 11 year struggle in Afghanistan?

3) Why exactly is a bankrupt U.S. maintaining troops in Afghanistan even beyond 2014?

It has been my observation that few Americans know why America is still in Afghanistan or why we invaded the country in the first place. Some think that the Afghanistan war was important in order to get the “terrorists who plotted 9/11.” But the official story that the government-media complex fed to the American public in the wake of*the tragic events of 9/11*actually provoke more questions than answers.

Within two weeks of the 9/11 attacks, the FBI claimed that a shadowy terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda was responsible. However, Osama Bin Laden, the professed leader of Al Qaeda, was*never*even formally charged for the 9/11 attacks. Even*Bin Laden’s Most Wanted Poster*issued by the FBI never mentioned his involvement in 9/11. Why? Because, as the head of the*FBI’s public affairs unit*Rex Tomb*admitted,*“The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has*no hard evidence*connecting bin Laden to 9/11.”

In fact, to this day, no hard evidence exists linking Osama Bin Laden to the events of 9/11. How can that be? And if there was no hard evidence linking Bin Laden to 9/11, then what was the justification for invading the sovereign country of Afghanistan in an effort to find him and*“smoke him out of his cave?”

All of this disinformation may sound eerily familiar as it seems to be the same faulty logic employed by the Bush administration regarding another post 9/11 invasion… in Iraq. Before we explore what I believe are the ultimate reasons for the Afghanistan war, let’s re-familiarize ourselves with some of that faulty logic.

The Bush Years: Bold Lies About Iraq and 9/11

Within days of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration began publicizing its war plans. While many Americans were desperate for answers and were eager for justice, some were deeply perplexed by the decision to invade Afghanistan, and later Iraq. After all, 15 of the 19 alleged 9/11 hijackers were*citizens of Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan or Iraq. However, the Bush administration explained to an extremely vulnerable public that the 9/11 masterminds (Al Qaeda) were hiding out in the mountains of Afghanistan. Those who questioned the logic of an Afghan invasion were quickly hushed by the war-hungry myriads, and their reasoning was silenced by the mainstream media’s relentless beating of the war drums.

In the build up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration swore up and down that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussein wasintimately connected*to the attacks of 9/11 and to Al Qaeda itself.

In a*letter dated March 21, 2003, written from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Bush says:

“I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations,*including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

You can read the entire letter*here.

Vice-President **** Cheney went as far as to call the so-called link between Al Qaeda and Iraq “overwhelming”

In its zeal to gain evidence of an Iraq connection to the events of 9/11, the Bush administration reportedly tortured numerous detainees, attempting to extract a damning confession. But the torture techniques resulted in no confessions.

In reality,*Iraq had no WMDs*and, despite massive intelligence efforts, no connection could be found between Iraq and Osama Bin Laden. It was later revealed that the Bush administration had detailed knowledge that Iraq did*not*have WMDs*prior to the invasion. Bush would later be forced to*admit*that Saddam Hussein had no connection to the events of 9/11 after*his attempts to lie*to the American people failed. Of course, he refused to admit that he had indicated, or even suggested a link between Iraq and Bin Laden. The CIA would later admit that they knew one year before the Iraq war that Iraq and Al Qaeda had*no connection*and that Osama Bin Laden was “in fact a longtime enemy of Iraq.”

Interesting side note: While the*growing public mistrust of the Washington elites has reached a fever pitch in our modern era, its origins are somewhat surprising. It was not the blatant*lies told to the American people during the Bush years, along with the gross mishandling of the events on 9/11, that would eventually cause the “sheeple” to stir from their slumber. Instead, it was the 2008-09 economic crisis that forced the citizenry to look upon their elected officials with suspicion.

Al Qaeda: Just Another CIA Creation

While Iraq was obviously a war designed to protect America’s*petrodollar system, the war in Afghanistan at least appeared to be slightly more justifiable. Why? Because it was a known fact that Afghanistan harbored and supported members of Islamic terrorist groups. Yet relatively few Americans are aware that*the U.S. spent billions of dollars funding the Afghan mujahideenthe 1980’s*and into the 1990’s. This funding of Afghan radicals and Islamic militants occurred under a covert CIA program, known as*Operation Cyclone.

If you are not familiar with Operation Cyclone, I urge you to spend some time researching this interesting piece of U.S. history. This extremely expensive covert CIA operation, which was coordinated with the financial assistance of Saudi Arabia, was initiated under President Jimmy Carter and*greatly expanded*under President Ronald Reagan. The financing and arming of these Islamic radicals by the CIA and the Saudis was later justified as an attempt to demoralize and degrade the Soviet army during the Cold War era. The fact that the U.S. armed Islamic militants to the teeth and provided them with tens of billions of dollars in the form of “foreign aid” is obviously an embarrassing fact in U.S. history. It makes you wonder how many U.S. troops have been killed or maimed by our own weapons in this most recent war.


Perhaps even more damning is that Operation Cyclone may have provided necessary financing for the rise of a man by the name of Osama Bin Laden. In the wake of the tragic London bombing on 7/7/2005, former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook*penned a piece*in the London Guardian*publicly admitting*that the CIA and the Saudis had*created, armed, and funded*Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

“Bin Laden was, though,*a product of a monumental miscalculation*by western security agencies. Throughout the 80’s he was*armed by the CIA*and*funded by the Saudis to wage jihad*against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.*Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA*to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden’s organisation would turn its attention to the west.”

What made this revealing commentary so explosive was the fact that Cook was a*respected former high-ranking British government official. Within one month of the publication of the article, the healthy and fit Cook*died of a “heart attack”*while on vacation with his wife. The*mystery*surrounding his death still raises more questions than answers.

Later, U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, would publicly admit that the CIA created the very enemies that the United States is now fighting in Afghanistan.*Watch the video below.

[ghumbasa]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp6SZnhymQQ

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqn0bm4E9yw

While many Americans are distrustful of their government, most of them are so woefully ignorant of their own history that they are unable to demand positive change from their leaders. Instead, they are spoon-fed current events by the government-corporate-media complex, which not only carefully selects the news that is reported, but also tells them what to think about it. If the American people truly understood history they would reject the corporate-controlled media.

The FOXNEWS-MSNBC-CNN-ABC-NBC-CBS news outlets should be viewed merely as entertainment… and at best, info-tainment. Their refusal to dig deeper into their stories, however, is determined by the attention span of the average American.

[ghumbasa]

The Afghanistan War: Follow the Money

When you consider that the bankrupt American empire has been spending approximately*$2 billion per week since 2001*on the war in Afghanistan, it should be apparent that our government officials are motivated by some incentive other than “fighting terror” and “spreading democracy.” In fact, if our government officials are foolish enough to spend $2 billion per week in order to “spread democracy” to foreign lands as the American economy crumbles, then they should all be immediately checked into the Beltway’s nearest asylum. But we know better. As rational human beings, we know that everything that occurs in this life does so at the behest of incentives. In other words, America would not be spending $2 billion per week for 11 years in Afghanistan unless it perceived that the expense was somehow justified.

The thesis of this article then, pertains to the reasons behind the war in Afghanistan. The U.S.-led invasion and agonizingly drawn-out occupation of the region by our military has little to do with eradicating the CIA-created “Al Qaeda”, fighting “terrorism”, or altruistically “spreading democracy” to foreign lands. Instead, a basic understanding of history and economics demonstrates that these wars have much more to do with the U.S. securing access to the region’s natural resources.

Like the Iraq war, I believe that the war in Afghanistan has been motivated by an effort to protect the U.S. dollar (i.e. the petrodollar system.) Protecting the current “dollars for oil” arrangement requires the U.S. to control and regulate the flow of natural resources in the region. After all, modern empires like the U.S. need not occupy an entire land in order to regulate and dominate commerce and trade. Instead,*selecting*and*controlling*those in power is all that is required for the empire to maintain its dominion over a particular region. This explains many of the Western puppet regimes that exist in the Middle East, which actively do the bidding of Western interests. Of course, the leaders of these puppet regimes are attractively compensated in exchange for their willingness to eliminate the sovereignty of their nation and their people.

Consider the chart below which shows the excessive amounts of money that the U.S. spends on foreign aid in the Middle East propping up its puppets.

Notice that the U.S. gives*more foreign aid*to Israel’ s sworn enemies than it does to Israel itself. This schizophrenic behavior of “standing with Israel” while providing excessive financial support to Israel’s enemies in the region is dubious. However, it makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of resource war and the petrodollar system.

Iraq, for example, offers a clear picture of Western interests as it sits atop some of the largest oil reserves in the world. And most of Iraq’s oil fields are still largely untapped and lie waiting for oil companies to exploit them.

But what about Afghanistan? Isn’t Afghanistan just a mountainous wasteland with an uneducated population? What possible incentive could the United States have for wanting to invade and control this nation?

If you have ever wondered this, it is time to introduce you to the “New Great Game.”

The New Great Game: The Real Reasons Behind the Afghanistan War

Afghanistan is strategically located in the resource-rich region of Central Asia.*Amid the rise of many emerging nations in search of new oil supplies, Central Asia has become ground zero in what is a new scramble for natural resources.

It has been estimated that the entire Caspian Sea is*full of oil*and*natural gas, starting from Azerbaijan and continuing to the opposite shore in the territory of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. These energy deposits take on enormous importance given their close proximity to the rising energy hungry powers of China and India. In addition, because of the expected depletion of the oil deposits in Alaska and the North Sea around the year 2015, the West is aggressively seeking access to new sources of energy supplies.

For decades, Central Asia has held immense strategic geopolitical significance. During World War II, for example, Adolf Hitler enacted*Operation Blue*in an attempt to capture the Caucasian oil fields from the Russians. His hope was that this victory would help him secure his plot for global domination. His failure left the oil-rich region of Central Asia under Russia’s control.

But throughout history, countries that have attempted to invade and exploit Central Asia’s abundant natural resources have been forced to contend with one major obstruction:*the region is isolated and landlocked. This was the predominant theme of the 19th century (1813-1907) when the British Empire*struggled to gain access*to the region when it was largely under the thumb of Tsarist Russia. This 19th century race to exploit the immense energy supplies of Central Asia between the Russian empire and the British Empire is known as the “Great Game.”*To those familiar with the phrase, and the history it implies, the reasons of the growing “war on terror” begin to come into sharp focus.

Today, Western powers are once again racing to build an empire in Central Asia. But, unlike the last century, this*New Great Game*is not about controlling the lands of Central Asia. Instead, as Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac put it in their book,*Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia“pipelines, tanker routes, petroleum consortiums, and contracts are the prizes of the new Great Game”.

In 2010, the Guardian*newspaper published a*leaked document*written by*Washington’s ambassador to Kyrgyzstan,*Tatiana Gfoeller, after she had attended a*meeting with British and Canadian businessmen in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. In the leaked document,*Ms. Gfoeller reports that*during the meeting, Prince Andrew of York told her that Western Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom were now*“back in the thick of playing the Great Game*and this time we aim to win.”

Whoever can gain control over this region can control the pipelines that will be constructed, which will transfer the natural resources to global markets.

A Working Timeline of the New Great Game

While selecting a point of origin for this New Great Game is arguable, for the sake of brevity, I will begin our timeline in April 1995. In that month, the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council formed a working group to study U.S. oil and gas interests in the Caspian Sea region. In that same month, Turkmenistan officials traveled to Texas to discuss the feasibility of constructing a gas pipeline that would stretch from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and on to the Arabian Sea.*By October of that same year, Turkmenistan’s president, Saparmurad Niyazov,*signed an agreement*with Unocal and the Saudi Arabian Delta Oil Company, giving the two companies exclusive rights to develop the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline in his country.

With Turkmenistan in agreement, the next step would be to gain approval from Pakistan. That job fell on U.S. Ambassador Tom Simmons who, in March of 1996,*began urging*Pakistani Prime Minister, Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto, to give exclusive rights for the Trans-Afghan pipeline to Unocal.

By September 1996, the Taliban had fully captured the city of Kabul, Afghanistan. At this time, the U.S. viewed the Taliban as*anti-Iranian and pro-Western. President Clinton, who was impressed by the Taliban’s apparent willingness to discuss the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline, opted to support their claim to power in the region. Soon, the State Department and Pakistan’s ISI were*funneling weapons and money to the Taliban to aid their confrontation with the Northern Alliance. In his provocative book,*Taliban, Ahmed Rashid explains that U.S. taxpayers*paid for the salaries*of virtually every Taliban official up until 1999.

In 1997, the*BBC reported*that a senior delegation from the Taliban in Afghanistan was invited by the international energy company, Unocal, to the United States for talks on constructing a gas pipeline that would stretch from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. (Unocal later merged with Chevron in 2005.) The Taliban delegation spent several days at the company’s headquarters in Sugarland, Texas. Unocal, eager to begin development of the vast energy resources of the Caspsian Sea region,*commissioned the University of Nebraska*to teach Afghan men the technical skills needed for pipeline construction.

According to*sources, Taliban officials were told they could accept a “carpet of gold” or a “carpet of bombs.”

Pakistani officials claimed the Bush administration informed them*five weeks before 9/11*that they would begin military operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban in October of that same year. This claim is backed up by the fact that the detailed military invasion orders against Afghanistan, referred to in*National Security Presidential Directive 9*(NSPD 9), were placed in the Oval Office on President Bush’s desk waiting to be signed — on September 4, 2001. Did Bush know that the events of 9/11 were about to unfold?

The Trillion Dollar Graveyard… of Empires

Interestingly, in 2010, it was reported that a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists had discovered*vast amounts of untapped mineral deposits*in Afghanistan*worth nearly $3 trillion.*One U.S. government official explained, “This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy.” A related Pentagon memo claimed that Afghanistan was positioned to become the*“Saudi Arabia of lithium.”

The story, however, was*not*new. Instead, it was likely manufactured to drive support for the war from an apathetic American public.

The fact that Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was known by the U.S. in advance of the war was*revealed in*an interview*with a retired senior U.S. official based in Afghanistan. In the interview, conducted by Politico, the U.S. official noted that the reports of a*‘discovery’ of vast amounts of resources and minerals was old news.

“When I was living in Kabul in the early 1970’s the [U.S. government], the Russians, the World Bank, the UN and others were all*highly focused on the wide range of Afghan mineral deposits. Cheap ways of moving the ore to ocean ports has always been the limiting factor.”

In fact, the Afghans themselves knew about the vast mineral riches that lay under their feet as far back as 1985.*A*report published by the chief engineer*of the*Afghan Geological Survey Department details the*discovery of massive amounts of mineral wealth along with extraction plans with the aid of the former Soviet Union. Obviously, that deal fell through after Russia made another important discovery: that Afghanistan was the*graveyard of empires.*In 1989, after attempting to exploit the region’s resources on numerous occasions, Russia pulled out of Central Asia amid deep turmoil in the mother country.

Additionally, the news of Afghanistan’s tremendous mineral wealth, and the vast oil and natural gas reserves of nearby countries, was published for all to read in a 1997 book by globalist*Zbigniew Brzezinski entitled*The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives.

Brzezinski, who is a former Presidential advisor and a member of both the Bilderbergers and the Council on Foreign Relations, states in his book what was commonly known among the global elites in the mid-1990’s about the importance of the Central Asian region:

“…the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a*potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold”*(page 124)

Brzezinski continues:

“America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Euraisian continent is sustained…*A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions…most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and*underneath its soil*(page 30-31)

And here’s footage of former U.S. National Security Advisor,*Zbigniew Brzezinski, as he stirs up the Islamic militants telling them that God is “on their side” and that their war against Russia is just.*Watch the video below

[ghumbasa]

And here’s footage of former U.S. National Security Advisor,*Zbigniew Brzezinski, as he stirs up the Islamic militants telling them that God is “on their side” and that their war against Russia is just.*Watch the video below

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uhFleLinwEM

[ghumbasa]

US foreign foreign aid.

[ghumbasa]

http://ftmdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/central-asian-oil.png

[ghumbasa]

Great game going to Pakistan

In addition to the vast mineral wealth, which*the*United States Geological Survey reported*as early as 2007 — three years before it released its “bogus finding” to the mainstream press as a legitimate news story — Central Asia is also extremely rich in oil and natural gas.

According to the*BP Statistical Review 2011, Kazakhstan had the ninth largest proven oil reserves in*the world with well over 30 billion barrels. This is larger than*Nigeria (37.2 billion barrels), Canada (32.1 billion) and the*United States (30.9 billion).

What Russia and Britain both failed to do in previous decades during the Great Game, America appears willing and able to do.

However, America will face formidable opposition and competition for these same resources from the Russians and especially the Chinese. Again, Brzezinski points out the obvious when he writes:

“China’s growing economic presence in the region and its political stake in the area’s independence are also congruent with America’s interests.”*(page 148)

In order to successfully conquer the region of Central Asia, Brzezinski writes that*the West must seek to:

“prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”*(page 40)

I cannot think of a better description of what the U.S.-led wars in the region have created than this last sentence.

How do you “prevent collusion and maintain security dependence?” By keeping the region in a perpetual state of war and and upheaval.*This is the classic “divide and conquer” strategy that Western nations have employed in the resource-rich regions for centuries. But the American empire deserves credit for cleverly disguising its true intentions in its conquests by appealing to a bogus “war on terror” along with its relationship with Israel. By creating an enemy figure in the form of “global terrorism” along with whipping up national “support” for Israel, the U.S. has made it easy for the public to turn a blind eye towards the nation’s aggressive foreign policy in most parts of the world. In fact, it appears that some Americans actually believe that the bankrupt U.S. empire has pure intentions in conquests. However, this fantasy of America being guided by its better angels in all things related to foreign policy entraps only the weakest of minds.

Pipeline Politics

As stated previously, the difficulty in exploiting the natural resources within Central Asia is one of transport not exploration. The exploration and extraction process is relatively simple compared to transporting Central Asia’s vast oil and gas reserves out of difficult terrain, out to a warm water port, and then on to global markets. To do so would require the construction of a large number of pipelines traversing multiple nations. Geographically, there are several potential pathways for these pipelines. Two of these include:

1) A pipeline running south from the Caspian Sea, crossing through Iran, and out into the Black Sea

While this is the most direct and inexpensive route, the U.S. is firmly against this option. Tensions are rising as Iran has thumbed its nose at the U.S. dollar and refuses to allow the American empire to treat it as a puppet regime.

2) A pipeline from the Caspian that traverses Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then out to the Arabian Sea

This has been the route preferred by the United States for well over a decade. However, one thing has long stood in the way of this becoming reality: Radical Islamic militants in the region.

More on this in a moment…

The other potential routes for transporting Central Asia’s resources to global markets have been shunned by the U.S. as they traverse areas that the U.S. believes would be too tempting to the region’s two behemoths: China and Russia. In years past, Russia has dominated oil and gas fields in the Western portion of Central Asia. However, in 2009, the first gas pipeline in this region to be built without Russian involvement came into operation. The pipeline directly linked the resource-rich areas of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the growing energy demand of another emerging nation: China.

And while China’s oil demand is noteworthy, it is certainly not the only emerging nation vying for Central Asia’s abundant resources. India and Pakistan are both struggling to meet demand amid rising domestic natural gas usage.

In December 2010, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India*signed an agreement*with Turkmenistan to begin work on the*TAPI gas pipeline. This agreement, funded by the Asian Development Bank, will lead to the construction of a gas pipeline at an estimated cost of $9 billion. When completed in 2013-2014, this 1,087 mile long pipeline will allow Turkmenistan to export 1.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

While the surrounding nations stand to greatly benefit from this access to the region’s vast natural resources, Western oil firms have gained the upper hand in the region. American firms dominate the area, controlling 75% of all new oil fields. In total, America has invested $30 billion into energy projects, which represents around 40% of all foreign investment in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

Enter the Iran-Pakistan Pipeline

In an effort to increase demand for its own gas supplies, Iran has been constructing a separate pipeline that will deliver natural gas to Pakistan. The idea for the Iran-Pakistan pipeline was first proposed by a Pakistani civil engineer named Malik Aftab Ahmed Khan. Khan wrote a piece in the*Military College of Risalpur entitled the “Persian Pipeline” back in the 1950s. While Iran and Pakistan both favored the idea, formal discussions did not begin until 1994. As time went on, the plan became even more ambitious as Iran sought to extend the pipeline through Pakistan and into India. India and Iran agreed on the details and*signed an agreement*in 1999. Additionally, Iran made overtures to*China*and*Bangladesh*to join the arrangement.

Predictably, the U.S. disapproved, viewing the Iran-Pakistan pipeline as a direct threat to its own TAPI project. In an attempt to dismantle the Iranian pipeline project, the U.S.*began putting pressure on India and Pakistan. India suddenly backed out of the arrangement in 2009 after signing a civilian nuclear deal with the United States.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has threatened Pakistan with sanctions if the country continues with plans to build a natural gas pipeline to Iran. After the U.S. threats against Pakistan failed to stop the agreement with Iran, the U.S. softened its tone. In 2010, the U.S. promised Pakistan that if they would cease their relationship with Iran, they would receive an assortment of*promised financial goodies*including cheap energy sources that would be routed to them through Afghanistan.*Pakistan flatly turned down the offer by the Americans, opting instead to press on with the Iranian pipeline deal. In March 2010, Pakistan and Iran*signed an agreement*that revived the pipeline project. Under the agreement, both Iran and Pakistan agreed to take responsibility for constructing their own pipelines with a completion date set for the end of 2014. And while Iran quickly completed its section of the pipeline, Pakistan’s construction efforts were delayed by a general lack of funding. Desperate for money, Pakistan sought the assistance of the Russians who*agreed to finance*the Pakistani portion of the pipeline.

Determined to stop the Iran-Pakistan pipeline, the Saudis (no doubt prompted by similar economic interests to the U.S.) made*a generous assistance offer*to Pakistan. If they would cancel their arrangement with Iran, the Saudis would provide a financial bailout for the country and provide them with sufficient oil supplies. Within weeks, a defiant Pakistan swore that its pipeline arrangement with Iran would*not be thwarted*by Western interests. In September 2012, it was announced that the Iran-Pakistan pipeline project was progressing normally and was*expected to begin operations*in December 2014 as scheduled.

The ongoing attempts to destabilize Iran are motivated primarily by Western interests and not the interests of the region. The anti-Western government of Iran has failed to go along with the West’s defined goals for the region of Central Asia.

The U.S. has turned on its propaganda machine, accusing Iran of wanting a nuclear weapon. The U.S. is leading the world to pressure Iran into submission. Despite the fact that Iran has no known nuclear devices, despite the fact that Iran has not invaded its neighbors in decades, and despite the fact that Iran denies wanting a nuclear bomb, the U.S. has imposed devastating sanctions upon the country.

Those who believe that Iran poses a “nuclear threat” should remember under what pretense the Bush administration invaded Iraq. Iran’s belligerent attitude towards the U.S. dollar and the petrodollar system has backed the country into a corner. They refuse to price their oil in dollars and resent American interference in the region. Too bad for them. The American military machine lays waste to those who stand in the way of its meddling.

But Iran is no stranger to U.S. interference. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency engineered a coup in Iran, known as*Operation Ajax, against the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh. Why? The overthrow of the Iranian government came after Mossadegh*attempted to nationalize the Western oil companies in his country. The West was quick to impose economic sanctions. These sanctions were followed by the overthrow of Mossadegh and the installation of a U.S. friendly dictator (Shah of Iran.)

(Note: Another foreign leader that despises the U.S. government and its petrodollar system is Hugo Chavez. In 2002, a*CIA-backed coup*failed against the Venezuelan leader. What was the reason for the coup? Chavez sought state control over his country’s own oil supplies.)

Conclusion

In summary, evidence suggests that the U.S. planned to invade Afghanistan even before the tragic events of 9/11. While the reasons are somewhat speculative, the weight of the evidence points to the Taliban’s obstruction in allowing Western oil companies to build a Trans-Afghanistan pipeline. Eleven years later, the U.S. military remains in Afghanistan while the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline is being constructed with completion plans set for 2017. Iran’s competing pipeline project will be completed by the end of 2014 and is catching the attention of China, Russia, India, and others. The U.S. cannot allow renegade regimes, like Iran, to dictate the flow of natural resources in this important region. Therefore, the U.S. government has inflicted punitive economic and political measures upon Iran in an effort to bring it into submission.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were both “resource wars” sold to the American public under false pretenses. America’s empire of 700+ military bases in 130+ nations serves as a global oil protection service, not a national military seeking to protect American citizens. Instead of protecting our nation’s borders, the U.S. military is used by the Washington elites to protect the petrodollar system. The foundations of the American empire are now crumbling as emerging nations are no longer willing to spend their lives and their new found wealth propping up the U.S. consumer. Nor do they have any desire to tolerate the belligerence of the U.S. war machine.

Like all failing empires, America will fall under its own weight as more nimble economies arise in its wake. America’s attempts at regional dominance of Central Asia will lead to further friction with Russia and/or China. This friction will provide the spark for yet another war.

[ghumbasa]

http://www.isreview.org/issues/15/blood_for_oil.shtml

U.S. Intervention in the Middle East: Blood for Oil


By Paul D'Amato




"If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn't give a damn."

--Lawrence Korb, assistant defense secretary under Reagan, as the U.S. prepared its massive military assault on Iraq in 1991.


SINCE THE Second World War, the United States has been the dominant world power in the Middle East. Every U.S. policy shift, every military intervention, every CIA plot has been carried out to secure one main aim: to ensure the cheap and plentiful flow of the world's most important energy resource--oil. Despite new discoveries of oil reserves in Central Asia, the Middle East still has two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves, and its oil is still the cheapest to pump and produce. As Lawrence Korb's statement about Kuwait and carrots makes clear, nothing that takes place in the Middle East today can be understood without first understanding the strategic and economic importance of "black gold."

The U.S. has relied on brutal, repressive regimes--Iran under the Shah, Saudi Arabia, Israel--to do its dirty work. It has used the CIA to foment coups against "unfriendly" regimes. When necessary, it has intervened directly to punish regimes that have challenged its dominance in the region--as it did to Iraq in 1991. To this day, the U.S. spends billions annually to maintain a large military presence in the region. It provides billions in military hardware to client states, in particular to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel--which the U.S. carefully maintains as the region's most formidable military power.

The prize

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France drew the boundaries of the new states in the Middle East with absolutely no input from the people of the region. All promises of Arab independence the British had made to various local leaders during the First World War were scrapped. At the 1919 peace conference, when the victorious powers sat down to divvy up the spoils, foremost in their minds was the need to keep the region divided and thereby easier to control:

Private oil concerns pushed their governments (in the national interest, of course) to renounce all wartime promises to the Arabs. For the oilmen saw only too well that oil concessions and royalties would be easier to negotiate with a series of rival Arab states lacking any sense of unity, than with a powerful independent Arab state in the Middle East.1

Britain took the areas that became Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. France took Syria and Lebanon. Each state was then handed to local kings and sheiks who owed their position to British tutelage. Kuwait was handed to the al-Sabah family. After he was promised a united Arab republic, the Hashemite King Hussein was awarded Jordan. Britain gave Ibn Saud Saudi Arabia--the only country in the world named after its ruling family. France put Lebanon in the hands of the Christian minority.

Journalist Glenn Frankel describes how British High Commissioner Sir Percy Cox settled boundaries between Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia at a 1922 conference in Baghdad:

The meeting had gone on for five grueling days with no compromise in sight. So one night in late November 1922, Cox, Britain's representative in Baghdad, summoned to his tent Sheik Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud, soon to become ruler of Saudi Arabia, to explain the facts of life as the British carved up the remnants of the defeated Ottoman empire.

"It was astonishing to see [ibn Saud] being reprimanded like a naughty schoolboy by His Majesty's High Commissioner and being told sharply that he, Sir Percy Cox, would himself decide the type and general line of the frontier," recalled Harold Dickson, the British military attaché to the region, in his memoirs.

"This ended the impasse. Ibn Saud almost broke down and pathetically remarked that Sir Percy was his father and mother who made him and raised him from nothing to the position he held and that he would surrender half his kingdom, nay the whole, if Sir Percy ordered."

Within two days, the deal was done. The modern borders of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait were established by British Imperial fiat at what became known as the Uqauir Conference.2

There was one unique exception to this arrangement. The 1917 Balfour Declaration had committed Britain to supporting the formation of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. When the postwar settlement made the country a British protectorate, Britain backed Jewish immigration to Palestine, hoping to create a "secure strategic outpost in an Arab world."3 Though Lord Arthur Balfour was an anti-Semite, he and other members of the British ruling class could see the value of creating a colonial-settler outpost that, dependent on British support, could become a loyal protector of British interests in the area. The full significance of the role of such an outpost would not become apparent, or fully taken advantage of by the U.S., until several years after the formation of the state of Israel in 1948.

U.S. steps in

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the U.S. moved in quickly to establish itself as the number-one power in the Middle East.

American policy in this period was chiefly concerned that countries in the region did not come under the control of nationalist regimes. They had their first taste of that threat in Iran, when the democratically elected president Mohammed Mossadeq, with mass popular support, nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In a coup engineered by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, Mossadeq was toppled and replaced by the Shah. The Shah's power was underwritten by massive infusions of American aid and upheld by the notoriously savage secret police, Savak.

The U.S. worried that Egypt, under Gamal Abdel Nasser--a nationalist military officer who had come to power, ironically, with the CIA's blessing after a 1952 coup--might become a pole of attraction for pan-Arab movements.

U.S. interests in the region were couched in the Cold War terms of preventing Soviet domination, though it was clear that any regime attempting to leave the orbit of the U.S., whether it had ties to Russia or not, was considered a threat. Under the first of what would become a series of "doctrines" outlining U.S. policy in the Middle East, the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine declared that the United States was "prepared to use armed forces to assist" any Middle Eastern country "requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism."4

The Eisenhower Doctrine reflected Washington's anger over Nasser's turn to the Eastern Bloc for weapons. The U.S. refused to arm Egypt unless it agreed to join the U.S.-sponsored Baghdad Pact, a regional security agreement under U.S. auspices. The doctrine was quickly put to the test as a series of developments in the region seemed to augur a wave of nationalism. In Jordan, King Hussein was threatened by a newly elected pro-Nasser parliament. In 1958, Egypt and Syria joined together to form the United Arab Republic. In Lebanon, Muslim Arab nationalists led a struggle against the minority Christian regime led by Camille Chamoun. More importantly to the U.S., a nationalist military coup in Iraq that same year overthrew pro-British dictator Nuri Said. This event was perceived as a severe blow to U.S. prestige in the region and as a threat to American oil interests.

U.S. officials feared that the new Iraqi regime might reassert its historical claim on Kuwait, a tiny country created by British fiat in order to prevent any larger state from controlling what was then the biggest oil-producing area in the Gulf. A memorandum based on an emergency meeting between Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Nathan Twining, and CIA director Allen Dulles asserted that unless the United States intervened, "the U.S. would lose influence," its "bases" would be "threatened," and U.S. credibility would be "brought into question throughout the world."5 The U.S. was also concerned about the nationalist threat to what were very profitable oil concessions in Kuwait and Iraq.

Fearing that he was on the brink of losing power, Lebanon's Chamoun asked the U.S. for assistance under the Eisenhower Doctrine. With its eye on Iraq, the U.S. seized this opportunity and declared a nuclear alert, mobilized a massive strike force ready to intervene when called on, and invaded Lebanon with 14,000 marines. When the new Iraqi regime announced its commitment to "respect its obligations," the U.S. withdrew its forces. "Thus what followed the coup in Iraq and the landing of troops in Beirut was a new understanding of the rules of the Middle East game," writes Micah Sifry. "Political changes were possible as long as economic interests were safeguarded."6

The "special relationship" with Israel

Since the late 1960s, Israel has been the single most important ally of the U.S. in the Middle East, fulfilling the role laid out for it by the Israeli newspaper*Ha'aretz*as America's "watchdog" in the region. For this reason, Israel receives more economic and military aid from the U.S. than any other country in the world. "The U.S. relationship with Israel is singular," writes Stephen Zunes.

Israel represents only one one-thousandth of the world's population and has the 16th highest per capita income in the world, yet it receives 40 percent of all U.S. foreign aid. In terms of U.S. aid to the Middle East, Israel received 54 percent in 1999, ›gypt 38 percent and all other Middle East countries only about 8 percent. Direct aid to Israel in recent years has exceeded $3.5 billion annually and has been supported almost unanimously in Congress, even by liberal Democrats who normally insist on linking aid to human rights and international law.7

The basis on which Israel was formed--the mass expulsion of the local Arab population and the establishment of an exclusively Jewish state--makes Israel both the most reliable ally and a source of instability in the Middle East. The U.S. can rely on Israel's superior military might to help police the region because Israel's unique history makes the majority of its citizens zealous defenders of the Israeli state. In addition, Israel's dependence on American imperialism to pay for its massive military superiority over its neighbors makes Israel solidly pro-West. On the other hand, the forced expulsion of Palestinians by Israel has created a constant source of friction in the region that threatens to upset U.S. relations with Arab states.

In the early years following the Second World War, as the U.S. endeavored to extend its dominance over the Gulf states, Washington viewed Israel as an ally, but only as one among many. However, as the threat of Arab nationalism rose after Mossadeq's and Nasser's rise to power in the early 1950s, U.S. aid to Israel began to increase. Whereas in 1951 the U.S. gave Israel only $100,000 in grants, the coup in Egypt the following year prompted the U.S. to give Israel $86.4 million.8

But the U.S. was still wary that stronger ties with Israel could sour relations with the other Arab states. This was one of the reasons that the U.S. opposed Britain, France, and Israel's invasion of Egypt in 1956 over Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal. Yet the continuing growth of Arab nationalism and the fear of possible growing Soviet influence in the region prompted the U.S. to rely more closely on Israel's "watchdog" capabilities. "By 1958," writes Mark Curtis, "the U.S. National Security Council concluded that the 'logical corollary' of opposition to radical Arab nationalism 'would be to support Israel as the only strong pro-Western power left in the Middle East.'" He continues:

During the "crisis" in the Middle East of 1958, when Britain landed troops in Jordan and the United States did likewise in Lebanon, President Eisenhower on several occasions considered the merits of "unleashing" Israel (along with Turkey) against Egypt. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Nathan Twining, proposed that Israel should seize the West Bank of Jordan as part of a regional offensive that would include British intervention in Iraq and Turkish intervention in Syria. In all, it has been little wonder that the building under British auspices of a national home in the region for Jews was regarded by Arabs as a "permanent imperialist bridgehead."9

By the 1960s, as aid to Israel increased, U.S. officials realized that Israel could be counted on to work, mostly covertly, to curb the expansion of Arab nationalism in the region. But it was with Israel's role in the June 1967 Six Day War, when the Israeli army proved itself superior to the combined forces of several other states and expanded its territory into the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai peninsula, that the U.S. cemented its special relationship with Israel. In fact, 99 percent of U.S. aid to Israel has come in the years since the Six Day War. That aid has been, in the eyes of U.S. imperialism, a very good investment. Stephen Zunes recounts the importance of Israel to the United States:

Israel has helped suppress victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen, as well as in Palestine. The Israeli military has kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check, and its air force is predominant throughout the region. Israel's frequent wars have provided battlefield testing for American arms. Israel has also served as a conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and movements--such as apartheid-era South Africa, Iran, Guatemala, and the Nicaraguan contras--too unpopular in the United States for overt and direct military assistance. Israel's military advisors have assisted the contras, the Salvadoran Junta, and other governments allied with the United States; its secret service has assisted the United States in intelligence gathering and covert operations. Israel has hundreds of intermediate-range ballistic missiles and has cooperated with the U.S. military-industrial complex regarding research and development for new jet fighters, antimissile defense systems, and even the Strategic Defense Initiative. No U.S. administration wants to jeopardize such an important relationship.10

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi makes a similar point:

An American military expert--Major General George Keegan, a former air-force intelligence officer--has been quoted as saying that it would cost U.S. taxpayers $125 billion to maintain an armed force equal to Israel's in the Middle East, and that the U.S.-Israel military relationship was worth "five CIAs." There can be no doubt that from the U.S. point of view, the investment in Israel is a bargain, and the money well spent.11

Of course, the interests of Israel and the U.S. do not always exactly coincide. Sometimes, in fact, Israel's aggressive posture toward the Arab states must be curbed in order to foster closer relationships with the Arab ruling classes. George Bush, for example, during the 1991 Gulf War, had to restrain Israel from attacking Iraq for fear of upsetting Egypt and Saudi Arabia, two crucial regional anti-Iraq coalition members.

But it was Israel's military muscle in the Six Day War, and again in the 1973 war that pitted Israel against Egypt and Syria, that helped to bring Egypt into the U.S. fold. Under President Anwar Sadat, Egypt became the first country to recognize the state of Israel. Ever since, Egypt has become the second largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel.

In that sense, Israel*is*a watchdog, but like a watchdog, it must sometimes be kept on a short leash and sometimes tries to slip that leash. This has been a constant tension in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, and thus explains Clinton's eagerness for the "peace process." The peace process is not aimed at securing justice for the Palestinians, but at bringing Palestinian Authority head Yassir Arafat under control, eliminating the "Palestinian problem," and thereby facilitating further cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors. As it stands, the resilience of the Palestinian movement continually upsets these calculations.

Surrogates

The U.S. debacle in Vietnam convinced U.S. planners in the late 1960s of the importance of securing control in the Middle East without direct military intervention. The new "Nixon Doctrine" looked to local powers to be America's regional police force. In the Middle East, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia became the three "pillars" on which U.S. power rested in the region. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird explained, "America will no longer play policeman to the world. Instead we will expect other nations to provide more cops on the beat in their own neighborhood." In addition:

U.S. Senator and oil expert Henry Jackson noted in 1973 that Israel and Iran under the Shah were "reliable friends of the United States" who, along with Saudi Arabia, "have served to inhibit and contain those irresponsible and radical elements in certain Arab states...who, were they free to do so, would pose a grave threat indeed to our principal source of petroleum in the Persian Gulf."12

The U.S. sold $8.3 billion worth of arms to the Shah between 1970 and 1979 and sent more than 50,000 U.S. advisers to train the Shah's army and secret police.

Saudi Arabia has long been considered the most important Arab ally of the U.S. in the Gulf. Economically, it is the lynchpin of Gulf oil production. If 65 percent of the world's proven oil reserves are in the Gulf region, 38 percent of that is in Saudi Arabia.13 When oil was discovered there in 1938, U.S. oil companies like Socal, Texaco, Mobil, and Standard Oil of New Jersey quickly gained lucrative concessions by forming the Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO). A draft state department memorandum in 1945 described Saudi Arabia's oil resources as "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history."14

To secure what was initially an impoverished and weak state, the U.S. gave Marshall Plan funds to Ibn Saud. Until the 1950s, when regional rulers began to assert more control over oil revenues, Ibn Saud and other local sheiks sustained themselves from royalties handed to them by the oil companies. To give some sense of how this tremendous oil wealth was spent, while Ibn Saud spent $2 million in 1946 to maintain his garages, Saudi spending on education in the same year amounted to $150,000.15 Today, the ruling Saud family, for whom Saudi Arabia is a piece of family real estate, consists of several thousand members. Of them, more than 50 are billionaires. The king's palace alone is estimated to be worth $17 billion, and the royal family's budget is $6 to $7 billion.

Protecting the Saudi Arabian "prize" became a chief aim of U.S. policy in the Gulf. President Truman wrote a letter to King Saud in 1950 in which he said, "No threat to your kingdom could occur which would not be a matter of immediate concern to the United States."16 After the oil-producing states, eager to gain a greater share of revenue from their oil, formed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1960, keeping Saudi Arabia in America's corner became even more important. As the world's largest single oil producer, Saudi Arabia can be relied upon to use its leverage to ensure, among other things, that enough oil flows to keep prices down.

The U.S. has sold billions of dollars in military hardware to Saudi Arabia throughout its history, not only to protect the Saudi "prize" from outside intervention, but also from internal dissent. The fact that Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive societies in the world has not concerned U.S. officials one iota. Writes SaÔd Aburish:

Amnesty International, Middle East Watch, the Minnesota International Lawyers Association and other human rights organizations have documented endless cases of imprisonment, torture and elimination within the kingdom. Solitary confinement for years on end is a regular happening..., kidnappings and disappearances are common..., political executions without proper trial are frequent...and even women are not spared torture and humiliation.... In February 1996 a ten-year-old child was left in the sun tied to a rope in front of a police station. In six hours he was dead, the victim of the merciless desert sun. The boy had criticized the House of Saud.17

Saudi Arabia's abysmal human rights record doesn't even appear on U.S. public radar, reflecting a long-standing double standard whereby enemies are demonized and friends are whitewashed. U.S. military assistance helps to keep this reactionary, repressive monarchy in power.

Though the U.S. now views Islam as a grave threat to its interests in the Middle East and the U.S. press regularly pumps out racist anti-Islamic stereotypes, Islamic Saudi Arabia remains completely unscathed. Ironically, at one time the U.S. actively promoted Islamic fundamentalism as a counterweight to Arab nationalism. The CIA, for example, cooperated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Nasser's Egypt and provided Muslim movements with operating bases in Pakistan. Osama bin Laden is a former U.S. ally, the product of U.S. efforts to arm and train Islamic fundamentalist forces fighting the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Even Israel once funded the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in Palestine as a way of undermining the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO's) strength. Islam, now considered one of the most formidable threats to U.S. interests in the region, was once promoted by those same interests.18 What is consistent in U.S. policy is its need to strengthen its strategic, economic, and military control over the flow of oil. How it does this changes with the times.

[ghumbasa]

Continue......

Rapid deployment:

When the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, U.S. policy in the Middle East faced a severe crisis. It had lost one of its key pillars in the Middle East. Joe Stork and Martha Wenger describe the problem:

The revolution which overthrew the Shah in 1979 radically changed the strategic equation in the region. Sparsely populated Saudi Arabia was never a serious candidate to play a role comparable to Iran. The real "second pillar" of U.S. strategy in the Middle East was Israel, but Israel's political liabilities severely limited its usefulness in the Gulf.19

The "Nixon Doctrine" was now replaced by the "Carter Doctrine," which placed emphasis on the need to use direct military force if U.S. interests were threatened in the region. Accordingly, President Jimmy Carter promoted the idea of a U.S. "rapid deployment force" that could intervene quickly in the region. Such a strategy required the U.S. to line up local regimes to allow U.S. military bases on their territory. Saudi Arabia became the lynchpin of this strategy. Unable to openly declare support for the U.S. and Israel for fear of alienating their own populations, Gulf rulers were forced to act discreetly, allowing U.S. air and naval forces limited use of military facilities in the region. This forced the U.S. to depend heavily on more remote bases in Kenya and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, as well as on deployment of aircraft carriers.

The outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980 provided the U.S. with the perfect opportunity to bring Saudi Arabia into even closer military collaboration. As Stork and Wenger explain:

Saudi fears of an expanded war gave the U.S. leverage to extract more intimate Saudi collaboration with U.S. military plans. The centerpiece of this effort was the sale of five AWACS planes and a system of bases with stocks of fuel, parts, and munitions. "No conceivable improvements in U.S. airlift or USAF rapid deployment and 'bare-basing' capability could come close to giving the U.S. this rapid and effective reinforcement capability," wrote military analyst Anthony Cordesman. An added advantage was that the Saudis paid for it all.

Over the course of the decade, Saudi Arabia poured nearly $50 billion into building a Gulf-wide air defense system to U.S. and NATO specifications, ready for U.S. forces to use in a crisis. By 1988, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had designed and constructed a $14 billion network of military facilities across Saudi Arabia.20

U.S. policy during much of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, which cost a million lives on both sides, was to encourage it as a means to weaken both Iran and Iraq. Western powers and Russia each sold arms to both sides. But when in 1987 it appeared that Iran might win the war, the U.S. tilted toward Iraq, seeing an Iranian victory as the greater evil. The U.S. gave Iraq military aid, agricultural credits, and crucial intelligence information, and used the pretext of "freedom of navigation" in the Gulf to mobilize a massive armada to attack Iran's navy.

After Iran's defeat in 1988, U.S. support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein increased. "Between 1985 and 1990," writes Lance Selfa,

U.S. firms sold almost $800 million in "dual use" aircraft--ostensibly to be used for civilian purposes, but easily convertible to military use. In 1988 and 1989 alone, the U.S. government approved licenses to U.S. firms to sell biological products to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Agency and the electronics equipment to Iraqi missile-producing plants. In July 1988--two months after Saddam used chemical weapons to wipe out the Kurdish village of Halabja--the California-based Bechtel Corp. won a contract to build a petrochemicals plant. Iraq planned to produce mustard gas and fuel-air explosives in the plant. The Bush administration doubled agricultural credits to Iraq to $1 billion a year.... U.S. business created a virtual "Saddam lobby" to press for greater ties with Iraq.21

The 1991 Gulf War

The 1991 Gulf War marked the first time since 1958 that the U.S. launched a full-scale invasion of the Middle East in order to protect its interests. Up to the day that Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was under the impression that his actions would be acceptable to Washington. Bled dry by the war with Iran, Iraq was angry over Kuwait's insistence on dumping oil on the world market when Iraq needed better oil revenues to pay for the war. When Iraq began threatening Kuwait, U.S. ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait."22*But when Iraq invaded Kuwait soon after, the U.S. completely reversed its position. The U.S. could not allow Saddam Hussein to upset the balance of power by taking control of a quarter of the Gulf's oil. Saddam Hussein was a brutal military dictator long before he tried to get control of Kuwaiti oil. The only difference is that pre-invasion, he was a friend of the United States, whereas post-invasion, he had suddenly become the "new Hitler."

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War created the unique conditions that allowed the U.S. to assert its dominance in the region more directly than it had in the past. Bush took the opportunity to cobble together a military coalition--under United Nations (UN) auspices--that included not only European powers such as Britain, France, and Germany, but also Middle Eastern states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria.

The U.S. freely used bribery and intimidation to create the anti-Iraq coalition. The U.S. pushed the Gulf states to give $4 billion to Russia; China, whose brutal suppression of the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square had left it isolated internationally, was now offered a place at the table; Egypt was forgiven $14 billion in debt; and Syria was given the green light to invade Lebanon. When Yemen voted against the UN resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, the U.S. cut off millions of dollars in aid, and Saudi Arabia promptly expelled 800,000 Yemeni "guest" workers.

Yet for all of the fanfare about the war pitting Iraq against the "international community," the war was overwhelmingly fought by U.S. forces, for U.S. aims, with some backup from Britain and Saudi Arabia. U.S. pilots flew ninety percent of all combat sorties. The UN was used purely as a fig leaf to cover what was an American-led and American-fought war.

The Bush administration deliberately sabotaged every effort made by European and Arab countries to work out a peace settlement--vetoing, for example, a four-point peace proposal put forward by the French in the UN Security Council. The U.S. was itching to teach its former client a lesson. The month-long air war devastated Iraq's infrastructure. More than 90,000 sorties dropped 88,500 tons of cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives, and other ordnance, destroying Iraq's bridges, roads, power grid, and water processing capabilities, and killing tens of thousands of people.

Even though Saddam Hussein, after more than a month of bombing, agreed to accept the UN resolution calling for Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait, the U.S. dismissed this gesture. Lance Selfa describes Bush's brutal ground war that followed:

Saddam had essentially cried "uncle," but the U.S. wanted to mount a ground offensive anyway. In six days, U.S. and coalition ground troops swept across Kuwait and southern Iraq, forcing Iraqi troops into a full-scale retreat. In the last 40 hours of the war, before Bush called a cease-fire on February 28, U.S. and British forces mounted a relentless assault against retreating and defenseless Iraqi soldiers. The road leading from Kuwait to Basra became known as the "Highway of Death." Iraqi soldiers fled Kuwait in every possible vehicle they could get their hands on. Allied tank units cut the Iraqis off. U.S. warplanes bombed, strafed and firebombed the stranded columns for hours without resistance. In a slaughter that a U.S. pilot described as "like shooting fish in a barrel," thousands of Iraqi conscripts were killed on a 50-mile stretch of highway. So many planes filled the skies over southern Iraq that military air traffic controllers maneuvered to prevent mid-air collisions.23

The endgame to then-President George Bush's war was ironic. After calling on the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein, U.S. forces stood by as Iraqi troops put down an uprising of Kurds in the North and Shiites in the South. General Norman Schwartzkopf gave Saddam's generals permission to violate the "no-fly" rule and use armed helicopters to put down the rebellion. Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser at the time, told Peter Jennings in 1998 that the U.S. wanted a military coup to oust Hussein, not a popular uprising: "I envisioned a postwar government being a military government."24

In the years following the war, the UN-imposed sanctions on Iraq have not only prevented Iraq from rebuilding its infrastructure, but have resulted in the deaths of thousands of children every month who suffer from diseases related to malnutrition. Thousands of others suffer from various cancers caused by depleted uranium shells used by U.S. tanks in the ground invasion during the Gulf War. Whereas the war killed upwards of 200,000 Iraqis, the sanctions regime has resulted in the deaths of more than one million Iraqis. In addition, the U.S. has engaged in ongoing bombings of Iraq, which have rarely been considered newsworthy in the U.S. press.

The U.S. secured a bloody victory in the Gulf War. At the cost of a few hundred American soldiers, the U.S. demonstrated that it will stop at nothing to exercise its imperial prerogatives and strengthen its hold over the Middle East. With Russia out of the picture, the sole remaining superpower seemed set to impose its "Pax Americana" over the region.

U.S. policy since the Gulf War

The U.S. emerged victorious after the Gulf War, with its dominance over the region more firm than it had ever been. Iraq was destroyed and kept permanently weak, and the coalition allowed the U.S. to cement stronger ties with many of the Arab states. The success of the United States in the Gulf War sent the message, in George Bush's words, that "what we say goes." As Michael Hudson, professor of international relations at Georgetown University wrote in*Middle East Journal:

Even critics, such as the author, of U.S. Middle East policy must agree that the United States today stands astride this unhappy region like a colossus. A half century of regional involvement in every conceivable way--through diplomacy, aid, culture, education, espionage, subversion and (not least) the projection of military power--has secured the "holy trinity" of American interests: Israel, oil and anti-communism. Those who said it could not be done underestimated the U.S. ability to achieve contradictory goals. Today, the American president can summon the leaders of most Middle Eastern governments to endorse his regional (and domestic) political agenda. American financial officials can write the domestic economic policy for most governments in the region. The U.S. military enjoys unprecedented access and acceptance from North Africa to the Gulf.25

But the U.S. suffers from two Achilles' heels in its role as regional superpower. One, it has been unable to solve the Palestinian question, which again threatens to explode the delicate balance in the region. And two, its own massive military intervention has rendered the Gulf monarchies even more unpopular and--with the crisis of declining oil revenues over the last decade as oil prices have plummeted--more unstable.

The policy of "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran pursued by the U.S. after the 1991 Gulf War has been more or less abandoned, but no policy has replaced it. The sanctions regime against Iraq has eroded, and Arab states' support for sanctions has weakened, while the changes in Iran have created an ambivalent relationship between it and the United States. The U.S. cannot decide whether to maintain a policy of sanctions against Iran or to shift to a policy of opening toward the country ("engagement"). Outside of the U.S. lapdog Britain, other European states are no longer interested in maintaining the sanctions against Iraq. Eager to make oil deals, Russia has recently expressed its intention to work to bring an end to the bombing and sanctions against Iraq.

The increasing suffering of the Iraqi people has weakened the ability of the U.S. to justify the sanctions, particularly within the Middle East. Arab regimes have begun to resume political and economic relations with Baghdad. Taking advantage of resumed civilian flights to Baghdad by several states, dozens of Middle Eastern officials and celebrities have broken the "no-fly" rule to fly to Baghdad. For all intents and purposes, it seems that the new UN inspection team will never even set foot on Iraqi soil.

The problem that the United States faces, even after its success in the Gulf War, is that, outside of Israel, it has no reliable "surrogates" in the Middle East, and Israel, as the Gulf War demonstrates, must sometimes be held at bay. Since the death of Nasser in 1970, the U.S. has successfully pulled Egypt into its orbit and neutralized it as a threat to Israel. But the U.S. cannot rely upon Egypt to discipline its Arab neighbors. The popularity of the Palestinian cause in Egypt has even compelled President Hosni Mubarak to withdraw Egypt's ambassador from Israel.

The U.S. has, it is true, armed Saudi Arabia to the teeth, but Saudi Arabia is in no position to successfully project its military power beyond its borders. That is why Saudi Arabia has pursued a policy of détente with Iran. The United States must spend massive amounts of money to arm what are undemocratic, illegitimate Gulf monarchies. Even so, it cannot rely on them to police the region in U.S. interests. These regimes are armed to cement them as allies and to create the military conditions in those countries to allow rapid deployment of U.S. troops.

The U.S. must keep an expensive military presence in and around the region in order to maintain its interests. This not only leaves American troops open to military attacks, like the one recently in a Yemeni port against the*U.S.S. Cole,*but it also puts tremendous political strain on local rulers, whose own populations increasingly resent the U.S. imperial presence.

Conclusion

Hypocrisy has always permeated U.S. policy in the Middle East. While some regimes, such as those in Iraq, Iran, and Libya, are dubbed "rogue states," this has absolutely nothing to do with whether these regimes are repressive or invade their neighbors. When Israel--the only nuclear power in the region--invaded Lebanon in 1982 and killed 40,000 people in its efforts to smash the PLO, it had the backing of Washington. Though lip service is paid to helping the oppressed Kurds in Iraq, U.S. ally Turkey is given weapons to attack its own Kurdish minority. While Saddam Hussein is certainly a tyrant, he was every bit as much of a tyrant when he was Washington's friend. While his invasion of Kuwait was condemned, the U.S. supports Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. The coalition lined up against Iraq in 1991 consisted of countries such as Kuwait, a monarchy that still does not grant women the right to vote; Saudi Arabia, which publicly executes its critics; and Egypt, which outlaws opposition parties, and sometimes murders them when they protest.

U.S. imperialism in the Middle East has always been naked and brutal. It is primarily responsible for upholding backward, dictatorial regimes that, without its help, would have been overthrown long ago. Middle East specialist Dilip Hiro spelled it out: "It is much simpler to manipulate a few ruling families (and to secure fat orders for arms and ensure that oil prices remain low) than a wide variety of personalities and policies bound to be thrown up by a democratic system."26 But such brutality always provokes a reaction--as the new Intifada shows. "If history is any guide," writes Michael Hudson, "hegemony by the United States or any other party in the Middle East tends to produce resistance."27*That resistance is back--not just in the Intifada in Palestine, but in the large sympathy demonstrations throughout the region. The struggle against U.S. imperialism in the Middle East is intimately tied up with the aspirations of the mass of Arab workers and peasants in that region, not only against the American "colossus," but against their own ruling classes.