"Try a better chant: `No oil money for terrorists'" - Victor Davis Hanson

[Coastie for Truth]

Link: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/11039277.htm

The invasion of Iraq was not to loot its oil treasure, but more likely to cease the recycling of its petrodollars that went to terrorists and weapons procurement. Oil revenue allowed Saddam to attack four countries. His oil money subsidized terrorists like Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas. He sent cash bounties to suicide murderers on the West Bank and helped Al-Qaidists in Kurdistan. Petrodollars empowered him to butcher his own people, and thus indirectly led to endless Western patrolling of two-thirds of his airspace.

<snip><

Oil, remember, is also not just an American interest. Japan, Europe, India and China depend on imported fossil fuels far more than does the United States. Impoverished Third World states need moderately priced petroleum to salvage their chronically weak economies. For all the pampered terrorists' bluster about ``stealing our resources,'' the real moral onus is more often on the opulent oil producers like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait rather than a destitute consumer like Bangladesh or Peru.

Oil is pumped out of the ground in the Middle East at costs of between $5 and $8 a barrel. Through the power of a cartel, it is then sold to the world for $50. The Saudis, gulf states and Iranians -- who sit atop it but neither developed it nor can pump it without foreign expertise -- have exclusive rights of possession protected by international protocols and ultimately the U.S. Navy.

As thanks, the oil producers have formed a monopoly -- every bit as ruthless as any 19th-century creation of a John D. Rockefeller -- in unison to cut production and jack up the world price. This price-fixing harms millions from rural Brazil to Albania. OPEC, not the United States, is the real cutthroat petroleum profiteer.
<snip><

Those who scream "no blood for oil" would do better to chant "no oil money for bloody terrorists and dictators."

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
Link: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/11039277.htm

Hanson is an academician who is associated with the Hoover Institute. He appears in Bay Area newspapers to provide "balance."

Interesting read on "following the petrodollars."

[IrateCitizen]

1. Funny, Hanson leaves out US loans to Iraq during the 1980's...

... that were used for EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS!!!

I've seen and read this guy before. He's intelligent, but lacking in judgement, IMHO. He's a huge proponent of American Empire. He's also one of the biggest critics of Noam Chomsky alive today (not that I think Chomsky's even close to infallible, but he is a big target for "establishment thinkers").

He also recently wrote a column savaging Barbara Boxer for attacking Condileezza Rice's credibility, and it was couched completely in terms of hailing Rice for being an "intelligent, accomplished black woman" without even mentioning the SUBSTANCE of Boxer's objections (typical RW race baiting).

[Coastie for Truth]

2. He's from the Hudson Institute (same as Condi)

---I read everything from the Hudson Institute with a questioning eye.

---While I usually skip over Hanson -- and head right to EJ Dionne and Paul Krugman, I think this article was decent "for Hanson."

[hatrack]

3. Excuse me, Iranians & Saudis can't do petroleum engineering?

Sorry, Hanson, but that's just good old-fashioned all-American bullshit.

[Igel]

4. So why was Halliburton in Iran, and

why is there such a large Western ex-pat community in Sa'udi Arabia?

Surely the British don't go there to do the jobs they don't want to do in Britain. Like cook, clean, chauffeur.

And all the French oil contracts in Iraq? And Chinese contracts in the Sudan? And Iran?

No Sa'udi or Iranian contracts in Eq. Guinea, though. Which is consistent.

They're coming up to speed with the technology, but they've certainly not been like Pemex--Pemex and American geologists are dead certain there's oil out deep under the Caribbean. At least as of three years ago they were adamant in not allowing foreign exploration to find it and exploit it, and didn't have the technology to do the exploration themselves.