Caltrops - Operation: Hammer Time

Forum Overview :: Operation: Hammer Time

by Lizard_King 04/30/2003, 7:22pm PDT

FoK wrote:

Who would you suggest fill their roles in Iraq? I know of few companies with the experience Halliburton has in reconstructing damaged oil wells, for example, and in any case we are talking about a contract worth millions in a reconstruction process worth billions.

Are you in the oil well business? No? Then how the fuck would you know?

Offer an alternative to the companies that wouldn't be a subsidiary of one of your much reviled American corporate giants. You can't, because they don't exist...unless of course you are proposing the deals be handed over to the European equivalents, which not even the French are stupid enough to propose.

Laudable beat me to the punch in offering Hitchens' article. I could offer you the reasons why I know this, but I'll settle for the fact that your attack, premised on faith in others being as ignorant as you, is facially absurd.

Getting Iraq's oil fields to pre-1991 production levels will take at least 18 months and cost about $5 billion initially, with $3 billion more in annual operating expenses, according to a recent study by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University

Dull, obvious, and again, the reference was to Halliburton specifically, if you look at my post. Millions, not billions. Plenty of other big oil companies will get their share. You know why? Because they are the only ones who can do the fucking job. I am sorry if no corporation in that line of work is acceptable to you, but until Greenpeace learns to fix pipelines I think your shit out of luck.

And, in any case, the amount of money isn't the point: the point is that while the outcome may (may) have been positive overall, the motives that our leaders have for attacking were positively corrupt. Overall.

"Since we decided, umm, that there weren't any WMDs after all, what we're thinking is that we, uh, attacked Iraq because of the Reverse Domino Theory. Once Democracy is in the Middle East, all those countries are going to do it!" Aha.

I wonder if you people will ever tire of regurgitating Lenin's Imperialism theories created circa 1900? They weren't coherent when offered as a critique of actual empires (were it such a profitable enterprise, more of them would still exist), and have not done much better since being adopted by American "liberals" and contemporary Eurotrash.

Oil wasn't the primary concern any more than democracy in Iraq or WMD's. They are all part of the bigger problem, which is the threat to our national security that continued instability in the Middle East creates. That includes economic factors, but it is what they add up to that made Iraq a legitimate target, especially given Hussein's declared course to pursue nuclear weapons ever since the French gave him his first reactors in the early 80's. That is as legitimate a cause for our foreign policy as can be found. I seriously doubt whether George Bush or any of his advisors give a damn what sort of Iraqi government is set up, so long as its legitimacy isn't predicated on Anti-Americanism like that of all of its Arab neighbours. For which, of course, there is long term destabilization in store.

My speculation (and this is just a speculation, I'm not an economist any more than LK is an oil baron) is that democracy, even if it could be administered successfully (which it can't), wouldn't work in Iraq, any better than it's worked in the former Soviet Union. It works great in the U.S. - we are sitting on an embrassment of natural resources here. There are enough different industries that, pretty much, everyone can work here. Iraq, as far as I know, only has one export industry, and it's not going to be privatized (Hell no, then the US wouldn't get its share!). So, how are we expecting that our system will work for them?

FoK

Your embarrassing oversimplification of Russia's situation does nothing to strengthen your argument. The Russian question is about a lot more than democracy "not working", whatever that means. Likewise, natural resources have precious little to do with the possibility of establishing a liberal democracy in a country. Israel and Costa Rica are far more democratic in a literal sense than the United States, and have few significant natural resources.

The successful establishment of diversified industry will have far more to do with the extent that its economy and people are liberalized at a personal level. It doesn't really matter whether or not they have political liberty, or even all that much at any other level than economic, a fact that I am certain GWB and friends are well aware of...look at the comparative success of modern China or Russia under Putin; neither country's people has the slightest delusion of self-rule.

As a lot of observers of the region have noted, in the near future we will either see two theocracies in Iran/Iraq or two...whatever the hell more liberalized systems would be in the Arab world. [URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/28/international/worldspecial/28IRAN.html?pagewanted=2&tntemail0]Tehran-style hostility to the US[/URL] is far from a given in Iraq, and barring a Carteresque presidency following Bush's, I would certainly put my money on the corrup theocracy with low popular support collapsing first.

America's share could just as easily come from a privatized Iraqi concern as it could from a public one. The question really lies with what the interim and future government sees as a more palatable and popular move.

In any case, I have not heard anyone other than leftists in need of straw men talking about an American democracy in Iraq in anything but a purely rhetorical capacity.