CounterVortex

Oil is not the reason for the Iraq war
Scapegoat for the Iraq War
As if we didn’t already have too many excuses and too few facts over the real reasons for the invasion of Iraq, we now have Alan Greenspan blaming everyone’s favorite scapegoat – oil. He states in his new book “The Age of Turbulence”:
“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil. Thus, projections of world oil supply and demand that do not note the highly precarious environment of the Middle East are avoiding the eight-hundred pound gorilla that could bring economic growth to a halt ….. Until industrial economies disengage themselves from, as President George W. Bush put it, “our addition to oil”, the stability of the industrial economies and hence the global economy will remain at risk.”
That such a statement could be made by someone with the stature and influence of Alan Greenspan is extremely troubling. Like so many of our policy makers, he has little understanding of oil, and seems unwilling to confront the actual causes of the Iraq war.
To examine how unlikely it is that the Iraq war was “largely about oil”, we need to look at the original ideas behind the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, which have been around since the mid-1990s. One of the early advocates for invading Iraq was a group of neoconservatives who called themselves the Project for a New American Century, who articulated their ideas in a letter to the Clinton Administration in 1998. According to the neoconservative theory, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of a democracy in Iraq would create a domino effect that would transform the Middle East by causing other countries in the region to rise up against their dictatorial leaders and elect governments that are friendly to American interests. Neoconservatives associated with PNAC also devised a plan they termed “Clean Break” advocating that the Israeli government under Netanyahu support the removal of Saddam Hussein. All of this occurred at a time when oil prices were very low, indeed, as the press was writing about a world awash in oil. There was certainly no oil shortage at that time that would motivate starting a war. Of course the Clinton Administration had no interest in invading Iraq. Then September 11 happened and in the aftermath, the Bush Administration was easily persuaded to invade Iraq based on the misleading case for the war that ultimately prevailed.
Clearly, oil was not the first priority or even a high priority for the neoconservatives who originally pushed for the war.
Second, it wasn’t necessary to invade Iraq in order to access its oil. Oil companies, for better or worse, would have been quite able to deal with Saddam Hussein’s government to develop and produce Iraq’s oil fields had it been legal. It certainly wasn’t true oil companies were somehow behind the war so that they could take over Iraq’s oil fields. Oil companies operating in foreign countries do not own the reserves so changing the government would not allow them to own Iraq’s oil. They produce oil for the host government for a fee, usually paid in oil barrels. Thus, for each barrel they produce, they receive a certain portion of it, which varies depending on the country and the project.
Thus, to claim that the invasion of Iraq was about oil is ridiculous. That is not to say that oil was not a factor in the Bush Administration’s decision to go to war since the US government was unwilling to lift the sanctions as long as Saddam was in power. But the invasion certainly wasn’t necessary for oil companies to gain access to the oil and sell it into the global market.
Mr. Greenspan goes on to express his fear that that the global economy could suffer if/when oil becomes scarce and expensive. This is a valid concern and is one that we should take action on before it becomes a crisis. If we wait, scarcity and ever increasing oil prices will create major disruptions to the world economy. However, there are far more cost-effective ways to deal with potential oil shortages than to start a war. There are many new technologies that can be brought to bear as well as certain lifestyle changes that can reduce our oil consumption, such as better fuel economy standards for cars, public transport systems, and alternative fuels. These programs would not wreck the economy if conducted over a reasonable period of time, and they could even help by creating many new high-value jobs. Thus, it certainly isn’t necessary to go to war over oil and in reality, the Iraq war has burdened our economy with huge costs that will have to be repaid, making it more difficult for the US to reduce its dependence on oil.
If America is to learn anything from the fiasco of the Iraq war, we must not look for scapegoats such as oil to blame. Let’s determine once and for all the real causes of the war. Let’s examine the role of the neoconservatives and their supporters in the Bush Administration and blame the erroneous ideas behind the Project for a New American Century, the false intelligence emanating from the Pentagon and other sources. The real politically inconvenient elephant in the room is this group of influential people who were so determined to invade Iraq that they mislead the American people in order to do so.