Desert Rat Democrat

Commas

"I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy." -George W Bush, September 24, 2006.

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Somehow, I think they were and are far more to the people who care for them than a comma, you callous son of a bitch.

Coruscant, Trantor, Rome, Constantinople, Corn, and Oil

No Blood For Oil.

Such has been the chants we've heard from portions of the Anti-War Left during both Iraq Wars, as well as numerous other times in the past 25 years. Truthfully, it's a smug argument, which falsely claims the moral high ground, without ever explaining or caring to think about how to get out from under the oil portion of the equation.

Annoying as the shriller parts of the antiwar left can be, however, there has always been a kernel of truth to the simplistic chant, and its something as a country we need to face, or it will bring us to our knees.

That was the reason I truly enjoyed Billmon's post from yesterday, dragging out the classic science fiction series of Isaac Asimov, the Foundation Series and in particular, the peculiar fate of Trantor, the totally urban capital world of Asimov's Galactic Empire, and likening it to an American foreign policy which increasingly is being dictated by the price and availability of oil.

It's a little disconcerting to think that gas prices — not Iraq, not Katrina, not the extra-constitutional power grabs — could decide whether Shrub's presidency recovers or collapses into complete irrelevancy for the next three years. But the good Dr. Pollkatz has already plotted the relationship, and it's statistically suggestive, to say the least.

This should be enough to make any would-be president (Demopublican or Republicrat) extremely nervous, since it seems high energy prices are likely to be a major fact of life for years to come — and maybe forever. If that turns out to be the case, then an absolutely necessary condition for future presidential success, or even survival, might be making sure the go juice keeps flowing at prices that won't drive the average American SUV owner onto the war path.

But that isn't going to be easy — not in a world in which everybody and their Chinese cousin is scrambling to lock up the available supply, where a number of major oil producing countries are a coup away from becoming failed states (if they're not there already), and that is already producing about as much of the light, sweet cheap stuff as it ever will.

Given the political incentives, it's possible to look a ways down the road — not a long ways — and see a U.S. military policy (formerly known as a foreign policy) that begins and ends with the protection of the oil lifeline. This could leave America in roughly the same position as Trantor, the world city and imperial galactic capital in Isaac Asimov's sci-fi classics, the Foundation trilogy. (George Lucas later shamelessly ripped off Asimov's idea and turned it into his own galactic world city, Coruscant, in the last three Star Wars movies.)

Like Coruscant, the surface of Trantor is just one big urban 'hood, meaning the planet's inhabitants — including the imperial court — must rely on a ring of neighboring star systems for their food supply. In his mythical Encyclopedia Galactica, Asimov explains the strategic implications:

Its dependence upon the outer worlds for food and, indeed, for all necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by siege. In the last millennium of the Empire, the monotonously numerous revolts made Emperor after Emperor conscious of this, and Imperial policy became little more than the protection of Trantor's delicate jugular vein.

Substitute oil for food and Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria for the "outer worlds," and you can begin to see where our own dependence may take us. If you've read the Foundation trilogy, you know that the galactic empire soon crumbles, first at the edges, then the core, until only those precious agricultural planets remain.

But Asimov's fictional emperors actually had it easy by comparison. Trantor's jugular vein connected it to a handful of nearby star systems — the imperial backyard, in galactic terms. These could still be held, even after the rest of the empire had slipped away.

By contrast, America's oil lifeline spans the earth (our imperial "galaxy"). All of it has to be watched and guarded, stabilized and supervised. Even a partial loss of control could turn into a disaster, since in a global market supply disruptions anywhere can send prices soaring everywhere. And yet some of the most serious threats — like the separatist movement in the Niger delta — are outside the U.S. security "umbrella," traditionally defined.

(Emphasis to Asimov's passage is added).

Frankly, I hesitate to place too much stock in a future history as written in an admittedly classic work of science fiction, until you stop to consider that Asimov himself was looking to Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for his inspiration.

For those who've read Gibbon's history, or for that matter, a good general history of the Roman Empire, as well as its Eastern successor, the Byzantine Empire, one is struck by the critical effect that grain supplies had on the fate of numerous Roman and Byzantine Empires over the centuries. Rome was a large city, whose size made her dependent on foreign imports of grain (or corn, as it was called by the historians of the day, though not the stuff we call corn these days). Cut off the supply of corn to the capital, and soon, the Emperor would face rebellion within his city walls.

Since the Empires had no formal procedure for succession, the death or enfeeblement (or in some cases rank incompetence) of an emperor inevitably led to a civil war, usually between the leaders of one or more factions of the Army, the Praetorian Guard, and the Senate, usually ending in some clash of arms and the deaths or suicide of all but one of the contenders for the throne. In many instances, such Imperial contenders were felled not because of a great defeat, but simply because their opponents cut off the corn shipments. As Rome in the West, and later Constantinople in the East lost their outlying provinces, maintaining the corn shipments literally dictated Roman (and Byzantine) policy, literally making the later Emperors of both empires mere puppets under the control of barbarian kings from distant lands.

As Billmon points out, our lifeline spans the globe. And I'd suggest to you that Billmon underestimates the effect foreign oil has already had on US policy for a generation.

One of my earliest memories is the 1973 oil embargo. Long gas lines. Soaring gasoline prices that look incredibly tame by today's tandards. Gas not available at any price at times. Since that time, US foreign policy, even Cold War foreign policy, was conducted with one eye towards the oil fields of the Middle East.

In the 1970's, other than a feared Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe, the one thing that kept foreign policy hawks and doves awake at night alike was a drive by Soviet armored divisions into the oilfields of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf States.

The fear of oil no longer flowing has inspired fiction, both science fiction, and military thrillers alike.

This fear has also been the elephant in the room of US foreign policy continually since 1973. Even when it isn't spoken, its been on the minds of foreign policy experts, liberal and conservative, dove and hawk. It dictated military policy. It warped foreign policy in a myriad of ways. It led the US to continue to prop up the crumbling regime of Iran's Shah Reza Pahlavi long past the point of common sense. Ultimately, a fear of Iranian oil interests led us to first arm Saddam Hussein in the 1980's, and later, to drive him out of Kuwait when he appeared to become a threat to the Saudi oil fields in 1991. And ultimately, while the present Iraq War has been the war of a thousand feeble justifications, the one that sticks, that truly has legs, was a desire to bring Iraqi oilfields under US control. We know how well that has worked. And now, it seems, it may be the turn of Iran.

So, ultimately, Billmon's nightmare scenario doesn't get recent history correct. US Presidents, Democratic and Republican, have been hostages to the flow of the oil pump for 30 years now. The difference, now, is that the margins are much tighter. There are more nations, and more people competing for a resource that is finite. And the endgame, when crude oil supplies start to decline, is at hand. Wars have been fought, and civilizations have collapsed for reasons like this.

The only way to reverse that trend, is to cut dependence on oil. Conservation, developing alternative sources, and just plain taking a serious look at flawed urban planning that leads to Buckeye to Tucson urban sprawl, and beyond. Because if we don't cut that dependence now, simple economics will do it for us. But the dislocation will be much worse the longer we wait. The cost in terms of foreign policy, and if necessary, war will spiral out of control. And ultimately, in that situation, we may all shed blood for oil.

It is worth noting that I do not believe Republicans, and particularly this Republican administration (which is made up almost wholly of oil men and women) will ever have the political will to put the interests of the country over the interests of Exxon. It will take a strong, effective Democratic President, with a Democratic Congress to have any shot of changing this formula. It's one of the primary reasons Democrats need to make gains in November.

Dispatches From the Short Victorious WarTM: The SequelTM

"What this country needs is a short victorious war to stem the tide of revolution." -Tsarist Russian Interior Minister, Vladimir Konstantinovich Plehve, shortly before the start of the Russo-Japanese War. The war was an utter disaster for the Russians, who lost a quarter of million casualties, not one but two fleets, and ultimately, control over Korea, Manchuria, and part of the Sakhalin Islands. The war also touched off the 1905 Russian Revolution. Plehve did not live to see the war's end, he was killed by revolutionaries in the summer of 1904.

It's a symbol of peace, really.

In his ongoing effort to lose more wars than any ruling monarch, president, or prime minister since the Emperor Franz Josef, George Bush's minions cabinet members have certainly decided to turn up the rhetoric volume knob to 11:

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, which is defying United Nations Security Council demands to cease its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days if it goes ahead with plans to install thousands of centrifuges at its Natanz plant, a U.S. State Department official said.

``Natanz was constructed to house 50,000 centrifuges,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow. ``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days.''

As Josh Marshall notes:

Now, I'm pretty new to this issue. But even I can spot that Stephen Rademaker works for Robert Joseph. And that's the same Bob Joseph who was charged with muscling the CIA into letting President Bush use the Niger bamboozle in the 2003 State of the Union address. And he actually managed to get it done, even after the Alan Foley and others at the CIA told him repeatedly they didn't think it was true. So he certainly speaks with a lot of credibility on this issue. Like I said, we may not be able to stop our march toward destruction. But we can at least have some fun with it as we swirl down history's drain.

Of course, now as the Bush-led, Republican designed Right Wing War Wurlitzer starts to give us the full "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud" nonsense, I'd suggest we'd better consider the latest blow to the credibility of the Bush Administration's evidence to justify the current Short Victorous War^TM in Iraq:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

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There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."

The mobile Weapons labs, or rather, digital mock ups of them, along with a vial of mineral water, were the chief props in Colin Powell's infamous 2003 presentation to the UN, forever known at Desert Rat Democrat as The Mother of All Powerpoint Presentations^TM.

Clearly, they were lying to us then. And there is good reason to believe they are lying again to us now:

OSLO, Norway Apr 3, 2006 (AP)— Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Monday that Iran is a least five years away from developing a nuclear bomb, leaving time to peacefully negotiate a settlement.

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Blix said there is still time for dialogue over Iran's nuclear enrichment program, which Tehran insists is for peaceful purposes but the West fears is part of a secret nuclear weapons program.

"We have time on our side in this case. Iran can't have a bomb ready in the next five years," Blix was quoted as saying.

Blix, of course, has been a right-wing punching bag for years over his statements, as head of chemical and biological weapons inspections teams on the ground in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion, that Iraq no longer possessed nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs. The facts ultimately proved Blix correct in every particular.

The trouble with routinely lying to the American people, as the Republican Party in general, and the Bush Administration in particular, has sought to do about the war in Iraq for nearly four years, is that nobody believes you when you tell the truth. This is particularly true when you continue to spin, obfuscate, or obscure the truth about your past lies. Lies come as naturally to these people as breathing.

And the statement about Iran being 16 days away from building nuclear weapons. Yep. That's a lie, too.