 ©- January 5, 2003,
Sunday
-
- EDITORIAL DESK
-
- A War
for Oil?
- By THOMAS L.
FRIEDMAN
Our family spent winter vacation in
Colorado, and one day I saw the most
unusual site: two women marching around
the Aspen Mountain ski lift, waving signs
protesting against war in Iraq. One sign
said: ''Just War or Just Oil?'' As I
watched this two-woman demonstration, I
couldn't help notice the auto traffic
whizzing by them: one gas-guzzling S.U.V.
or Jeep after another, with even a Humvee
or two tossed in for good measure. The
whole scene made me wonder whether those
two women weren't -- indeed -- asking the
right question: Is the war that the Bush
team is preparing to launch in Iraq really
a war for oil?
-
- My short answer is
yes. Any war we launch in Iraq will
certainly be -- in part -- about oil. To
deny that is laughable. But whether it is
seen to be only about oil will depend on
how we behave before an invasion and what
we try to build once we're there.
-
- I say this possible
Iraq war is partly about oil because it is
impossible to explain the Bush team's
behavior otherwise. Why are they going
after Saddam Hussein with the 82nd
Airborne and North Korea with diplomatic
kid gloves -- when North Korea already has
nuclear weapons, the missiles to deliver
them, a record of selling dangerous
weapons to anyone with cash, 100,000 U.S.
troops in its missile range and a leader
who is even more cruel to his own people
than Saddam?
-
- One reason, of
course, is that it is easier to go after
Saddam. But the other reason is oil --
even if the president doesn't want to
admit it. (Mr. Bush's recent attempt to
hype the Iraqi threat by saying that an
Iraqi attack on America -- which is most
unlikely -- ''would cripple our economy''
was embarrassing. It made the president
look as if he was groping for an excuse to
go to war, absent a smoking gun.)
-
- Let's cut the
nonsense. The primary reason the Bush team
is more focused on Saddam is because if he
were to acquire weapons of mass
destruction, it might give him the
leverage he has long sought -- not to
attack us, but to extend his influence
over the world's largest source of oil,
the Persian Gulf.
-
- But wait a minute.
There is nothing illegitimate or immoral
about the U.S. being concerned that an
evil, megalomaniacal dictator might
acquire excessive influence over the
natural resource that powers the world's
industrial base.
-
- ''Would those women
protesting in Aspen prefer that Saddam
Hussein control the oil instead -- is that
morally better?'' asks Michael Mandelbaum,
the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert
and author of ''The Ideas That Conquered
the World.'' ''Up to now, Saddam has used
his oil wealth not to benefit his people,
but to wage war against all his neighbors,
build lavish palaces and acquire weapons
of mass destruction.''
-
- This is a good
point, but the Bush team would have a
stronger case for fighting a war partly
for oil if it made clear by its behavior
that it was acting for the benefit of the
planet, not simply to fuel American
excesses.
-
- I have no problem
with a war for oil -- if we accompany it
with a real program for energy
conservation. But when we tell the world
that we couldn't care less about climate
change, that we feel entitled to drive
whatever big cars we feel like, that we
feel entitled to consume however much oil
we like, the message we send is that a war
for oil in the gulf is not a war to
protect the world's right to economic
survival -- but our right to indulge. Now
that will be seen as immoral.
-
- And should we end
up occupying Iraq, and the first thing we
do is hand out drilling concessions to
U.S. oil companies alone, that perception
would only be intensified.
-
- And that leads to
my second point. If we occupy Iraq and
simply install a more pro-U.S. autocrat to
run the Iraqi gas station (as we have in
other Arab oil states), then this war
partly for oil would also be immoral.
-
- If, on the other
hand, the Bush team, and the American
people, prove willing to stay in Iraq and
pay the full price, in money and manpower,
needed to help Iraqis build a more
progressive, democratizing Arab state --
one that would use its oil income for the
benefit of all its people and serve as a
model for its neighbors -- then a war
partly over oil would be quite legitimate.
It would be a critical step toward
building a better Middle East.
-
- So, I have no
problem with a war for oil -- provided
that it is to fuel the first progressive
Arab regime, and not just our S.U.V.'s,
and provided we behave in a way that makes
clear to the world we are protecting
everyone's access to oil at reasonable
prices -- not simply our right to binge on
it.
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