Dear Leader: Stay the course v.2 by upping the ante Salvadorian-style.
Sunni death squads? Shiite death squads? The Sociopath-in-Chief in about to unleash 150,000 American troops as death squads, under the rationalization that they can't prosecute him for war crimes if the entire Department of Defense and United States Armed Forces is also involved.
The Company wants more of its good thing; evidence suggests that Special Forces may have been pitting partisans against each other all along.
This raises the possibility of incredible violence. Like Greg Palast says:
...Baker is more than aware that, two weeks ago, Dick Cheney dropped his Thanksgiving turkey to fly to Riyadh, at the demand of the Saudis, for a dressing down by King Abdullah. The King wants US forces to stay to baby-sit the Shias in Iraq’s army. The Saudis have made it clear that, if the US pulls out our troops, Saudi Arabians will crank up payments to their brothers, the Sunni warlords in Iraq, and Baghdad, or the entire region, will run with blood.
The outcome was foregone: King Abdullah’s wish is Cheney’s command — and Baker’s too. And so 70,000 of our soldiers will stay.
What gives King Abdullah the power to ghost-write the Iraq Study Group recommendations? It’s not because the Saudis sell us broccoli.
And therein lies the danger. Behind the fratricidal fracas in Iraq is something even more dangerous than civil war — a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia over control of Iraq’s pivotal position in OPEC, the oil cartel.
Because what is painted by Baker’s Iraq Study Group as an ancient local clash between Shia and Sunni over the Kingdom of God, is, in fact, a remote control war between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the Kingdom of Oil.
Welcome to the Midpoint.
Over the next 50 years, if nothing halts or side tracks the economic dependence on fossil fuels, expect increasingly vicious wars for energy. They won't call it that at first. But every disagreement in the Middle East, be it Israeli and Palestinian or Sunni and Shiite, will be amplified because of it.
The only way to stop this feed-forward cycle of violence is to literally stop feeding the fire with fossil fuel.
Team Xinhua realizes this, and like their moonbase, they may have photosynthesized fuels long before we do.
But of course, if our Saudi lienholders decree otherwise, we never will.
1 comment:
Of course we are not supposed to say that Oil has anything to do with this.
I went to a conference where they talked about Peak Oil they said, "Watch as we start hearing more and talk about how dangerous Venezuela's President is and how he is evil." I thought that was silly until right on time I heard 3rd tier pundits spouting off about Chavez.
I wonder if we'll get any cool movies like Road Warrior out of all this quest for oil
P.S. Be sure to check out Media Matters from last week. Search on Melanie Morgan. or Halfrican.
Post a Comment