A Glimpse Inside

poems and other assorted literary works...
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[::..prose..::]
After the Dream*
Again
All There Is
Beacon
Brief Icarus*
Dawn*
Emptiness
The Fool
Forlorned*
Friendship
The Last Goodbye
Nowhere
Searching*
Stained
Such Sweet Sorrow
Through the Storm*
Today*
Transient
Unrestrained
War
Welcome to Diego
[::..essays..::]
The War Within
True Motives
[::..short stories..::]
The Slaying of the Beast

07/14/2002 - 07/20/2002

:: essays ::

True Motives [3.21.03]
Lately I’ve been involved in a number of war discussions/debates for obvious reasons. For me the topics revolve primarily around America’s true motives for invading Iraq and our Command and Chief’s current warmongering. While I’ve heard the official reasoning behind Operation Iraqi Freedom, a name which I find both hypocritical and at the same time utterly ridiculous, I have a hard time believing America has committed 300,000 troops and a dozen surface vessels as well as a number of submarines all to remove Saddam Hussein from power and free his people from his tyranny, all under the pretense that he has violated UN resolutions, a crime which Israel has been guilty of for years. Any why should Israel obey international law when the US flouts it whenever we please? While I can only reasonably guess at what the true reasons for this new war are, I know I won’t be spoon fed “facts” by an obviously biased media that at times seem more determined to spread propaganda than actual facts. Luckily we live in an age where information that is gathered around the world is more readily accessible to those who seek an alternative source than the American corporate-controlled media. Of course my dissenting ideas are immediately labeled as “conspiracy theories,” the pro-government catch all that automatically discredits anything contradictory to current government doctrine despite any basis it might have in fact. Because we all know conspiracies don’t exist, right? And our government never traffics disinformation to its own citizens.

The bottom line in my view is this, America wars for American interests and those interests have always been and always will be dominated by money. Our government has long ago ceased to be a government for the people but instead only a government for those who are in a position to afford it. It is no secret that big business dominates American politics, so why is it such a stretch of the imagination to see that big business interests dominate American foreign policy as well. Can people truly believe our government is as altruistic as it portrays itself? Keep in mind this is the same government that had to be fought tooth and nail for ever civil liberty minorities and women currently hold and in recent days has shredded the Bill of Rights to a point almost beyond recognition. Saddam Hussein’s atrocities against humanity have been occurring for more than a decade, back before the invasion of Kuwait and the UN backed coalition of the Gulf War. In fact he was formerly an ally to the US, though it seems we’re not supposed to mention or even remember that small tidbit. It has been conveniently if not erased than surely blurred from the annals of history. Where was American altruism as we were selling him weapons to fight his war with Iran who we saw as the greater of two evils and his own people? Saddam’s tyrannical and anti-humanitarian ways didn’t seem to bother us then. But times have changed I’m told. American foreign policy has changed. Mistakes were made, people concede albeit quietly, but they have been resolved and we are on the high road of the righteous now. But have things truly changed?

The US backed Saddam’s regime in Iraq in the 80s for obvious reasons, we needed an Arab nation sympathetic to American interests and of course the 10% of the world’s oil reserves that lie buried beneath the sands of Iraq played no small part in our motivation I’m sure. In December 1997 representatives from the Taliban, remember these guys, met in Sugarland, Texas at the headquarters of Union Oil of California, better known as Unocal. Their reason for journeying to the Lone Star state? To discuss the construction of a pipeline that would give the US access to rich oil fields of Eurasia. At this time the Taliban were already notorious for their crimes against humanity. And once again America foreign policy turned a blind eye to human suffering and tyranny when confronted with the billions to be made from a pipeline running from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan. By 1999 however, it became obvious that the Taliban would never be a stable enough government to protect our precious pipelines and America began considering some military action against Afghanistan, and all this coming pre-9/11. Ever wonder how we were able to launch military operations against Afghanistan so quickly and efficiently? It was almost as if the plans were already in place. Now if the Taliban had intelligence of this possible American military threat beforehand, a strike against the US could be seen as preemptive. In fact, the Taliban and Osama received word of the possible military action two months prior to 9/11, but we’re not supposed to talk about any of this either. The truth however around the attacks still remains largely a mystery due primarily to impediments from the executive to any serious investigation. Actually this seems to be the beginning of a trend. If I were a Eurasian nation, I’d consider carefully before become allied and embroiled in American economic interests and foreign policy, which appear in truth to actually be the same thing, because it appears we go to war with all our former allies once they become inconvenient or unnecessary.

So back to the original question, why are we in Iraq? Well it’s obviously for financial reasons, but what could those possibly be? Could it be that during the post-Gulf War period, French, Russian and Chinese corporations were able to come into Iraq and develop new oil fields containing billions of barrels of oil, but US corporations due to US law and restrictions put in place after the conflict ended missed out on this oil rush? If a US backed government was established, Iraq would suddenly open up all those untapped oil fields to US corporations. Or perhaps it’s the fact that there are those in the Bush administration that have stated that Iraqi oil will ultimately used to pay for the Iraqi occupation if not also to offset the cost of the Iraqi invasion, going so far as to call them “spoils of war.” Or could it be increasing Iraqi production of oil would help break America’s dependency on Saudi Arabian oil, currently the largest producer of crude oil in the world. Who knows, but I do know there are no end to the financial benefits of this war, at least to Americans, well the top 1% anyway.

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