3-7-07 Making Fire and Making War
I think these two things go hand in hand. It's a "man thing". It's full of testosterone. I mean, do girls play with matches? Of course not... they know better.
Our millenia long existence on this planet has been as a fire society and there's not much chance of that changing anytime soon. Why? Because most of our war machinery runs on petroleum products.
It's all about the firepower.
Tanks and Hummers and B-1 bombers won't be running "hybrid electric" anytime soon, and they sure won't be running on solar power, either...
Oil drives the war machinery, and the war machinery is directed towards defending the access to this fuel, more often than not. It's a self-feeding, closed loop situation. Those in power cannot maintain their power without the military, the military runs on petroleum products, and thus the only way those in power can stay in power is to defend their access to the oil.
It doesn't take a doctorate to figure this out. Access to oil has played a major role in the conduct of war ever since mechanized armies were invented. The only other comparable influence on our history over the past century has been ideological fanaticism. People get all charged up on some idea, some issue, and they end up being used by the powers that be to further some other agenda. The old "bait and switch" is all it is. Besides, when the armies and navies and air forces of any ideologically driven warmonger has run out of gas, that's the end of it.
That's what happened to Nazi Germany when they failed to capture the oil fields at Baku, and that's what happened to the Japanese when they failed to hold onto the Phillipines. It was only the access to the oil that really mattered in the end.
The twentieth century could easily be viewed as the history of the Oil Wars. Anyone who views the current warmongering going on since the turn of the century as anything BUT Oil Wars really needs to take another look.
But the waging of war is something that requires the will of the people. The populations that send their children into the fray as cannon fodder need to believe that there's a good reason for the sacrifice. If they are lied to, if they are told that they are sacrificing life and limb for a good cause, but it turns out to be a lie... things tend to get a bit screwed up.
The reason the US government has active military stationed all around the world is to stay in power. The reason we're in Iraq is to keep the oil out of the hands of the fanatics.
If the Bush administration had told it to us straight, we wouldn't be in this mess. It's a good fight, it's in our best interests to go after control of the oil in the middle east. But it's the biggest mistake in history that the Bush administration has made, and continues to make, in trying to foist all these lies on us. Not only did they lie to us, they tried to work the whole thing so that cronies and buddies would profit from the warmongering activity, to the exclusion of everybody else.
Making fire and making war have been with us all our lives, and it will continue to be with us for the rest of our lives and our children's lives. But it will be a lot more difficult for our children and our grandchildren because the Bush administration played the wrong game. They played the selfish and greedy game, the game of spinning lies and more lies, and the game of pretending they didn't screw up on a grand scale from day one.
"Winning in Iraq" has nothing to do with anything else except "winning" our access to the oil. The Bush administration continues to squander our national resources on this pursuit, and if the prize is won, then this country's economy may have a chance to survive it. But if the prize is not won, and not won soon... making fire and making war will no longer be America's game as the biggest superpower on Earth.
Our millenia long existence on this planet has been as a fire society and there's not much chance of that changing anytime soon. Why? Because most of our war machinery runs on petroleum products.
It's all about the firepower.
Tanks and Hummers and B-1 bombers won't be running "hybrid electric" anytime soon, and they sure won't be running on solar power, either...
Oil drives the war machinery, and the war machinery is directed towards defending the access to this fuel, more often than not. It's a self-feeding, closed loop situation. Those in power cannot maintain their power without the military, the military runs on petroleum products, and thus the only way those in power can stay in power is to defend their access to the oil.
It doesn't take a doctorate to figure this out. Access to oil has played a major role in the conduct of war ever since mechanized armies were invented. The only other comparable influence on our history over the past century has been ideological fanaticism. People get all charged up on some idea, some issue, and they end up being used by the powers that be to further some other agenda. The old "bait and switch" is all it is. Besides, when the armies and navies and air forces of any ideologically driven warmonger has run out of gas, that's the end of it.
That's what happened to Nazi Germany when they failed to capture the oil fields at Baku, and that's what happened to the Japanese when they failed to hold onto the Phillipines. It was only the access to the oil that really mattered in the end.
The twentieth century could easily be viewed as the history of the Oil Wars. Anyone who views the current warmongering going on since the turn of the century as anything BUT Oil Wars really needs to take another look.
But the waging of war is something that requires the will of the people. The populations that send their children into the fray as cannon fodder need to believe that there's a good reason for the sacrifice. If they are lied to, if they are told that they are sacrificing life and limb for a good cause, but it turns out to be a lie... things tend to get a bit screwed up.
The reason the US government has active military stationed all around the world is to stay in power. The reason we're in Iraq is to keep the oil out of the hands of the fanatics.
If the Bush administration had told it to us straight, we wouldn't be in this mess. It's a good fight, it's in our best interests to go after control of the oil in the middle east. But it's the biggest mistake in history that the Bush administration has made, and continues to make, in trying to foist all these lies on us. Not only did they lie to us, they tried to work the whole thing so that cronies and buddies would profit from the warmongering activity, to the exclusion of everybody else.
Making fire and making war have been with us all our lives, and it will continue to be with us for the rest of our lives and our children's lives. But it will be a lot more difficult for our children and our grandchildren because the Bush administration played the wrong game. They played the selfish and greedy game, the game of spinning lies and more lies, and the game of pretending they didn't screw up on a grand scale from day one.
"Winning in Iraq" has nothing to do with anything else except "winning" our access to the oil. The Bush administration continues to squander our national resources on this pursuit, and if the prize is won, then this country's economy may have a chance to survive it. But if the prize is not won, and not won soon... making fire and making war will no longer be America's game as the biggest superpower on Earth.
posted by Jeff Barnard at 4:14 PM
1 Comments:
Now this is really the crux of the matter - lying about why we're bankrupting the U.S. economy is the crux of the matter. Chilling thought - if we don't take the oil fields, the economy probably won't recover any time soon. Perhaps this is what all the "alt energy' people are clamoring for - energy independence so that the complete collapse of our economy won't happen. But of course, we should have gone down that garden path a few decades ago to prepare for it. We didn't. And here we are... waging war under false pretenses, standing on the precipice of economic disaster...
Jo
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