Pelosi's New Iraq Supplemental: Outright Colonial Robbery

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Pelosi's New Iraq Supplemental: Outright Colonial Robbery

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Rolling Stone via Alternet - May 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51657/


Pelosi's New Iraq Supplemental Is Outright Colonial Robbery

By Matt Taibbi

There is a growing number of people out there who believe the
Reid-Pelosi Iraq war supplemental is a gigantic crock of ***, and
who think the Democratic Party leadership should now officially be
labeled conspirators in the war effort. I've even seen it suggested
that Reid and Pelosi should now be sent official "certificates of
war ownership," to formally put them in a club with Bush, Cheney,
Richard Perle and the rest of the actual war authors.

The growing tension between the real antiwar movement and the
Democratic Party was reflected in a long article over the weekend
in the New York Times. "Antiwar Groups Use New Clout to Influence
Democrats." The piece that described how an umbrella group of antiwar
activists called Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq was ready
to drop the public relations hammer on the Dems, should they cave
too easily in their negotiations with the president.

The thinking goes something like this: the Democrats, who are mostly
the same people who voted for the war in the first place, don't
really want to end it. They do, however, want to take political
advantage of antiwar sentiment. So they will appear to be against
the conflict but set things up in such a way that their "efforts"
to end the war will fall just slightly short, like a fourth-quarter
pass thrown by a point-shaving quarterback.

I was squarely in that camp until recently, when it occurred to me
to wonder; if Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were to wake up one morning
with innocent, uncorrupted brains and decide, really decide, to end
the war in Iraq, how exactly would they do it? And the answer, I
think we all have to admit, is: they would do it exactly the way
they're doing it now.

Neither of these Democratic leaders, after all, are Huey Newton,
or even Benjamin Spock. They are not going to get up on a table,
shake a shoe in the direction of the White House, shout "*** you,
pig!" and just turn off the money, consequences be damned. No, these
are career bureaucrats, political herd animals who survive year
after year by clinging for dear life to the concept of safety in
numbers. They will watch the bushes with great big eyes to see what
is rustling back there, and when exactly two-thirds of the herd
decides to bolt, they all will -- not just the Democrats, but the
Boehners and McConnells too, leaping over logs, tearing off big
chunks of fur against the bark of trees, etc.

I can certainly see a scenario in which people like Reid and Pelosi
would make a secret deal to compromise now and give Bush his money,
in exchange for another bite at the apple later this year -- by
which time a veto-overriding coalition of Democrats and "moderate"
Republicans will have magically coalesced. The Republicans crossing
the picket line later this summer will inevitably claim to have
done so with heavy heart, out of principle and "concern for the
safety of the troops," and yet at the same time there will mysteriously
appear a new raft of appropriations calling for expensive dam and
highway projects in certain districts. That tends to be the blueprint
for how 67% of congress will catch up to 67% of the population on
major issues like these.

So maybe Reid and Pelosi really are working the phones on this one,
who knows. What I do know is this; there are elements of the
Democratic-crafted Iraq supplemental that are not only severely
regressive but would actually tend to encourage the continuation
of the insurgency. Anyone who wants an example of why the areas in
which the Democrats and Republicans are in agreement are more
significant than the ones in which they differ need only look at
the two parties nearly unanimous endorsement of the "Benchmarks"
the Iraqi government must meet, according to the supplemental. The
key passage reads as follows:

(2) whether the Government of Iraq is making substantial progress
in meeting its commitment to pursue reconciliation initiatives,
including a hydro-carbon law...

It is notable that the hydrocarbon law comes in first place in this
clause, ahead of "legislation necessary for the conduct of provincial
and local elections," reform of de-Baathification laws, amendments
to the constitution and allocation of revenues for reconstruction
projects. For whether or not it really was "all about oil" at the
beginning of the war, the fate of the occupation really does hinge
almost entirely upon oil initiatives now, as the continued presence
of U.S. troops in the region may depend on whether or not the Iraqi
government bites the bullet and decides to eat the proposed hydrocarbon
law in question.

The law, endorsed here by the Democrats, is an unusually vicious
piece of legislation, an open blueprint for colonial robbery of the
Iraqi nation. It is worth pointing out that if you go back far
enough in the history of this business, the law actually makes the
U.S. an accomplice in the repression of Saddam Hussein, the very
thing we claim to be rescuing the country from.

This has all been described at length by better reporters than
myself, people like Michael Schwartz and Tom Engelhardt, but the
genesis of the proposed law goes something like this:

During the Saddam years, the Iraqi government racked up massive
debts as Hussein stole outright much of the country's oil revenues
and built himself elaborate palaces packed with gold leafing and
Balinese whores and whatever else assholes of that ilk use to furnish
their garish pink mansions. Upon occupying the country, the United
States agreed to forgive some of that debt in exchange for its
acceptance of a "standard International Monetary Fund program,"
which among other things included an end to consumer price controls
on food and fuel -- a move that, whatever one's feelings about
government price controls may be, inarguably made it more difficult
for a newly-impoverished, war-torn population to afford to eat.

Another condition was the liberalization of the economy, and the
opening up of the oil industry to foreign interests. To recap:
Saddam Hussein rips off Iraqi people, America "liberates" said
people from Saddam, then bludgeons them with Saddam's debts until
they hand over the keys to the oil industry. Nice deal, yes?

The proposed Hydrocarbon Law is a result of pressure from the
American government on the Iraqis to draft an oil policy that would
adhere to the IMF guidelines. It allows foreign companies to take
advantage of Iraqi oil fields by allowing regions to pair up with
foreigners using what are known as "production-sharing agreements"
or PSAs, which guarantee investing companies large shares of the
profits for decades into the future. The law also makes it impossible
for the Iraqi state to regulate levels of oil production (seriously
undermining OPEC), allows oil companies to repatriate profits, and
would also allow companies to hire foreign workers to man facilities.
Add all the measures up and the Hydrocarbon law not only takes
control of the oil industry away from the Iraqi state, but virtually
guarantees that the state will profit very little from future oil
exploitation.

Now, I live in America and have been known to drive a car occasionally
and I also understand something else -- when mighty industrial
countries need oil or anything else, they're going to take it.
They're also unlikely to acquiesce forever to the whims of an
organization like OPEC out of mere morality and decency, when
military power can change the equation. Anyone who's going to be
shocked, shocked by this kind of *** had better be prepared to
live in a tent and eat twigs and berries instead of African cocoa
or Central American sugar or any of the millions of other products
we basically steal from hungry, dark-skinned people around the world
on a daily basis.

But I'll tell you what I can do without. I can do without having
to listen to American journalists, as well as politicians on both
sides of the aisle, bitch and moan about how the Iraqi government
better start "shaping up" and "taking responsibility" and "showing
progress" if they want the continued blessing of American military
power. Virtually every major newspaper in the country and every
hack in Washington has lumped all the "benchmarks" together, painting
them as concrete signs that, if met, would mean the Iraqi government
is showing "progress" or "good faith."

"President Bush will not support a war spending bill that punishes
the Iraqi government for failing to meet benchmarks for progress,"
was how the AP put it.

"Among the mile markers that should be used to measure Iraqi progress
is a finalized revenue-sharing agreement on current and future oil
reserves," was the formulation of the Savannah Daily News.

Still other papers, like the Baltimore Sun, cast the supplemental
as a means of exercising "tough love" with the lazy and ungrateful
Iraqis, who to date have failed to show interest in governing their
own country. "The talk around Congress," wrote the Sun, "was of
putting together a bill with (probably nonbinding) benchmarks,
designed to hold the feet of the Iraqi government to the fire --
or at least near the fire."

The title of the Sun editorial, humorously, was "Small steps" --
as if such a radical decision about what may turn out to be a fourth
of the world's oil reserves is a "small step."

Of course, among politicians, it was the same bull***. "And we now
have to see... a good-faith effort on the part of the Iraqi
government," said Maine's Olympia Snowe, "that they're prepared to
do what it's going to require to achieve a political consensus."
The recently "antiwar" Chuck Hagel concurred: "We're seen the Iraqi
government miss benchmark after benchmark," he said. "You have to
connect consequences to those in some way."

Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, described the benchmarks as a means to
"hold the Iraqi government accountable." As if their failure to
pass the Oil law would make them "not accountable."

Moreover, let's just say this about the Democratic Party. They can
wash their hands of this war as much as they want publicly, but
their endorsement of this crude neocolonial exploitation plan makes
them accomplices in the occupation, and further legitimizes the
insurgency. It is hard to argue with the logic of armed resistance
to U.S. forces in Iraq when both American parties, representing the
vast majority of the American voting public, endorse the same
draconian plan to rob the country's riches. This isn't a situation
in which there's going to be a better deal down the road, after
Bush gets thrown out of office. Looking at it from that point of
view, peaceful cooperation with the Americans is therefore probably
impossible for any patriotic Iraqi; the economic consequences are
too severe.

(A side note: there's also an argument to be made that the smart
play for the Iraqis is to cooperate now, and then tear up any
agreement made with the Americans once they get their troops out.
The instant our army leaves, any "laws" passed now under American
pressure will be meaningless anyway. Yeah, sure, take all the oil
you want... hey, do you want these bath towels, too? Oh, wait,
you're leaving? You sure you can't stay? Etc.) Moreover, this
endorsement of these neoliberal "benchmarks" by the Democrats makes
me believe a lot less in their "gradualist" approach to ending the
war. If they viewed the war as much of the world did, as a murderous
and profoundly immoral criminal enterprise, they would understand
that morally, they really have no choice now but to refuse to send
Bush even a dime more for this war. After all, it's impossible to
justify on any level voting to give George Bush more money for more
troops "in the short run" if you believe that the occupation is
fundamentally evil and exploitative. But the Democrats clearly do
not believe it is wrong. They don't even mind having a big hand in
it. They just don't think it's going very well, and understand that
in the long run, it's a non-starter politically.

And that, in the end, is about the best thing you can say about
Democrats -- they are just barely smart enough to step out of a
burning house. Well, maybe they are. Tune in next fall, for the
next supplemental...




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