Slop Will Eat Itself
Today’s David Ignatius column merits all the attention of some C-list warblogger’s “Indeed!” but one passage contains a grace note on the theme of “Iraq Forever, Just Because”:
Leaders on both sides endorse the broad strategy proposed in December by the Iraq Study Group: a gradual withdrawal that shifts the American mission to training, force protection, counterterrorism and border security.
Most of the passage comes pre-rebutted by Steven Biddle in yesterday’s edition of the same paper that keeps running Ignatius. (And by Cernig, and Eric Martin, and me, and Yglesias, and the Center for American Progress, but Biddle got the most prominent placement.) “Training” is a plan for equipping and developing better militia members and insurgents. “Counterterrorism” is a loophole that nullifies any supposed scheme to curtail US involvement in Iraq, since by US definition any opposition to the American presence or the Maliki government is terrorism. There’s no argument that a reduced force could provide effective “border security,” though on its face the idea seems like a dandy way to increase the likelihood of incidents with Syrian, Iranian and maybe Turkish troops. And oh yes, entangle the US military with a smuggling economy that probably keeps Iraq from being even more of a basket case.
But you’ve got to love the idea of “force protection” as a main mission. The US military could stay in Iraq for the purpose of trying to keep its members from being killed for being in Iraq. There’s a stirring cause. I know a much more effective “force protection” plan, which I call “get the hell out.”
This is what they’re down to: inertia. The “bipartisan” compromise the Ignatiuses of the world envision is that we stay in Iraq so that we can stay in Iraq. Because if we pulled out of Iraq, well, we wouldn’t be there any more.
Comment by Tim —
July 12, 2007 @ 8:20 am
This is pretty much the crap you get when they can’t mention the real reason, oil. The more money they spend, the less likely they are to leave iraq without something to show for it.
Comment by Mona —
July 12, 2007 @ 9:10 am
Jim, not to argue — I not consider myself incompetent to have an opinion on partial draw-down v. total withdrawal — but even war critics like Zinni and Powell say we’d have to leave a troop presence in the region, if not in Iraq.
Comment by DanF —
July 12, 2007 @ 9:12 am
Tim – Who says they aren’t seeing something for their efforts? NOT pumping Iraqi oil is beneficial for certain people. You have seen the obscene profits the oil companies have posted lately, yes? Iraq is sitting on the second largest oil reserve in the world. Our policy (and British policy) have effectively kept that oil from being pumped at anywhere near capacity for the last thirty plus years.
If American oil companies were to control the fields, then I think we’d be happy to let them pump more oil. If we pump, we keep the cash and have a nice reserve of oil under our control. If we don’t pump, profits soar. The only way Bush and his oil buddies lose is by not being there with US troops to either keep the conflict going and oil production low or quell the conflict enough to install a friendly government and take all the marbles. Since the latter is not likely to happen, he’ll settle for keeping production low.
Something to think about at least.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
July 12, 2007 @ 9:30 am
we’d have to leave a troop presence in the region, if not in Iraq.
Well, but that’s a big difference, isn’t it? Kind of like the difference between having troops south and north of the 38th parallel in Korea.
Comment by Eric Martin —
July 12, 2007 @ 9:49 am
Agree with lemeul. I’m more amenable to some type of presence in Jordan, or in the Gulf states that currently play host to our military.
But keeping troops in Iraq is a recipe for certain disaster. See, ie, 2003-2007.
Comment by Mona —
July 12, 2007 @ 9:58 am
Eric writes:
Ok, I get that — but is it what Powell and Zinni are saying? My take is they think some presence also in Iraq. Am I wrong?
If not, is there a credible reason for them to hold that view?
Comment by ajay —
July 12, 2007 @ 10:40 am
The US military could stay in Iraq for the purpose of trying to keep its members from being killed for being in Iraq. There’s a stirring cause. I know a much more effective “force protection†plan, which I call “get the hell out.â€
No, no, no. You see, if our troops leave, the terrorists will follow them home.
They have to not be killed over there so we can not be killed over here. (stolen from Doonesbury)
Comment by dsquared —
July 12, 2007 @ 10:41 am
It’s astonishing how many folk tunes can be used as the basis for the old trench song “We’re here because we’re here”; I so far count Auld Lang Syne, Bladon Races, Ilkley Moor and the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Comment by Steven Taylor —
July 12, 2007 @ 10:56 am
There is no doubt that the major reason that we have a stake in the Middle East in general is oil. However, I have long been flummoxed by the argument that access to Iraqi oil was the main motivation for this enterprise–given that if we really wanted access to Iraqi oil, Saddam would have been more than happy to sell it to us, and, no doubt, more than happy to allow US oil companies contracts to work Iraqi oil fields.
If it was really just about the oil, there were easier ways to get it.
Comment by bill —
July 12, 2007 @ 11:04 am
Cheaper ways too. The problem isn’t the supply of oil, it is keeping oil profits from paying for terrorism. Look at Saudi Arabia, for example.
Comment by Eric Martin —
July 12, 2007 @ 11:18 am
Ok, I get that — but is it what Powell and Zinni are saying?
IIRC, Zinni is for keeping a force in Iraq. My guess is Powell likely agrees.
Others, though, are on the “over the horizon” bandwagon. Like Lawrence Korb, Flynt Leverett and Steven Simon, to name a few.
Biddle’s in the kitty as well, obviously.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
July 12, 2007 @ 11:27 am
Re oil, of course it’s true that Saddam would have sold it to us, as would Iran and anyone else. The notion is that at some point in the not too distant future, the world price of oil is going to rise to the point of causing serious economic disruptions, at which point we won’t want to be paying the world price. Military power is needed to shut other purchasers out of the market and thereby lower the price to the US.
I don’t know that this was a major motivation of the war, but it’s the only oil-related one that really makes sense.
Comment by "Charles Dodgson" —
July 12, 2007 @ 11:31 am
… who, before the war, had done more to succor terrorism and Islamic extremism than Saddam ever did. (Saddam came to power as a secular Baathist, and only started cozying up to his own local radicals after his regime was weakened in the wake of the first Gulf War).
Also, Saddam’s oil revenue was under moderately tight control, via the oil-for-food program. He diverted some funds, to be sure — but he needed those for maintenance on his palaces, and keeping the shell of his army together; at the time, he had too much trouble at home to go looking for more abroad.
So, even if the goal was to keep oil revenue away from terrorists, attacking Saddam was a dumb way to do it…
Comment by Ishikawa —
July 12, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
If coalition forces did pull out, who are the Iraqi’s going to blame for man eating badgers
Comment by Tim —
July 12, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
However, I have long been flummoxed by the argument that access to Iraqi oil was the main motivation for this enterprise–given that if we really wanted access to Iraqi oil, Saddam would have been more than happy to sell it to us, and, no doubt, more than happy to allow US oil companies contracts to work Iraqi oil fields.
I suspect that not having to buy oil at market prices was the whole point, whether Saddam would sell it or not. Especially since shortly China will be able to outbid us for what’s remaining.
Comment by bill —
July 12, 2007 @ 3:49 pm
Do you think that for some reason the US is going to be able to buy oil for less than the market price, from Iraq or anyplace else? Think again.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
July 12, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
Bill-
There’s no reason in principle that the oil market couldn’t be artificially segmented into the US plus the Middle East (and whatever other producers we can shanghai in, like Mexico and Venezuela) on the one hand, and the rest of the world on the other. Then the market price will be lower than in a single world market on our side of the partition, and higher for Europe and East Asia and whoever else ends up on that side.
Of course you’d get some smuggling as a result of the price differential, but not that much — oil is bulky and you can’t really sail tankers around unobserved.
A single global market for commodities like oil is historically the exception rather than the rule.
Comment by Thoreau —
July 12, 2007 @ 7:52 pm
lemuel-
My hunch is that the blockade would fail miserably. Given the stakes, I imagine that every trick in the book would be employed to get around the artificially segmented market. Smugglers tend to be smarter than governments.
Of course, we’d have every incentive in the world to fight the smugglers. The result would be war for oil.
Which is kind of where we’re at. Or at least we’re fighting a war for control of an oil-rich country, which may or may not make economic sense. (I don’t think it does.)
Comment by Jon —
July 13, 2007 @ 5:19 am
Well, it doesn’t make economic sense for the America as a whole. But who cares? The Americans who profit and the Americans paying are not the same people. And it’s the Americans who profit who are making the decisions.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
July 13, 2007 @ 11:49 am
Thoreau-
You might be right, I don’t know. Altho it’s easier to control trade in a bulk commodity like oil than in most stuff, and the partition doesn’t have to be 100% effective to maintain a significant price difference.
But I’m not arguing that this actually would work, only that it’s the only sense in which “control of oil” is a meaningful objective.
Comment by MRW —
July 13, 2007 @ 6:57 pm
I thought the “pre-rebutted” in the first link actually read “prebutted”, which I found a clever new term.
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 13, 2007 @ 7:06 pm
Actually, “prebutted” is practically a standard word now.
Comment by roger —
July 14, 2007 @ 3:48 pm
I think there are several scenarios involving oil that make sense. One is simply about rollback. Baghdad is, after all, the place where OPEC was born, and whether or not Saddam would “sell us” the oil, the oil fields would not likely have been privatized under Saddam Hussein. Privatization is a big issue in the Gulf region – and not only the privatizing of oil companies, but the privatizing of a whole host of other state supported companies as well. Yet, even Kuwait went back on its proposal to privatize its oil industry in 2000. The fundamental change in the Middle East in the fifties was the wresting of the elements of primary product export from the oil cartels, and that has never set well with the West.
Luckily, we don’t really have to guess about what the Bushies wanted vis a vis the oilfields, since they wrote the oil law. We can see what they wanted in black and white, and it isn’t state oil companies getting back on line, it is the Gulf states and, eventually, all petroleum producing states getting a share of oil revenue that is about the percentage they got back in 1957. It seems pretty simple, to me. Break the state monopolies, break OPEC, exert an old hegemony over the oil industry and oil policies in the oil exporting states. You have to begin somewhere, and Iraq has a satisfying symbolic value.
It didn’t work, however, and in 2007 , more oil fields are in the hands of state companies, globally, than ever before. I guess rollback’s a bitch.