It's a war for oil, Tony Benn tells protesters

Great Debates
81

Mandelstam, I think you misunderstood my oil discovery date. Oil itself had certainly been discovered before the 1930s. There was a thriving oil industry in the United States in the 19th century. I’m saying that oil wasn’t discovered in the Middle East (well, Saudi Arabia for sure) until the '30s.

And my point about bases in German was that they were set up after WWII (and in Britain) because of the Cold War threat of the USSR. My point being that even after the fall of the USSR and the lack of any real threat in the region, those bases are still there.

Anyways, I don’t think we are really disagreeing anymore. I completely agree that oil is behind our interest in the Middle East. And I don’t deny that our involvement in the area has made us a few enemies. And I agree that the Marshall Plan was a good thing, and has never been repeated ever since (it almost never occurred in the first place and the Truman administration had to fight for it tooth and nail). I’m just saying that I don’t think the US is maintaining bases in Saudi Arabia for the explicit and primary purpose of supporting the royals in the event of an uprising, nor do I think that the current military exercises in Afghanistan are being fueled primarily for a desire for a pipeline.

82

If the Taliban was not going to be able to hand OBL over they’re not going to say they would if they could. Possibly they knew that if they had said this, that the US would begin making more and more demands so that it could increase it’s power in Afghanistan. The Taliban obviously chose not to allow a slow infestation of their country by US authorities, which would threatend their regime as surely as the Northern Alliance.

I’m quite tired and I can’t express exactly in words why this is bullshit, but one simplified point of it would be that we rarely begin what could be a long brutal war over something that could have potentially be solved with diplomacy if Bush had not openly threatend the Taliban and said that they were his bitch and he would bitchsmack them if they didn’t give him his money. That’s not the tone someone uses when they’re looking to get anything other than a fight.

83

Sure you can find human rights violations anywhere you want, but playing them up to the public as groudns for war doesn’t work very well. You need something BIG to get the people behind a effort that not only risks American soldiers but civilians because of retaliation (or I guess it would be counter-retaliation?) from terrorists.

If every other country in the world was the US’s puppet, we probably wouldn’t have waited. But Bush had international opinion to worry about. In the end it may not have mattered if he waited or not though, because making the world see the Taliban as a terrorist regime will ultimately take us the long way towards its destruction. We’ll be able to make all kinds of demands of it and if it doesn’t comply we can begin the bombing.

84

It doesn’t matter if it is built or not. But they would control it and we are not in control of them, and that means the oil/gas supply is at risk.

If a party united region the with a little US help before, a party can unite it with a whole lot of international help. Hell, we might have “peacekeeping troops” there to make sure the area is stable.

We support repressive regimes that support us. Not unpredictable stubborn radicals like the Taliban.

You think that the US had forseen this all that time ago? We couldn’t have.

85

Tony Benn a senile old Loon because he says something you dont agree with?
Tony benn is remarkably sane, and that is rather scary.

86

Neurotik, Mandelstam, I think you misunderstood my oil discovery date. Oil itself had certainly been discovered before the 1930s.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. BTW, I don’t actually think there was a “thriving” oil industry until the early 20th century. But again, I’m going from memory of this (awesome) documentary and this is stuff that a glance at any encyclopedia would clear up were I not too lazy.

“And my point about bases in German was that they were set up after WWII (and in Britain) because of the Cold War threat of the USSR. My point being that even after the fall of the USSR and the lack of any real threat in the region, those bases are still there.”

Well I’m sure that military bureaucrats and policy makers can always come up with reasons why it’s important to have troops in Europe: particularly as Europe more or less depends on its alliance with the US to defend itself against any powerful enemies that might arise (e.g., China even though I wasn’t at all persuaded then, and now everyone has forgotten about the supposed danger of China). But I take your point: there’s always likely to be a perception of strategic need once the troops are in place. But closer to the point that I want to stick to emphasizing (and I realize you aren’t substantively disputing it) is that West Germany was/is allied to the US, and this alliance (unlike the Saudi’s) was sanctioned through democratic channels. So US soldiers in Germany are as “welcome” as foreign soldiers ever are anywhere. Probably as welcome as are American tourists anywhere in Europe ;).

"I’m just saying that I don’t think the US is maintaining bases in Saudi Arabia for the explicit and primary purpose of supporting the royals in the event of an uprising"…

Nor do I. But it has to be said, I think, that we can’t be surprised to find Saudi dissenters seeing them in that light. Nor would such dissenters be any less wrong for seeing them that way even if it were documented that it were only the 37th reason for the military presence. (Nor should US policymakers be let off the hook for having actively funded and trained some of the most radical of those dissenters only to piss them off so mightily after the Cold War.)

“nor do I think that the current military exercises in Afghanistan are being fueled primarily for a desire for a pipeline.”

Nor do I. It think a lot of what the Bush administration sees its underlying motives (both economic and political) as being will come through in what happens after Afghanistan (whenever that might be).

No, there isn’t much debate between us though I’ve been on the lookout for some since you implied that you don’t think the US needs at all to practice what it preaches. :slight_smile:

Twist: When I’ve lived in England (a few months at a time on and off between 1993-1999) I’ve always found that lots of people really like Tony Benn and blame the tabloids for painting him (and leftwing positions in toto) as “loony.” Does this tally for you? Or does it just say something about my friends? :wink:

87

Cites, please?

In other words, British colonial interests were primary in the Middle East. And there doesn’t seem to me to be much difference between creating by fiat and territorially constraining by fiat. Britain says “Your borders are here because we say so”, ibn Saud says “Yes sir, of course sir, wouldn’t think of putting even a toe over that line, sir” what does it matter if Britain drew those lines from the outside or the inside? Britain gave a bunch of territory to a local warlord/prince and said “You can rule that”, and whether or not they owned the territory as a colony previously is irrelevant. Britain set up Saudi Arabia and installed ibn Saud as the ruler.

:rolleyes: Debators are supposed to take sides, no?

Come on, now! If the Taliban is soft enough to give up someone they’ve supported for years and repudiate the organization he leads when the US demands it, do you really think they’re suddenly going to grow a spine and say “no” to the pipeline? Giving up bin Laden would have been a major sign that the Taliban is eager to cooperate with the United States, thus making it easier for the pipeline project to go ahead.

Allow me another

[quote]
(http://isreview.org/issues/12/hidden_war_iraq.shtml) from the ISR:

I refer you to the extensive quote I posted on page 1. No less an august newspaper than the Wall Street Journal called Afghanistan a “prime transshipment route” for the oil and gas in Central Asia. The pipeline has a lot to do with current policy towards Afghanistan. Of course, maybe that source is biased? :wink:

Which governments? Specify, please.

Elaborate, please.

Peace at what cost? Women’s oppression, a fundamentalism that outrivals anything Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell could dream up, and God knows what other human rights violations. Brilliant. I’m sleeping soundly tonight.

Well, in the face of arguments asserting the pipeline is nothing more than a mirage and/or a fallacy that has nothing to do with the current issues in Afghanistan, I find it hard to overemphasize the opposite.

checks remaining posts I think that’s about it for now.

88

Mandelstam: Actually, I think an argument could certianly be made that we’d be involved in the area even were all of the oil deposits to be replaced by sheep. Certainly, we have been seriously involved on the side of Israel without them providing us major or even minor sources of oil. The question as to whether we would have decided to do something about Iraq remains; however, were we to posit that the Saudi country was still very rich, chances are we would have done something in order to stop Saddam from pushing in to Saudi Arabia and thus making himself a huge regional power with no qualms about using chemical (and developing nuclear) weapons. At which point, we’re back to the same position we’re in now, sans oil.
Eternal and Olentzero: I’m having trouble arguing against you two because I’m not sure exactly what your position is. Is it:

A) The United States has gone to war with Afghanistan solely over the hopes of putting this pipeline in place. Any talk of anti-terrorism is mere smokescreen over the real reason.

or

B) The idea of removing the Taliban and putting a friendly government into place (one that would allow the pipeline to be placed) meant that the U.S. ignored all non-war options.
I think I’ve disproven A- the U.S. certainly could have taken such action prior to the events of 9/11, or even could have begun taking steps in that general direction, neither of which occured. When matters that were pure spin gold- the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues, forcing Hindi to wear badges indicating they were non-Muslim, arresting Christians for preaching- occured, the U.S. kept silent. Had the U.S. any desire to march in and off the Taliban, certainly something would have been said by the U.S. government as the beginnings of pretext.

As for B- I can’t disprove that, any more than you can prove it. You can alledge it, and hope that natural cynicism means acceptance. I can counter with: “Let’s see. Advantage- Bush and Cheney make some people, people he doesn’t necessarily know, richer. Which makes him nothing personally- his money is in a blind trust, and whatever “cushy deals” you might think he gets after the Presidency he’d get anyways- look at Reagan, Ford, Bush Sr. and Clinton. Disadvantages- he throws the country into war with Afghanistan, where the only wars fought are quagmires that make Vietnam look near-palatable, and at a time when the press is soured on the thought of any conflict that might involve U.S. losses or any extended stay. Chances are the Taliban stays in power, the wars drags on, and Bush learns why LBJ smoked three packs a day before being ousted of a single term. Somehow, I think- even if Bush were the arrogant mental midget all his detractors caricature him as- he’d recognize the essential dangers in this action.”

89

Mandelstam, then we have clarified our points and are in complete agreement. Is this allowed in GD? Mods? :smiley: As for my assertion that the US does not need to practice what it preaches, start up another thread and we’ll get into it, but I think that we will not be disagreeing that much again.

Eternal, so you say that the US was itching for a war because we were threatening in the beginning? Well, I hate to break it to you, but there has been economic and diplomatic pressure in the Taliban to surrender OBL for years, dating back to the embassy bombings. I don’t recall it having worked, do you? Given a history of claiming their culture prevents them from giving up a guest and stonewalling any efforts, and the likelihood that the Taliban would continue that tack, and the likelihood that we would need to send in troops anyway and before winter came (winter has been bad to invading forces in Afghanistan), I think it is completely reasonable that the Bush Administration would use threats of force immediately. However, if you insist on arguing for a fantasy world where EVERYTHING the US does is based primarily on what the oil companies and MNCs want, and have little to back it up with except unproven musings on hidden motivations, then continue to do so. I’m not going to argue with you any longer unless you can come up with something substantive.

Olentzero, here are the cites for the oil discovery dates (aside from your own quote establishing oil wasn’t discovered in Iraq until 1950):

Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, Jordanis not an oil exporting state, Oman in the 1950s (but not a part of 1919 conference so it’s moot), Bahrain in 1932, Qatar in 1939, UAE did not start exporting until 1962, Kuwait in 1938 (by a nationalized oil company). Is that enough cites that oil was discovered too late in the region for it to have been a major consideration of the Europeans divying up the Middle East? So there goes the first quote.

Next up we have the Saudi Arabia thing. Well, first off, Britain didn’t give Saudi Arabia it’s borders, it just set the ones between the never-under-British-colonial-control Saudi kingdom and the British colonies. Saudi Arabia was still having border disputes with its southern neighbors like Yemen until 1936** when the borders were finalized, much later than that 1922 conference, which only concerned the Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi border (according to the article itself). Last time I checked, Saudi Arabia also bordered Jordan, the UAE, Oman, Qatar, and Yemen, which were not discussed. So in looking on a [url=“http://www.arabiancareers.com/saudi.html”]map we see that in fact, the British only set a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s territory. That’s a long way from, as you said, giving a bunch of territory to a local warlord/prince and saying you can rule that. No, the ibn Saud family was already in control of the area and had a dispute with the British over the northeast border, which the British decided in their own favor. The British had no say in the remainder of the Saudi border. Thus, we can safely say that the British did not set up Saudi Arabia, the ibn Sauds did that themselves, nor did they install the royal family, because they had been in control of the area starting in 1902, before the British had any influence in the area at all. There goes that little theory of yours.

This post is getting too long, so I’ll just respond to two more things. Yes, debators are supposed to take sides, however, the periodical you are quoting from is supposed to be giving you a fairly unbiased account of things. In fact, we see that it does not. It has made inaccurate accusations (see the first quote, primarily) that are intended to bolster its ideology of materialism, and gets it wrong. I’m no longer taking your source seriously as a provider of facts that back up your (**Olentzero) arguments.

Lastly, your source states that the US controls Middle East oil. Really? If the US is in control of the oil, it was pretty dumb of them to cause the oil crisis of the '70s then, wasn’t it. Sadly, no, US does not control the plurality of oil production nor profits. OPEC does, and the US is not in control of OPEC.

I’ll let Collounsbury respond to the rest. That took a lot out of me.

90

O.: “Well, in the face of arguments asserting the pipeline is nothing more than a mirage and/or a fallacy that has nothing to do with the current issues in Afghanistan, I find it hard to overemphasize the opposite.”

Fair enough, Olentzero. Although I don’t always agree with the letter of O., I applaud the spirit. And, Neurotik, I don’t think there’s any cause for singling out the “bias” of O’s source. The footnotes are to mainstream publications. It’s not as though socialist writers have a monopoly on “bias.” There’s a difference between disputing the analysis, and casting aspersions on the facts themselves without evidence that the facts are inaccurate.

Again, I’m far from an expert here, and not doing any outside checking, but I’m pretty sure the Nation article meant to indicate 1932 as the year in which oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia; this is given as the year in which Washington first became involved. (Up above I think Tamerlane gives us 1933, and he/she seems totally on the ball, no?)

91

Crap, can someone fix my code? The visible url during the listing of Mid-East countries and the excess bolding, (just stick a ** after Olentzero, please) to be specific. Thank you very much.

92

Oops, as I was vaguely weighing on my last, Neurotik was alredy doing some homework. Apologies.

93

Your extreme reductionism is really quite stunning, although unsurprising. There is a vast difference between expansion being contained and someone being set up. Ibn Saud hardly was yessiring anyone. Saudi Arabia certainly covers most of the traditional tribal core of the peninsula, ibn Saud’s base. They lose, in the borders, some possible expansion into Jordan, although already Bedouins are thnner and thinner as you get that far north.

Sources:

There are good sources and shit sources. Your’s would not rank in the former.

Well, given the structure of the quote, its phrasing, I rather question how you are interpreting its very presence.

In re history of oil: I think you’re refering to the History of the Prize doco based on Yergin’s book. Never seen it myself.

Russian discovery refs Baku, present Azerbaijan late 19th century.

American oil industry indeed did start and was thriving in the late 19th century in Penn and Texas. Oil usage was just not yet automobile. Certainly it became huge with auto usage but it was already a big, important business.

For an actual history one should indeed see Yergin’s book (as well as the economic analyses I cited a little while back).

94

I thought I had provided that the facts were inaccurate (as regards to the first quote of the article).

95

Olentzero (you too, Eternal), I was discussing the preconditions necessary for Olentzero’s and the ISR’s theory to be correct. And you are absolutely right, Olentzero - only a conspiracy theorist would think that those preconditions existed here. I’m glad that you acknowledge that your theory is unsupported!

Sua

96

**John Corrado **:“Actually, I think an argument could certianly be made that we’d be involved in the area even were all of the oil deposits to be replaced by sheep. Certainly, we have been seriously involved on the side of Israel without them providing us major or even minor sources of oil.”

That is not quite what I meant. What I meant was that had the entire region been oilless and sheepful from the start, it wouldn’t have the geopolitical significance it has had. As to Israel, those who see oil as the underlying explanation for historical developments in the region would see US support for Israel as inextricable from that. That isn’t to say that the US had no internal political reasons for supporting Israel (i.e., an influential American Jewish population). But if you think about Israel’s origins in the wake of WWII, it’s easy why both oil and the Cold War (the latter of which was is itself not entirely extricable from oil) might have greatly amplified the US’s desire to support a very friendly state in that region.

In analyzing the current situation in Afghanistan, I ask only 1) that we not be innocent of the oil context and our current administration’s particular vested interest in oil and 2) that we therefore see US energy independence as a crucial aspect of the war on terrorism. And domina, if you’re still reading, that wouldn’t entail cutting off the Saudis or other oil producers in the region and leaving them to rot. Rather, if I had my way, it would entail a constructive “nation-building” attitude–rid of hypocrisy–towards them as towards Afghanistan or Pakistan for that matter. In any case, doubtless for a long time to come there will be the need for a certain amount of oil; although with conservation and technological improvement, the oil we have can be made to go much further. That our government doesn’t promote the latter and, instead, actively thwarts it has always been outrageous and has become more outrageous now that terrorism is our foremost national concern.

97

Actually, John - it’s neither.

As regards A, it’s not that any talk of anti-terror is a smokescreen, it’s that asserting that the US is going into Afghanistan solely to fight terrorism is a smokescreen.

As regards B, I think the whole US attitude to the Taliban since it came to power shows that it considered all options before being provoked into war. The Taliban was meting out corporal punishment to criminals, denying women education and health care, etc. etc. almost since the day it seized power. But the US temporized, hedging its bets on whether the Taliban was going to be the guarantee of political stability that they’d hoped. Even after 9/11, Bush first demanded that the Taliban turn over bin Laden, waiting to see if they’d play ball.

I’ll try to sum up: The pipeline is important to the United States, regardless of its economic efficiency. It wants a stable, friendly government in Afghanistan to ensure that pipeline can be built and there’s no threat of losing it. Only when the Taliban proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were not that stable, friendly government the US sought did the war start.

OK, I see some other people have chimed in while I’ve been typing this, and I see three comments that unfortunately have me severely pissed off.

From Neurotik:

From Collounsbury

and

Red flags popping up all over the place, people. From here on in it’s just going to end up as an exercise in smacking heads against the wall. While I certainly intend to research more on Neurotik’s assertions regarding the dates of the discovery of oil in the Middle East, the overarching sentiment here is that the sources are inherently untrustworthy because they provide a socialist argument. Such an attitude, IMO, is not conducive to constructive debate, and I’ve already been in too many pissing contests with the likes of Sam Stone and Scylla, among others, to have any patience for more.

I’m out of this one. Make of it what you will.

98

Back when Tony was one of the main targets for Tabloid agression, Thatcher was in power. It was the tabloids that kept Thatcher in power. They loved painting Benn as a left-wing loon over his socialist stances. He was a major supporter of the Miners during their strikes. He is a very intelligent guy, and a very fair man, even if he does come out with some clangers from time to time :wink:

99

No, I have no problem with your source as regards its political ideology. If the Economist had made those claims I would have torn them to shreds. My original point is that when a periodical has an obvious ideological slant (National Review, Economist, whatever) then you need to make sure you take that into consideration. I have a tendency to roll my eyes when reading most articles regarding free trade in the Economist.

That said, I was not going to dismiss your source until I made sure that they got their facts wrong. Which they did. So I came to the conclusion that they were taking inaccurate facts and using those to support their ideology. Which makes them untrustworthy and that their facts need to be checked more than, say, the Washington Post or New York Times or Reuters or Time or AP or whatever.

100

Yes, you did. I was trying to distinguish between disputing the accuracy of the facts themselves (where required), disputing analyses based on these facts (where required), and just dimssing the “bias” of the source in question out of hand. It seemed to me that you jumped from number one to number three rather quickly, without ever fully engaging in number two.

It’s for the same reason that I jumped on Collounsbury when he called the Nation article “ignorant” because he disputed the force with which its CIA-involvement thesis was being made at one or two points in the article. This could have been easily articulated as a difference in degree: “There’s a few points where that Nation article seems to overstate the role of CIA involvement.”

(The irony, Collousnbury, is that you are on record–IIRC–as not giving a hoot about cultural imperialism; yet, in essence you’re saying that a writer who cares a whole lot more about the issue than you do is, in effect, guilty of cultural imperialist reduction, insofar as he overstates the role of the CIA. Shouldn’t you be enjoying this? :wink: )

Speaking purely for myself, I’m persuaded by the Nation’s analysis overall and no one has yet provided anything that I see as challenging its basic premise. But I have no objection at all to hearing that kind of challenge–on the contrary, I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t interested in debate.

Soapbox Alert: I think we really defeat the purpose of being here when we go too far in rejecting sources on the grounds that they are biased, or ignorant, or shitty. Bias is everywhere; and charges of ignorance or substandardness require some support. Believe me, I’ve been in the midst of serious debates in this forum, and then someone will cite something from reagan.com or Joe Blow’s website. It’s frustrating. But I don’t think that Olentzero’s source deserves that kind of dismissiveness (and The Nation surely does not; I don’t even think Collounsbury thinks so). I’m not personally familiar with the journal O’s been citing: I haven’t read the article fully (and perhaps should); I don’t know who edits it, etc.

But Olentzero himself seems to deserve more civility than that. He now wants to exit the debate, and with that his socialist perspective. And why? Is it b/c none of us in this debate, except perhaps Tamerlane is an expert here and we’re all relying on what we’ve read and seen (and yes, Collounsbury, you’re right about the documentary and it’s excellent); and we don’t really know precisely where O’s source might or might not be wide of the mark?

It would be great if someone here who really knows a lot about the history of US/British imperialism c. 1900 could edify us on the subject of pre-1932 Middle East history. Since no such authority has as yet identified himself/herself, I think we can be a little bit more generous.

I actually have to finish something and I’ve posted more than I’d meant to since last night. But I will keep reading. So please don’t take my silence as a departure.