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| 5/25 |
| 2006/1/17-18 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:41401 Activity:kinda low |
1/17 Iraq, the petrodollar, and the upcoming Iranian oil bourse ... This
article ties it all together neatly:
http://energybulletin.net/12125.html
\_ Not to diminish the article's theses, but when I watch anime
with an apocalyptic backstory, they always seem to invoke this
style of storytelling. Art - life - art?
\_ We're running out of reasons for the Iraq invasion. Since
"bringing democracy" to the Middle East means Hamas and
other pro-terror hardline Islamic being to run the show,
which is way worse (for the USA) than the repressive
regimes we currently support -- and every other reason
was just a lie or BS -- supporting the petrodollar seems
like a reasonable theory.
\_ Coherent yes, reasonable maybe, likely no, a contributing
factor, yes.
IMO the most likely explanation is, Part One, that 9/11
changed everything: We now knew terrorists would blow up
a nuke in a U.S. city if they had one.
\_ See, 9/11 didn't _change_ that. It might have changed
it for Bushco (i.e. woke them up), but we've known that
for decades.
\_ It is either disingenuous or ignorant to claim
that 9/11 caused the Bush administration to care
about invading Iraq. See:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
(letter to the Clinton administration, dated
1/26/1998, signed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz,
Perle, on why we should invade Iraq).
After the election, the administration was clearly
building up for an invasion of Iraq; 9/11 actually
delayed their plans.
Their statement of principles:
"As the 20th century draws to a close, the
United States stands as the world's
preeminent power. Having led the West to
victory in the Cold War, America faces an
opportunity and a challenge: Does the
United States have the vision to build
upon the achievements of past decades?
Does the United States have the resolve to
shape a new century favorable to American
principles and interests?"
Invading Iraq is about showing the world that we
can do pretty much whatever we want, pretty much
whenever we want to.
-tom
\_ I agree completely. Above, I was addressing the
distinct point of "terrorists would blow up..."
\_ Of course you knew, but how about for most
Americans? How about, let's say: a possibility
became a real concern after 9/11.
\_ I posit that it shouldn't need to be a "real
concern" for "most Americans". It's something
that we pay the government to do for us. That
whole "provide for the common defense" thing.
It's only a "real concern" because Bush
propogandized it after he FAILED his first
time around.
\_ ob blame Clinton for 9/11, but then we
start getting off topic ...
\_ ob read the 9/11 commission report, and
look up project bojinka
Part Two, Dubya, boy genius, did not question the reports
that Saddam had WMDs. That, combined with Saddam's
previous "misbehavior" -- deploying chemical weapons in
the Iran-Iraq war, invading Kuwait, trying to kill
Dubya's dad and other potential unsettled scores with the
U.S., killing/torturing Kurds like nobody's business, and
having two sons who would continue the tradition -- all
combined, led Dubya to make the call to invade Iraq.
That's the most likely theory, IMO.
(Then again, Dubya, master diplomat, didn't exactly get
the entire world on the same page, since he based his war
on "no doubt" Saddam had WMDs, and never showed damning
evidence to this effect. You know he has them, you know
he does -- so why doesn't the evidence you provided show
this?) -moderate/liberal |
| 5/25 |
|
| energybulletin.net/12125.html I Economics of Empires A nation-state taxes its own citizens, while an empire taxes other nation-states. The history of empires, from Greek and Roman, to Ottoman and British, teaches that the economic foundation of every single empire is the taxation of other nations. The imperial ability to tax has always rested on a better and stronger economy, and as a consequence, a better and stronger military. One part of the subject taxes went to improve the living standards of the empire; the other part went to strengthen the military dominance necessary to enforce the collection of those taxes. Historically, taxing the subject state has been in various formsusually gold and silver, where those were considered money, but also slaves, soldiers, crops, cattle, or other agricultural and natural resources, whatever economic goods the empire demanded and the subject-state could deliver. Historically, imperial taxation has always been direct: the subject state handed over the economic goods directly to the empire. For the first time in history, in the twentieth century, America was able to tax the world indirectly, through inflation. It did not enforce the direct payment of taxes like all of its predecessor empires did, but distributed instead its own fiat currency, the US Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goodsthe difference capturing the US imperial tax. Early in the 20th century, the US economy began to dominate the world economy. The US dollar was tied to gold, so that the value of the dollar neither increased, nor decreased, but remained the same amount of gold. The Great Depression, with its preceding inflation from 1921 to 1929 and its subsequent ballooning government deficits, had substantially increased the amount of currency in circulation, and thus rendered the backing of US dollars by gold impossible. This led Roosevelt to decouple the dollar from gold in 1932. Up to this point, the US may have well dominated the world economy, but from an economic point of view, it was not an empire. The fixed value of the dollar did not allow the Americans to extract economic benefits from other countries by supplying them with dollars convertible to gold. Economically, the American Empire was born with Bretton Woods in 1945. The US dollar was not fully convertible to gold, but was made convertible to gold only to foreign governments. This established the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. It was possible, because during WWII, the United States had supplied its allies with provisions, demanding gold as payment, thus accumulating significant portion of the worlds gold. An Empire would not have been possible if, following the Bretton Woods arrangement, the dollar supply was kept limited and within the availability of gold, so as to fully exchange back dollars for gold. However, the guns-and-butter policy of the 1960s was an imperial one: the dollar supply was relentlessly increased to finance Vietnam and LBJs Great Society. Most of those dollars were handed over to foreigners in exchange for economic goods, without the prospect of buying them back at the same value. The increase in dollar holdings of foreigners via persistent US trade deficits was tantamount to a taxthe classical inflation tax that a country imposes on its own citizens, this time around an inflation tax that US imposed on rest of the world. When in 1970-1971 foreigners demanded payment for their dollars in gold, The US Government defaulted on its payment on August 15, 1971. While the popular spin told the story of severing the link between the dollar and gold, in reality the denial to pay back in gold was an act of bankruptcy by the US Government. It had extracted an enormous amount of economic goods from the rest of the world, with no intention or ability to return those goods, and the world was powerless to respond the world was taxed and it could not do anything about it. From that point on, to sustain the American Empire and to continue to tax the rest of the world, the United States had to force the world to continue to accept ever-depreciating dollars in exchange for economic goods and to have the world hold more and more of those depreciating dollars. It had to give the world an economic reason to hold them, and that reason was oil. In 1971, as it became clearer and clearer that the US Government would not be able to buy back its dollars in gold, it made in 1972-73 an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only US dollars for its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and also accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil countries, it had the reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. Because the world needed ever increasing quantities of oil at ever increasing oil prices, the worlds demand for dollars could only increase. Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil. The economic essence of this arrangement was that the dollar was now backed by oil. As long as that was the case, the world had to accumulate increasing amounts of dollars, because they needed those dollars to buy oil. As long as the dollar was the only acceptable payment for oil, its dominance in the world was assured, and the American Empire could continue to tax the rest of the world. If, for any reason, the dollar lost its oil backing, the American Empire would cease to exist. Thus, Imperial survival dictated that oil be sold only for dollars. It also dictated that oil reserves were spread around various sovereign states that werent strong enough, politically or militarily, to demand payment for oil in something else. If someone demanded a different payment, he had to be convinced, either by political pressure or military means, to change his mind. The man that actually did demand Euro for his oil was Saddam Hussein in 2000. At first, his demand was met with ridicule, later with neglect, but as it became clearer that he meant business, political pressure was exerted to change his mind. When other countries, like Iran, wanted payment in other currencies, most notably Euro and Yen, the danger to the dollar was clear and present, and a punitive action was in order. Bushs Shock-and-Awe in Iraq was not about Saddams nuclear capabilities, about defending human rights, about spreading democracy, or even about seizing oil fields; it was about defending the dollar, ergo the American Empire. It was about setting an example that anyone who demanded payment in currencies other than US Dollars would be likewise punished. Many have criticized Bush for staging the war in Iraq in order to seize Iraqi oil fields. However, those critics cant explain why Bush would want to seize those fieldshe could simply print dollars for nothing and use them to get all the oil in the world that he needs. History teaches that an empire should go to war for one of two reasons: to defend itself or benefit from war; if not, as Paul Kennedy illustrates in his magisterial The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, a military overstretch will drain its economic resources and precipitate its collapse. Economically speaking, in order for an empire to initiate and conduct a war, its benefits must outweigh its military and social costs. Benefits from Iraqi oil fields are hardly worth the long-term, multi-year military cost. Instead, Bush must have went into Iraq to defend his Empire. Indeed, this is the case: two months after the United States invaded Iraq, the Oil for Food Program was terminated, the Iraqi Euro accounts were switched back to dollars, and oil was sold once again only for US dollars. Bush descended victoriously from a fighter jet and declared the mission accomplishedhe had successfully defended the US dollar, and thus the American Empire. Iranian Oil Bourse The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate nuclear weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire. That weapon is the Iranian Oil Bourse slated to ... |
| www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm Letter to President Clinton on Iraq. January 26, 1998 The Honorable William J Clinton President of the United States Washington, DC Dear Mr President: We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the United States and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Husseins regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor. The policy of containment of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraqs chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddams secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons. Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the worlds supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat. Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administrations attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddams regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the United States has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council. We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk. Sincerely, Elliott Abrams Richard L Armitage William J Bennett Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W Rodman Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber Paul Wolfowitz R James Woolsey Robert B Zoellick. |