The
occupation of Iraq has and will continue to severely cripple America,
both in treasure and blood, bogging it down in a grueling guerilla war
of attrition for years to come. Already the war and occupation has
lasted longer than America’s involvement in World War II. Already it
has cost, in only four years, over one trillion dollars. Already,
America’s military is overstretched, overstressed, overburdened and
overworked. So far, close to 3,500 troops have died, with up to 30,000
maimed and injured; tens of thousands of personnel have been forced to
serve more than two tours of duty. The psychological costs to
thousands of soldiers will never be quantified, as well as the societal
damage done by people returning home with different minds, different
lives and altered circumstances.
Yet
in spite of the apparent defeat, the apparent debacle taking place in
Iraq, the American leviathan, that corporatist element within the
parameters of the state, that elitist cabal embedded in predatory
capitalist markets, will not allow itself or the nation to be
extricated from Iraq, for the price of such a calamity would be
disastrous. For the Iraq War was first and foremost a war for control
of oil, that most important of natural resources, that devil’s
excrement needed to run the engine called modern human civilization.
Catastrophic Success
The
occupation of Iraq, still illegal and immoral by any sense of human
understanding, has now run into its fourth bloody and horrific year,
becoming a quagmire for America and a vast killing field for Iraqis.
Indeed, for Iraqis, America’s invasion and subsequent occupation has
been and will continue to be one massive war crime, an onslaught of
criminality against humanity not seen since World War Two. It is they,
the Iraqi people, who have undergone tremendous hardship, and it is
they who will continue to suffer in horrific ways, due to the lunacy
and delusions of America’s miscreant leaders. Indeed, hell on Earth
has been imported into Iraq without so much as a care, concern or
bother from the American people, without so much as a protest or two by
the world entire.
For
America and her people, on the other hand, to say that the Iraq debacle
is the greatest strategic disaster in American foreign policy history
is an understatement, for the implications of America’s defeat at the
hands of Iraqis have only now begun to be seen, with its reverberations
to be felt for years to come. What was once considered a cakewalk by
an arrogant nation, basking in the glory of exceptionalism and
ignorance, blinded to reality by addictions to materialism and
televised charades, instead turned into an inextricable sand trap that
threatens to turn a New American Century into the Last American Decade.
For
unlike Vietnam, a backwater nation at the outer periphery of world
affairs, where America’s defeat did not disturb the grand chess match
of Cold War geostrategy or cause worldwide geopolitical earthquakes,
Iraq is at the epicenter of the world, sitting atop vast oil fields,
possessing two fresh water rivers in a region where water is scarce,
situated in the middle of vitally strategic lands sought by rising
powers and dwindling empires. A defeat in Iraq, as is already apparent,
and had long since been predicted by many, would thus severely damage
the interests of America, thereby altering a global balance of power
where one superpower dominates the rest of the world. Inside her
shores, a defeat would, similar to what happened after Vietnam,
alienate her people away from further wars of conquest, thus making it
harder to implement the plans for a New American Century, thus
destroying the once great controlling power engendered by the New Pearl
Harbor.
The
occupation of Iraq has and will continue to severely cripple America,
both in treasure and blood, bogging it down in a grueling guerilla war
of attrition for years to come. Already the war and occupation has
lasted longer than America’s involvement in World War II. Already it
has cost, in only four years, over one trillion dollars. Already,
America’s military is overstretched, overstressed, overburdened and
overworked. So far, close to 3,500 troops have died, with up to 30,000
maimed and injured; tens of thousands of personnel have been forced to
serve more than two tours of duty. The psychological costs to
thousands of soldiers will never be quantified, as will the societal
damage done by people returning home with different minds, different
lives and altered circumstances.
Yet
in spite of the apparent defeat, the apparent debacle taking place in
Iraq, the American leviathan, that corporatist element within the
parameters of the state, that elitist cabal embedded in predatory
capitalist markets, will not allow itself or the nation to be
extricated from Iraq, for the price of such a calamity would be
disastrous. For the Iraq War was first and foremost a war for control
of oil, that most important of natural resources, that devil’s
excrement needed to run the engine called modern human civilization.
The
subsequent occupation of Iraq, beyond the obvious lies of WMD, bringing
democracy and freedom, ridding Iraqis of tyranny and Saddam, and
fighting al-Qaeda in the “war on terror,” was built on the necessity of
pacifying and controlling the Iraqi populace so that the rape and
pillage of Iraq’s oil could commence. For this war has always been and
will always be about black blood, that dark substance that condemns and
curses all who live above it, and empowers and enriches those who
extract it. He who controls the oil controls the world, after all, and
he who controls the world controls humankind’s destiny.
It
is the devil’s excrement that sustains modern civilization; its births
Empire and makes overlords of those that control it. It is also a
truism that those who seek the power of modern empire must make a deal
with the devil to drink blood from its veins. It is this deal with the
devil that invariably resurrects violence, destruction, suffering and
the worst in human wickedness.
Empire’s Gas Station
As
such, to purposefully give up such a prize as the oil fields of Iraq,
along with its perfect strategic location, would be tantamount to
giving up on a burgeoning empire, something the elite and the
corporatists of the nation are not yet ready to do. Controlling the
oil markets of the world, along with the spigots, pipelines and oil
fields of Iraq, dictating supply and demand to the globe, possessing
the power to control the amount of oil a rival or rising superpower is
allowed to have, and establishing a beachhead for further attempts at
acquiring yet more oil and gas, this time in Iran and Central Asia, is
too tempting a proposition for America’s elite to extricate their
armies from Mesopotamia. In truth, to leave Iraq would be to leave
behind all delusions of a New American Century. It would be akin to
declaring defeat to Russia and China, in essence granting these rising
powers Iraq’s oil fields on a silver platter and cementing the
precipitous fall of the American Empire itself.
Iraq
is too valuable, in the minds of America’s elite and her corporatists,
to simply walk away from. For all intents and purposes, therefore,
Iraq has become America’s 51st state, a colony that will act
as America’s gas station for decades to come. Iraq is destined to
become the grease that provides the lubrication needed to run the great
American engine. It will act as America’s aircraft carrier, the easier
to patrol the world’s most strategic region. In time, Iraq will be
used to invade, threaten, hold hostage and/or conquer the oil fields of
Iran and those of the central Asian basin. From Iraq America’s new
national security infrastructure, such as pipelines and refineries, can
best be defended from any barbarian horde. Iraq is today the gateway
towards attaining the Empire the elite and the delusional have always
envisioned. It is the gateway towards power, control and untold wealth.
Of
course the sacrifice of American treasure and blood is and will
continue to be of no significance to those possessing the delusional
blueprints of a New American Century. After all, it is not their
children sent off to war, becoming cannon fodder, returning in a body
bag, with missing appendages, burned bodies or psychologically maimed
minds. It is not their wages being taxed in order to pay for the
ever-expanding corporatist army. It is not their hard earned money
being expropriated so that energy giants can further enrich themselves
to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in profits every year.
To
the elite way of thinking, the sacrifice of 3,500 dead soldiers, most
poor and working class, from rural cesspools or urban jungles, is a
minor and inconsequential inconvenience, along with the injury of
30,000 more, in the pursuit of Empire. These brave and oftentimes naïve
and brainwashed soldiers are simply the expendable tools of wealth
accumulation and empire building, the robots needed to pull the levers
and push the buttons of the vast arsenal of killing machines developed
by the military industrial complex. They are cannon fodder used not
for defending freedom and democracy, but for defending the corporate
bottom line and its shareholder wealth. In a nation of 300 million
people, the death in Iraq of 3,500 soldiers, or 30,000 for that matter,
is of little importance to the elite who see poor men and women as a
means to an end. They are the collateral damage sacrificed in the name
of predatory and debauched capitalism. They are the catalysts for
corporatism to thrive.
Sadly,
America will remain in Iraq for decades to come, occupying sand and
dune, living behind massive concrete walls, inside enormous embassies
and bases, all built to protect the ultimate prize of the 21st
century: oil. Iraq is now a giant American forward operating base, a
geostrategic prize from where the delusional elite can amplify their
presence both in the Middle East and the Caspian basin. From Iraq the
oil and natural gas fields of Iran are but a stone’s throw away. From
Iraq and Afghanistan Central Asia becomes easier to threaten and
control, easier for its energy resources to be exploited and defended
against potential adversaries. From Iraq it is easier for the rising
empire to contain, control and check the advancements of Russia, China
and India.
The
future death of thousands of American soldiers, and the maiming of tens
of thousands more, is a reality that will inevitably come in the years
ahead, will be but the price of doing business, of maximizing profit
and power, of controlling the black blood necessary for empire to rise
and breathe. Thousands dead and tens of thousands maimed is of little
consequence or importance to those whose vision of delusion includes an
empire greeted by the world as liberator, with flowers and candy thrown
at its feet. Sacrifices need to be made for the sake of consumerism
and materialism, for gluttony and greed, after all. Just not for the
elite that steer the American ship. The trillions of dollars that have
already been spent, and those trillions that will invariably be needed
in the future will of course be taken from the American people, their
treasure pillaged, their wages raped in the pursuit of empire. It will
be us, the common peasant, that will be forced to absorb the present
and future costs of delusions of grandeur and self-aggrandizing hubris.
It will be our children who will have to sacrifice freedom, rights and
blood.
The
added benefit to the elite of this robbery of the American taxpayer is
that for every dollar that goes to the Iraq War, to the
military-industrial complex, to the bank accounts of the war profiteers
and the energy corporatists, one less dollar is allocated for social
services, education, healthcare, infrastructure and the general welfare
of the American people. One more dollar taken out through taxes equals
one less dollar in the pocket of the people, thereby eviscerating the
middle class and shifting the burden of war from the wealthy to the
middle and working classes. By gutting the middle class, by putting
severe pressure on its ability to subsist on already diminishing wages,
the elite further separate themselves from the rest of us, increasing
the wealth gap, and by consequence, increasing their power and control
over us as well. When the rich get richer and the poor poorer, only a
nation of fools fails to see who wins and who loses.
As
such, the Iraq War is also a war against the American people, for it is
designed to make us anemic creatures dependent on the decisions of the
elite. It is engineered in part to increase injustice, inequality,
exploitation and dominion over us, robbing us of our power to mobilize
and seek change. By redistributing America’s treasure away from the
people and to the few elite and the corporations, using war as pretext
and fear as a conditioning element, government is being rewired to stop
acting in the interest of the masses. Meanwhile, it is being made to
serve the interests of the corporate world, which have been getting
enormously powerful through the looting of our treasure, under the
rubric of fighting the fictional war on terror and under the illusion
of destroying a nation only to later rebuild it. The shifting of
resources away from what helps the people to what empowers the
corporate world is but one more sign that the age of American
corporatism is upon us.
The
belief that the Iraq War will end once the Bush administration leaves
office, and that American soldiers will return home, is an illusion and
a mirage, a concoction of wishful thinking that has no basis in
reality. America has cemented its presence, firmly planting the
foundations for a long and prolonged occupation. Permanent military
bases have been erected, as has the largest embassy the world has ever
seen. It has manipulated elections so that its puppets are elevated to
the highest echelons of Iraqi power. It has written oil laws favorable
to its interests that it then demands be passed by so called sovereign
Iraqi lawmakers, in essence writing the same laws it needs to make
legal the exploitation and robbery of Iraq’s oil fields.
The
Middle East is the most vital region in the world in terms of energy
allocation and its subsequent strategic control, and is therefore of
tremendous national importance to a nation desiring to elevate itself
to full-fledged empire status. It has controlled the region for
decades now, either by military force, destruction of democracy and
through its large cadre of puppets, and by occupying Iraq with a large
military force, it now possesses a stranglehold on the world’s second
largest energy reserves. And, by making colonies of Afghanistan and
Iraq, by supporting the tyrants of Central Asia, it now surrounds the
third largest oil reserves in the world, namely those of Iran. Its
rich oil and gas fields, now targeted for conquest, are located just
across the Iraq border, within invading distance for American forces,
far away from Tehran, close enough to smell the fumes.
Iraq,
therefore, is a prize that will never be relinquished, and is the
reason America will never extricate herself from the debacle it has
created. No amount of pre-invasion ignorance, occupying incompetence
and blinding arrogance will force America to abandon her cherished
possession. No continued bleeding through a thousand cuts will force
it to return home in defeat. To the architects of empire, there is
more than enough cannon fodder, more than enough treasure from which to
maintain control of Iraq’s oil fields. There is too much invested
already, too much left to gain, too many fragile egos to appease, too
many insecure men to protect, to simply abandon a prize that has been
cherished by the elite for decades.
We
are in Iraq, and though broken by our hands, though destroyed by our
military, she is now ours, for our greed and our love of comfort and
consumerism demands that she be pillaged of her oil and raped of her
sovereignty. Our addiction to her black blood demands that we care
nothing for the plight of her people or for the decimation of her
society. It demands that we cast a blind eye to the holocaust now
taking place there and the ethnic cleansing destroying families and
neighborhoods.
It
demands that we see Iraqis as subhuman brown skinned aliens, their
plight and suffering ignored, their decimation at the hands of our
military and our government lost in hollow memory banks. It is because
of oil, after all, that we can share in the privileges of living in the
wealthiest nation the world has ever known. And so to continue living
in comfort and consumerism, the beast must be fed, it must gorge upon
the dark liquid of the third world, and the deal with the devil must,
invariably, continue well into the future.
As
such, no matter which member of the political duopoly is in the White
House, no matter how loudly the citizenry demands a pullout, the United
States will not leave Iraq in the foreseeable future. The two headed
hydra is, after all, attached to the same body, obeying the same
master. No amount of lies or spin or promises will alter this
reality. We live in the New American Century, after all, where reality
is the domain of those in power. As the will of the people no longer
matters or counts, our voices will be silenced, our growing anger
suppressed. Sure the illusion of troops returning home will be
created, with scenes of families reuniting and hero’s coming home
gracing the airwaves, yet in the real world, back in the land of
permanent bases and rich oil fields, back where enormous and modern
embassies rise on the banks of ancient rivers, tens of thousands of
troops will remain, guarding America’s ultimate prize, the blood that
sustains Empire, comfort and the military-industrial-energy complex.
The
mirage of American troops returning from Iraq with their heads held
high, as always marching triumphantly, as always having defeated evil,
will captivate millions of ignorant but otherwise well-intentioned
Americans. To millions more, however, this charade will be seen for
the fiction that it is, for Iraq will remain a very dangerous place,
especially for energy exploiters and oil conglomerates eager to further
enrich themselves by pillaging a nation blind. Tens of thousands of
American soldiers will remain, we will be told, to secure democracy and
freedom for the Iraqi people, to ensure security in the cities, to make
sure the “democratically” elected puppet is protected from al-Qaeda. We
will be made to think our soldiers need to remain to protect Iraqis
from themselves.
In
truth, tens of thousands of soldiers will establish a permanent
presence in Iraq because the Anglo-American energy consortium will need
protection while it pillages and rapes Iraq of her natural resources.
America’s military will be needed to defend from the targeted sabotage
and rebellion of freedom fighters, from the expected assassinations and
kidnappings of energy workers. It will ask to protect pipelines, oil
fields and their infrastructure; it will be told to suppress strikes
and the rage of Iraqi oil workers. The safety and freedom of Iraqis
will mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of greed and gluttony
and American empire. To the empire, oil trumps blood just as much as
profit trumps people.
Brand Marketing
Of
course to hear the Iraq War apologists tell it, and there are many of
these individuals in government and the corporatist media, America is
in Iraq because we are fighting al-Qaeda, and nobody else. To the
dwindling delusionists and supporters of this illegal war who are
somehow inexplicably still given a voice in the media and in print, the
illusion must be made that America is at war, given this war on terror,
with the dreaded bogeymen from al-Qaeda, those same evildoers who
attacked us on 9/11. This is the only way to keep the charade going in
the minds of millions that America must remain in Iraq, staying the
course, as always knowing that the deeply embedded myth of America
being the epitome of good and always triumphing over evil, epitomized
by whatever convenient scapegoat is needed, will again capture the
minds of the naïve and gullible.
This
fantasy, of course, is the last refuge of scoundrels, for it has been
proven over and over again that only two to five percent of fighters in
Iraq are foreign. But this does not preclude scoundrels from preaching
lies to the congregation nonetheless. A convenient enemy is needed to
validate the Iraq occupation, however, one that has already been
conditioned into the American mind as being nefarious and monstrous.
Indeed,
what America confronts is guerilla warfare in an urban setting. Her
soldiers, sent to protect the interests of the elite and those of the
military-industrial-energy complex, are engaged in a battle against
freedom fighters, the vast majority from Iraq, most common peasants
once living ordinary lives who want nothing more than to rid their land
of the occupying forces. From the beginning of time resistance
fighters have waged war against the more powerful invading and
occupying force, as always using their skills and talents to bleed
their rivals to death.
Like
American Revolutionaries, Iraq’s freedom fighters fight for
independence and freedom, for nationality and to expel foreign forces
from their country. If America or any other nation were invaded and
occupied, resistance fighters would immediately spring up as well,
forming an army of brave patriots using the tactics of the poor to try
and contain the weapons of the much more powerful and wealthier
military. Unfortunately, it is the poor of both countries waging war
against each other, killing and maiming one another, for the benefit of
the wealthy and powerful. Such is war that the poor are always made to
fight each other when it is the elite that is their common enemy.
Yet
the truth of who and what America’s army is fighting can never be
mentioned, for a myth has been embedded into the average American mind
that America is in Iraq to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, not to
fight their freedom fighters or rape their women. Since an occupying
power cannot fully dehumanize a legitimate resistance movement, given
that its cause is nobler than that of the occupying force itself, it
must resort to the realm of fiction and propaganda, concocting lies and
distortions to smear the resistance. Only by making freedom fighters
seem subhuman or evil in the eyes of its people can the occupying force
thereby make it acceptable to mass murder, dehumanize, torture and
illegally detain Iraqis.
Indeed,
resistance movements such as those fighting the American military in
Iraq are allowed under international law. When such an invasion and
subsequent occupation has been proven to be based on lies and deceit,
becoming immoral and illegal, a crime against humanity, any resistance
movement would find broad support among the peoples of the world.
Indeed, these movements are romanticized and applauded, for they become
brave patriots and freedom fighters against criminality, illegality and
immorality. Such was the case with the French resistance against the
Nazis, the Jewish resistance in the ghettos, the plight of blacks in
apartheid South Africa and the struggle of Palestinians against the
oppressive and apartheid methods of the Israelis.
As
such, in order to marginalize and vilify the resistance, in order for
the American populace to accept wanton destruction and killing, in
order to transform individuals fighting for independence and for an end
to occupation, the impression must be made by the creators of reality
that the Iraqi mujahedeen are really al-Qaeda in Iraq, thereby becoming
the central myth of why America is in Iraq and why it must continue to
remain there. This way, the dreaded evildoer extraordinaire, that
entity that continuously haunts the American mind, that bogeyman that
in the original conspiracy theory was said to have brought down World
Trade Center towers 1,2 and 7 through controlled demolitions and at
freefall speed, killing 3,000 innocent Americans in the process, can
continue to spread fear and insecurity in the belief structure of
millions of Americans who, like Pavlovian dogs, cower in fear at the
sound of the word al-Qaeda. It is al-Qaeda, after all, and not Iraq
freedom fighters, who attacked us on 9/11. It is al-Qaeda, after all,
that planned war games on the day of 9/11 and ordered fighter planes to
stand down, not Iraqi resistance fighters.
Thus,
by using the concocted scapegoat of al-Qaeda, having escaped the caves
and mud huts of Afghanistan, this time festering and planning to take
over Iraq if we let them, and hiding the reality of whom exactly the
American military is fighting in Iraq, millions of Americans readily
accept the continued occupation as being beneficial to their own safety
and security. For, as the scoundrels and the liars love to tell us, we
are fighting them there so we do not have to fight them here. If we
leave, we are told, they, being al-Qaeda, will follow us back,
undoubtedly to wage holy jihad in the little towns of Indiana and
Nebraska. This way, the creators of the new reality hide the true
rival in Iraq while at the same time manipulating the American public
into allowing the continued debacle taking place.
As
long as the term al-Qaeda is used in symphony with Iraq, as long as
Iraq and the so-called war on terror are similarly correlated, millions
of Americans will continue to support an occupation that is illegal and
immoral. As such, the Iraqi resistance movement will continue to gain
strength, it will continue to engage the American military, and a war
of attrition will continue to kill and maim both Americans and Iraqis.
This way, a vicious cycle of violence will not cease, for Americans
will continue to associate the need to wage war in Iraq, believing,
albeit mistakenly, that America fights al-Qaeda in the fictional war on
terror, not knowing or understanding the true nature of the rival.
With
violence begetting violence, more resistance fighters will join the
movement, as naturally occurs in a guerilla war against an occupation.
With manipulations and lies, the American people will be made to
believe that al-Qaeda in Iraq is growing more dangerous, that it is
expanding, that it will indeed follow us home if we leave, that it
presents a clear and present danger that must be defeated. Thus, the
ingredients for the endless war the elite have dreamt about for
decades, and the key to staying permanently in Iraq, have managed to
rise out of one nation’s desire to be free of occupation and another’s
systematically damaged and manipulated psyche, born on 9/11, that
freezes in horror and loses all ability to reason and think logically
at the mention of the words al-Qaeda and war on terror. As long as the
term al-Qaeda is used over the airwaves, as long as it retains its
corroding effect, the American people will allow the fictional war on
terror to continue. Such is the damage done by the masters of reality.
Quite
conveniently, then, Iraq’s freedom fighters are morphed by the state
and the corporatist media into al-Qaeda, thereby validating America’s
presence and continued occupation of a nation, and a people, fighting
for her freedom. The liberty and ease by which the apologists of the
war grant al-Qaeda franchises throughout Iraq, indeed, wherever America
seems to pick fights, without even a hint at investigation by the
corporatist media, underlies the fallacy of this myth. Along with the
purported death of probably 100 al-Qaeda’s number two’s, it also
demonstrates the level of propaganda and manipulation the Pentagon and
its lackeys fill the media, and thus our minds with. Truth is the first
casualty of war, after all. Therefore, under the auspices of fighting
terrorism, America can stay and focus on the real and most important
task at hand, namely the complete control, rape and pillage of Iraq’s
oil fields and pipelines.
The Curse of Black Gold
And
so America will continue fighting in Iraq because the state says we are
fighting al-Qaeda, because it blames Iraq’s puppet government for its
own incompetence and ignorance, because it says through its
stenographers and talking heads that the war on terror must be fought,
even if it takes decades to win, and because America is good and
exceptional and she must defeat evil, just as she has always done.
Along with our permanent occupation, we will continue mass murdering,
torturing, dehumanizing and falsely imprisoning hundreds of thousands
of Iraqis whose only crime, whose only curse, is living atop the
devil’s excrement, that dark liquid waiting to be gorged on by a most
greedy, ignorant and arrogant drug addict.
For
when it comes to dominating that black gold called oil, easily
available for conquest in various third world nations, either through
puppets, market colonialism or military might, no dark skinned,
non-European looking human is safe from the tentacles of modern empire,
for soon subhuman you will be called, seen as primitive, as an animal,
needing the “enlightened” hand of Western intervention for salvation.
When the aim of categorizing you as alien, evil and below the
parameters of being human is achieved your family will be murdered,
your people displaced, your life forever altered, your plight ignored.
Your death will never equal that of an American or a British citizen,
for you are a third worlder, a person of the southern globe, bred to be
exploited and oppressed, your lands becoming the feudal estates of
corporatism, your blood, sweat and tears falling only after you have
slaved yourself for the north’s comfort and wealth.
The
death of your son will not be counted, the rape of your daughter will
be dismissed as lies, the dehumanization of your father and the torture
of your brother will never see light of day, for your country has been
targeted as the next petrol station that will invariably be forced to
pay tribute to the purple robe of empire. Whether you live in Nigeria,
Venezuela, the Caspian Sea basin or Iran, it does not matter, for you
live where black gold abounds, where the drug of oil can be found. As
such your lands will become toxic, your air and water filled with
poison. All the while, even as your natural resources are pillaged,
your nation raped, your nation collapsing, you will never see a dime
from the corporations of the empire. For poverty is your destiny, even
as vast wealth lies below your feet. Subsisting on garbage, living in
shacks, your national wealth stolen and embezzled, you thus realize
that the black gold you were told would transform your nation has been
nothing but a terrible curse you wish never existed.
Of
course if you live where the devil’s excrement is bountiful you cannot
help but notice the addiction of the empire, and how maddened it
becomes if its fix is not satiated. You realize that death,
destruction and suffering are the only realities and expectations for
nations not willing to pay tribute to the empire. Thus, if you are not
careful, if you are not ready, the next knock on your door might very
well be that of a most immoral and criminal addict, ready to kill you
and destroy your nation for its next much needed fix. And then you
will automatically become the Empire’s next enemy, its next terrorist
scapegoat, becoming the evildoer chosen to strike fear in the American
populace. Inevitably, your face, your people and your culture will
become the poster children in the next marketing campaign and
psychological war against the American citizenry, designed, as always,
by fascism’s public relations experts, its army of little Goebbels.
Deal With the Devil
America
cannot exorcise itself from its addiction to oil that, like a demon
inside our body, possesses us day and night, demanding that we satisfy
our insatiable thirst for black blood. In this deal with the devil
that we long ago made, we became dependent on a natural resource that,
while not plentiful inside our own shores, is readily abundant in the
Middle East, Central Asia, West Africa and Venezuela. For this reason
the Middle East has become a militarized region, a vast feudal estate
owned by the masters and lords of energy, protected by the Empire
itself. For this reason it has become the world’s most volatile and
sought after region. Inside its borders puppets and despots and
proctors overlook America’s oil fields, proclaiming themselves princes,
kings and presidents, as always oppressing and exploiting their people,
as always overseeing the empire’s interests.
In
our deal with the devil, the more we taste the more we want; the more
we continue to grow the bigger we want to get. The more powerful we
are the greedier and more gluttonous we become, expanding the size of
everything we own, including our stomachs. Millions of us believe oil
is abundant, as if it grows yearly in some global breadbasket.
Millions of us fail to understand that hundreds of thousands of human
beings are killed and maimed, and tens of millions live in perpetual
indigence and oftentimes are forced to confront armed conflict because
of our insatiable addiction to oil. Millions of us fail to see that it
is our standards of living, our greed and gluttony, that contributes to
so much misery and destruction worldwide.
Yet
year after year our greed compels us toward ever larger vehicles and
homes, bigger toys and an exponentially growing consumption habit.
Through our actions it seems that we care nothing for the planet or its
inhabitants, instead filling our minds with the arrogance and apathy of
a spoiled child, transforming ourselves into a most insecure schoolyard
bully. We behave as if we are entitled to what does not belong to us,
in essence forcing the school’s other kids to give us their lunch
money, threatening with violence those that decline or stand up for
themselves.
Our
greed and gluttony, our indifference and arrogance, our insistence on
maintaining and even expanding our standards of living, all at the
expense of the planet and its people, is the reason we invade, occupy
and exploit weaker nations. It is the reason Iraq is in chaos, why
Nigeria is on the verge of full rebellion, why Central Asia is full of
despotic leaders and why Venezuela is vilified. It will be the reason
why Russia and China will in the years ahead become rivals and enemies,
why more and more people around the globe hate America and why we spend
more on military equipment and weapons than the entire world put
together. It is when we look in the mirror that the devil’s excrement
can be seen, acting like an aura around our head, smearing our face
with the darkness of wickedness and the madness of addiction.
We
can continue believing the exceptionalism of America, the grandeur of
her virtues, that of her leaders and her people, yet reality and truth
are altogether different, presenting circumstances too uncomfortable
for us to contemplate yet important enough to try and understand. We
can continue living the delusion of myth and the charade of the
American Dream. We can continue being brainwashed and conditioned that
our way of life is the only way of life, that the world entire must
conform to this way of life, and that bogeymen hate us for said way of
life. Yet to confront the evil’s done in our name by the government we
elect or fail to stop, we must realize that in many ways, we are to be
blamed, we are guilty in failing to act, in putting a stop to an
unsustainable standard of living.
Until
we realize the damage we do around the planet so that we may live in
comfort, so that we may enjoy the highest standards of living humans
have ever had, so that we may drive giant SUVs and live in expansive,
heated and air-conditioned homes, America will remain in Iraq
indefinitely, her military garrisoned inside bases clustered around oil
fields, facilities and pipelines. Until we confront the predatory
capitalism that is turning America into a corporatist state and the
world into a giant sweatshop Iraq and others like it will continue.
Until we look ourselves in the mirror and realize that it is our
failure to act and alter a doomed course, that it is our indifference
to the damage our lifestyles cause Earth, we will finally grasp that it
is ourselves, more than anything else, that are the reason we will
remain in Iraq long into the future, for our way of life must be
maintained and fed through the world’s last remaining petroleum
reserves.
Until
we realize our gluttony and greed, until we decide to put a stop to our
addiction and arrogance, a new version of Iraq will metastasize every
decade or so, popping up somewhere around the globe where black gold
exists, every time new oil fields are needed to expand our economy or
our comfort level, causing untold suffering and destruction in the
process, resulting in resistance, conflict and a ever-growing hatred of
America. To feed itself the empire thus needs to increase its military,
it thus needs to maintain over 750 bases worldwide. To feed its
peoples’ ever-growing greed and gluttony, its ever expanding waistline,
Iraq must remain within the empire’s violent and voracious claws,
becoming a colony of imperialism, to be exploited and raped.
No
amount of propaganda or brainwashing or delusion or denial can make
extinct this truth. We are thus stuck in Iraq for the long term, for
her resources and land is needed to sustain and maintain the America we
live in. To believe the empire will ever leave voluntarily is to live
in delusion and fall prey to the myths of our conditioning. We have
made a deal with the devil, and now we must pay its consequences.
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