topic by
Barb
12/7/2001 (3:00)

OK let's pretend for a moment that the US has 'withdrawn' from the mideast -- withdrawn ALL support to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other areas. Where would the control of the oil fall to then? In my 'ignorant and clueless' opinion, I would say it would fall to the dastardly Saddam or Osama. Just want to see if either of those choices would be OK with the posters of this board.

reply by
Someone
12/7/2001 (9:29)

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Barb,

Also explain HOW this will happen? What are the basis of this theory?

Any report you read somewhere?

Finally, what makes you think in the first place that US will leave MidEast. When local masters are willing to kill each other to appease thier western masters, why US or any other country should leave.

Last but not least, did you ordered that book I suggested in one of my postings, 'A brutal friendship, The West and the Arab Elite.'

It is a great book about how middle east was carved out by the colonial powers for their own deeds, totally discarding the views and feeling of local populations.

reply by
Barb
12/7/2001 (14:39)

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Where in my posting did I say the West 'will' leave? I do not think that will happen. I am theorizing, putting an imaginary case on the table. Is that OK?

reply by
Sandra
12/7/2001 (16:04)

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Barb's question is a perfectly fair one. That she doesn't know the answer doesn't have anything to do with the fact that she doesn't know anything about this region (which she doesn't) but because our media are so awful about educating Americans about a region that their government and their economy is so intimately involved with.

To answer:

Let's say the US pulls out all bases and troops, and stops sending arms to *all* states in the region. (First of all, the latter will never happen because there are too many arms manufacturers who profit from the trade and our gov't actively assists them in promoting their destructive wares overseas).

Who would control the oil?

The question neglects the absence of a critical actor in the oil market: the oil companies. They actually have far more control over the extraction, processing and distribution of oil than the governments that they do business with. That's #1. No discussion on oil can neglect their power, their influence, their interests.

#2 is the simple fact that whoever controls the oil NEEDS to do business with the world to accrue revenue for their economy.

For a non-oil example, the Taliban tried to appease the US by cracking down on the drug trade (for which the Bush administration praised them earlier this year). They wanted worldwide recognition for their gov't because they wanted aid, loans, trade. They were internationally ostracized and were thus desperate to have access to the international financial/aid system. By cracking down on the drug trade for a time, they hoped to begin to show the world that they could be dealt with. Of course, that didn't work, not least because they continued to harbor bin Laden, whose custody the US had demanded during the Clinton administration.

Anyway, my point is that NO government--of whatever type--can afford to drive oil prices *too* high or prevent access to oil to any country, particularly world powers. Not if that government wants to maintain access to the international financial markets, and certainly not if that government wants to receive any loans or aid, or establish trade with other nations.

That fact has already been proven by governments such as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. Even in the darkest days of Khomeinii's Iran, the government never stopped its oil business with the world. Prior to the Gulf War, the west had no problem of access to Iraqi oil. And certainly it's never had trouble having access to Saudi oil.

In other words, regardless of the *nature* of the gov't in question, *pragmatism* necessarily wins out in the economic realm.

US oil policy in the Middle East is driven by an overbearing desire to *control* oil, not just to have *access* to oil. Other western nations (and non-western nations as well) have plenty of access to Middle Eastern oil, but they don't feel the need to send troops, establish bases, prop up dictatorships, and interfere in the region's economies. Neither do they assist Israel in brutalizing a people whose sole crime was that they happened to be living in their ancestral homeland.

There is no fatwa against Swedes, Italians, Brazilians, Belgians, Finns, etc. (A point lost on too many obtuse and uninformed Americans).

(And why the Palestinians should have to pay for western guilt over centuries of European anti-semitism, culminating in the Holocaust, is beyond me).

There is much goodwill toward the US whenever it behaves modestly, wherever its overbearing, arrogant presence is absent, and whenever it *genuinely* acts on behalf of democracy and fairness. Throughout the so-called third world, it has never done so.