It's About The Oil

A couple of months ago, I posted on the sudden attention being paid to Africa, a continent the Bush administration had pretty much ignored. Under the aegis of the military, AFRICOM was ostensibly set up to provide services normally assigned to the State Department and aid agencies: painting schools and digging wells. The real purpose of the new program, however, was pretty clear. It was to protect major oil companies' interests in the region. In an article written originally for Foreign Policy in Focus, and reprinted at Asia Times Online, policy analyst Antonia Juhasz points out just why the US is embarking on this new military adventure.

"A key mission for US forces [in Africa] would be to insure that Nigeria's oilfields, which in the future could account for as much as 25% of all US oil imports, are secure," explains General Charles Wald, deputy commander of US forces in Europe in an interview with Wall Street Journal writer Greg Jaffe.

To secure and maintain access to oil, if not for the nation, then most certainly for our oil companies, the Bush administration has increasingly turned toward the US military. Author Kevin Phillips coined the term "petrol-imperialism" to describe the Bush administration's policies in this regard, "the key aspect of which is the US military’s transformation into a global oil protection force". Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, the Bush administration has implemented the greatest realignment of US forces since the end of the Cold War. With a map of Big Oil's overseas operations, the world's remaining oil reserves, and oil transport routes, one can now track the realignment and predict future deployments of the US military. [Emphasis added]

We've discovered via the Iraq War just how expensive using the military to protect oil companies' interests can be, and just how devastating. Even assuming that the misadventure in Iraq will wind up costing only $1 trillion dollars (and that's a conservative estimate), the waste of lives and national integrity will wind up costing the US considerably more.

Instead of pouring that kind of national treasure into the back pockets of oil companies, which deal in a product that ultimately is limited, we should be pouring money and resources into the development of alternative sources of energy. A trillion dollars would go a long way into refining and reducing the costs of solar and wind power, for example.

And then we also wouldn't be having these bogus arguments over drilling offshore and in ANWR (site of about a month's worth of oil for US use). Let the oil companies fund their own police forces. I understand Blackwater has some nice specials available this time of year.