Tuesday, March 25, 2003

New American Century I: Pax Americana    (Jay Bookman) The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence. The pieces just didn't fit. Something else had to be going on; something was missing. In recent days, those missing pieces have finally begun to fall into place. As it turns out, this is not really about Iraq. It is not about weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, or Saddam, or U.N. resolutions. This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were. Among the architects of this would-be American Empire are a group of brilliant and powerful people who now hold key positions in the Bush administration: They envision the creation and enforcement of what they call a worldwide "Pax Americana," or American peace. But so far, the American people have not appreciated the true extent of that ambition. (SOURCE: The president's real goal in Iraq, Atlanta Journal-Constitution) (For deeper understanding, please read the rest of these articles! And tell no one.) 3:16:44 PM    comment [] New American Century II: The Empire Needs New Clothes (Thom Hartmann) It's easy to vilify George W. Bush as a cynical warmonger, anxious to attack Iraq to repay the oil companies that funded his election campaigns. But to do so is to make a dangerous and fundamental error, and such a myopic view of the Bush administration's policies puts America's future at risk. The reality is that the current administration has a clear and specific vision for the future of America and the world, and they believe it's a positive vision. In order to put forward an alternative vision, it's essential to first understand the vision of America held by the New Right. The core of the neoconservative vision was first articulated on June 3, 1997, in the Statement of Principles put forth by the Project for the New American Century. Signed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Bennett, Jeb Bush, Gary Bauer, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Vin Weber, Steve Forbes and others from the Reagan/Bush administration, it clearly stated that "the history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership." Frankly acknowledging that America is a small portion of the world's population but uses a large percentage of the world's oil and other natural resources, Poppy Bush is famous for having said, "The American lifestyle is not negotiable." McMansions for two-person families, a transportation infrastructure based on 6,000-pound SUVs carrying single individuals, cheap Chinese goods at Wal-Mart and cheap Mexican food in the supermarket - all of this is not anything America intends to give up. We're king of the hill, and we intend to stay that way, even if it means going to war to keep it. At the core of this is oil. When the administration's people say American involvement in Iraq is "not about oil," they're often responding to charges that they're only going after profits for American oil companies. They speak truth, in that context, when they say the war isn't about revenues from oil - the profits will only be a desirable side-effect. What the war is really about is the survival of the American lifestyle, which, in their world-view, is both non-negotiable and based almost entirely on access to cheap oil. The same year Cheney, et al, wrote their papers on The New American Century, I wrote a book about the coming end of American peace and prosperity because of our dependence on a dwindling supply of oil. "Since the discovery of oil in Titusville, PA, where the world's first oil well was drilled in 1859," I wrote in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, "humans have extracted 742 billion barrels of oil from the Earth. Currently, world oil reserves are estimated at about 1,000 billion barrels, which will last (according to the most optimistic estimates of the oil industry) 'for almost 45 years at current rates of consumption.'" But that doesn't mean that we'll suck on the straw for 45 years and then it'll suddenly stop. When about half the oil has been removed from an underground oil field, it starts to get much harder (and thus more expensive) to extract the remaining half. The last third to quarter can be excruciatingly expensive to extract - so much so that wells these days that have hit that point are usually just capped because it costs more to extract the oil than it can be sold for, or it's more profitable to ship oil in from the Middle East, even after accounting for the cost of shipping. The halfway point of an oil field is referred to as "The Hubbert Peak," after scientist M. King Hubbert, who first pointed this out in 1956 and projected 1970 as the year for the Hubbert Peak of US oil supplies. Hubbert was off by four years - 1974 saw the initial decline in US oil production and the consequent rise in price. In 1975, Hubbert, who is now deceased, projected 2000 for a worldwide Hubbert Peak. Once that point had been hit, he and other experts suggested, the world could expect economy-destabilizing spikes in the price of oil, and wars to begin over control of this vital resource. Most of the world has now been digitally "X-rayed" using satellites, seismic data, and computers, in the process of locating 41,000 oil fields. Over 641,000 exploratory wells have been drilled, and virtually all fields which show any promise are well-known and factored into the one-trillion barrel estimate the oil industry uses for world oil reserves. And of that 1 trillion barrels, Saudi Arabia has about 259 billion barrels and Iraq is estimated by the US Government to have 432 billion barrels, although at the moment only about 112 billion barrels have been tapped. The rest, virgin oil, can be pumped out for as little as $1.50 a barrel, making Iraqi oil not only the most abundant in the world, but the most profitable. This at a time when virtually all American oil fields (except the Alaska North Slope) have dwindled past the Hubbert Peak into $5 to $25 per barrel pumping costs. Thus, we see that our "lifestyle" - our ability to maintain our auto-based transportation systems, our demand for big, warm houses, and our appetite for a wide variety of cheap foods and consumer goods - is currently based on access to cheap oil. If we assume that the American people won't tolerate a change in that lifestyle, then we can extrapolate that our very security as a stable democracy is dependent on cheap oil. Viewed in this context, the rush to seize control of the Middle East - where about a third of the planet's oil is located - makes perfect sense. It's a noble endeavor, in that view, maintaining the strength and vitality of the American Empire. Of course, there are a few cracks in this vision. In order to have such a new American century, we must be willing to foul our waters and air with the byproducts of oil combustion and oil-fired power plants, and tolerate the explosions in cancer they bring. We must be willing to gamble that raising CO2 levels won't destabilize the atmosphere and tip us into a new ice age by shutting down the Great Conveyor Belt warm-water currents in the Atlantic. We must be willing to hold the rest of the world off at the point of a bayonet, and to take on the England/Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine type of terrorism that inevitably comes when people decide to assert nationalism and confront empire. And, perhaps most distressing, the third George to be President of the United States must be willing to clamp down on his own dissident citizens the same way that King George III of England did in 1776. These are the requirements of empire. The last American statesman to put forth a different vision was President Jimmy Carter, who candidly pointed out to the American people that oil was a dwindling domestic resource. Carter said that we mustn't find ourselves in a position of having to fight wars to seize other people's oil, and that a decade or two of transition to renewable energy sources would ensure the stability and future of America without destabilizing the rest of the world. It would even lead to a cleaner environment and a better quality of life. Carter put in place energy tax credits and incentives that birthed an exploding new industry based on building solar-heated homes, windmill-powered communities, and the development of fuel alternatives to petroleum. Ronald Reagan's first official act of office was to remove Carter's solar panels from the roof of the White House. He then repealed Carter's tax incentives for renewable energy and killed off an entire industry. No president since then has had the courage or vision to face the hard reality that Carter shared with us. And so now we discover these oddities. Osama bin Laden, for example, explicitly said that he had attacked the US because we had troops stationed on the holy soil of his homeland - a position not that different from Northern Irish, Palestinian, Tamil, and Kashmiri terrorists. And our troops are there to protect our access to Saudi oil, a dependence legacy we inherited from Reagan's rejection of Carter's initiatives. If we are to hold a vision of America that doesn't depend on foreign sources of oil and doesn't require the enormous expenditures of money and blood to project and protect empire, simply saying "stop the war" isn't enough. We must clearly articulate a vision of what America could be in a world in balance, a world at peace, and a world where the planet's vital natural resources are protected and renewed. This is the ultimate family value, the highest patriotism, and the most desperately needed story to guide the next generation of Americans. As President John F. Kennedy said in his 1961 Inaugural Address, "All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin." Thom Hartmann is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann and in multiple submission, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached. www.thomhartmann.com 3:15:45 PM    comment [] New American Century III: Risks of Iraqi War Emerging (Joseph L. Galloway) Five days into the war, the optimistic assumptions of the Pentagon's civilian war planners have yet to be realized, the risks of the campaign are becoming increasingly apparent, and some current and retired military officials are warning that there may be a mismatch between Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's strategy and the force he has sent to carry it out. Uh oh... read this Philadelphia Inquirer article please. All the more amazing for coming from the mainstream American press. Factor that in with this tidbit from the National Review Online: Barry McCaffrey, NBC's chief military analyst, has officially turned on the war plan. The plan was a "miscalculation." Not enough troops. "I've been saying that for 6 months...." about the lack of ground support for Apache helicopters etc. McCaffrey's a serious guy, and in his defense Katie Couric asked any number of "How could we have miscalculated so badly?" type questions which made it difficult for him not to sound fatalistic. But not a cheery report. Although the outcome of the war is not in doubt, it seems our pinhead-in-chief and his merry band of miscreants may have made some major miscalculations, following their own flawed vision and ignoring the best advice of generals and of the CIA. I believe/want to be believe these errors in judgement are a result of the uniquely skewed perspective of the current administration, who have after all, god on their side. But I also believe -- fuck that -- I know we have been lied to. About the war, about it's ultimate costs, about the difficulties that lie ahead, about our motives going in and our plans for the region -- and for the world -- in the years to come. I (desperately want to) believe that the men who formulated these plans to usher in a so-called New American Century have the world's best interests in mind. But add to the ideological mix echoes of the uniquely American mindset that gave the world manifest destiny and the genocide of the original Native Americans, then stir in the latest ingredient in this stew: the growing influence of multi-national corporations and their endless billions of dollars short circuiting and even bypassing an increasingly corrupt lawmaking process, and you have a disaster in the making. We are about to become the world's policemen. Making the world safe for democracy, vanquishing the foe -- and we'll decide who that is -- wherever he may be, and at the time of our choosing. Never mind the sheer hubris of it all, the us-against-the-world/my-country-right-or-wrong mindset this will engender. The cost of all this 'progress' will cost this formerly great nation dearly. Funds for this ongoing effort will be diverted form education, from medical benefits, social security, infrastructure projects (unless they benefit the corporations) basic research, you name it. Our quality of life will suffer needlessly. I think this has turned into a rant of sorts. I am not the most politically savvy of individuals: I just don't understand the complexities. I can however recognize a quagmire of epic proportions when I see it. We're soaking in it now. I don't see el presidente being re-elected, not in this alternate universe anyway. So that should be the end of our problems, right? Well, no. Inestimable damage has already been done; we will be feeling its effects for years to come. And lurking in the background (cue spooky organ music) lurk the aforementioned multi-national corporations (BWA HA) HA! and their ongoing efforts to make the world safe for -- business as usual. And their agenda and their influence continue regardless of who is in power. Da fight is fixed! Democracy as we know it is taking a dive in the middle of the 5th round. And I. Am laughing. To keep from crying. All the way to the grave and beyond. And now, it is finished. Jay Machado Political anal-yst 3:15:36 PM    comment [] Reflections on a Mote of Dust    (Carl Sagan) We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00452 11:01:36 AM    comment []

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