This clearly isn't all about Oil. Some people misinterpret that to mean that this isn't at all
about Oil. But Oil is simply one of the many ways that rich people stand to get richer (and poor
people poorer), through this war.
Another is by making the bullets, bombs, guns, tanks and planes that are being used to liberate
Iraqis.
A third is by remaking the buildings, oil pipelines, hospitals, television networks,
and whatever else might happen to be either precision-laser-satelite-smart bombed to oblivion,
or collaterally vapourised. The French, for all their righteous
grand-standing opposition to the war, are still fighting to get a cut of the lucrative reconstruction
of a Free Iraq.
Another reason for this war is to show Syria, Iran, North Korea, China and the UN what the combined
defense budgets of the next 15 highest spending countries can buy in terms of pyrotechnics. The
"unprecedented coverage" of this conflict serves as a forceful reminder of the consequences of not
bending over when America says so, and is bought and paid for by the same people who
bought and paid for the presidency.
Even when they get shot at by an American tank which kills two of their own, the press doesn't
flinch in their steadfastly rose-tinted coverage.
I have a guilty pleasure. I daily read all the main stories on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/, even though I know their
coverage is unreliable, easy listening nuzak. But a couple of days ago I was especially appalled at
their coverage of the Fardus Square victory parade in front of the arrayed world media, and the
toppling of the statue of Saddam, which they repoprted as tantamount to the end of the war. As I
watched it unfolding live on their web feed, I marvelled at how a stuttered sentence from Jack Straw
about the war "perhaps entering the end game" metamorphosed with repitition into victory for the
willing, and an imminent end to the war. They were serving it up with so much sugar, that the Capitol
Bs could both come out and tell the truth - that this war has a long life ahead of it - and it still
tasted sickly sweet.
Curious to verify my earlier comment about the tank attack, I searched for "Palestine Hotel"
on the BBC site. Stunningly, the only relevant result that was returned was this little blurb
on a page of "latest developments":
1342: Spanish cameraman Jose Couso, 37, dies of wounds received when Baghdad's Palestine Hotel,
the main base for foreign media in the city, is hit. A Reuters cameraman earlier died of his wounds.
This war is being served up like a McDonald's Happy Meal. It's being so heavily refined and processed
until you don't realise that what you're chewing on is guts and brains.
Maybe in the war to liberate Syria, Brittany will do a concert at halftime, and the new Lord
of the Rings trailer will premiere.
Since Japanese TV has to translate all the news footage it gets from other sources anyway, they
aren't limited to English language stations, and we've seen French footage from the frontline. It
feels a lot more like war than the British and American news. After you see a French news
crew filmimg with a "pocket of resistance", you will never take seriously the suggestion that Iraq
posed a threat to the world. These are the same boys who throw rocks in the Gaza strip, but here with
machine guns and grenade launchers. You know it's his only grenade, and you suspect he's never
fired one of those things before. For his troubles he receives a depleted Uranium time bomb in his
thigh, and loses his brother. But it wouldn't do for the taxpayers funding this war to know any of
the splattered blood and shattered bone reality of Iraqi freedom. They need you to believe the war is
over and turn your attention to other things - the same scam they pulled in Afghanistan. And just in
case that doesn't work, Bush reminds us that he never said the war was going to be over quickly.
Looking back I realised he didn't say that, yet we all had the impression it would be. Why? Because
the supposedly un-biased media told us so.
And just like in Afghanistan, Corporate America's carefully selected and thoroughly obseqious puppet
regime will be foisted on a population who are totally unprepared for free elections
in the political vaccuum that follows the toppling of a government that suppressed opposition.
Patronisingly refering to US-friendly or even US-employed political figures as "tribal leaders", and
"exiled clerics" lends them credibility both within their own country and Internationally, and
smoothes the way for easing sanctions and restarting the flow of oil.
But the point is, it isn't to anybody's advantage to wrap this war up quickly. Embattled Iraq is a
long-term cash cow, and Afghanistan is the successful prototype of this aggressive new model of supply
and demand. If the market isn't buying enough bombs and buildings, all you have to do is convince a
few people that terrorists are using some existing buildings, and you've created the demand to meet
your supply. The best thing is that when you miss your target you get to try again, but you still
get paid for every inaccurate bomb, and for replacing every building you didn't mean to hit in your
valiant quest to rid the world of Terrorism.
Afterall, Terrorism is the ultimate evil, and must be stopped at all costs. Since the fall of
Communism, American scaremongers had been searching for a new bogeyman, and Terrorism has all the
evil of Communism, plus some. For a start, they both end in "ism", a clear sign of badness - even Bob
Marley thought so. It also helps that they are both largley practitioned by unusual looking, strange
talking people from distant lands, whose motives can be easily misrepresented, and whose humanity can
be abstracted away. Politicians can even use these "ism" labels along with another emotive term:
"unpatriotic", to associatively demonise anyone who questions the motivation or implementation of
the war. But wait, there's more. The best thing about Terrorism is the vicious cycle of
compounding justification from the simple fact that a war on Terrorism is the best way to make more
Terrorists. That's what's been going on in Israel and Northern Ireland for all these years, so why
is it any surprise to see the US and Britain so eager for war in Iraq?
Now Israel is a can that contains many worse things than worms, and I will not attempt to open it here.
It is a whole country as illegitimate, as "fictitious" as Bush's presidency, and to which can be
attributed a large part of the motivation of this war, but the historical and contemporary inter-
relationships between Israel and the US are complex beyond the scope of this piece.
I've talked before about the potential domestic spinoffs of
war, but there's a couple of things I've so far missed off my list of motives. The
first of which is the only phrase more compelling as a justification for war than "Sponsors of
Terror", and that is "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Remember? That's what Bush & Co. initially gave as
the rationale for invading Iraq. But no matter how many bombs and bullets they throw at Iraq,
no matter how much territory they capture or how many people they kill, they still haven't succeeded
in triggering a chemical attack. Luckily they had an even more worthy Plan B justification - the
liberation of the oppressed people of Iraq. Since the beginning of the war, but especially since
American troops crossed the imaginary "red line" beyond which chemical attacks were reported
to have been authorised by Saddam, focus has been shifted from the War on Terror, to Operation
Iraqi Freedom. But after three weeks of freeing Iraqis (from this mortal coil), again it has fallen
to the press to over-report what little evidence there has been of Iraqi jubilation.
The next few days and weeks will continue to reveal the intriguing mechanisms driving this war.
One thing only is for certain. And that's the preceding sentence.
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