I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.
~ Alan Greenspan (from his memoirs, September 2007)
As the president surreptitiously departed off to Iraq and Afghanistan for his final victory tour earlier this week to bask in the two identifiable foreign policy “victories” in an otherwise unremarkable eight years as president, Bush was jubilant. The Iraqi government he helped installed welcomed him as an honored statesman; the adoring crowds that followed him shouted words of welcome and gratitude. Nevertheless, there was a nagging malaise in the air – something amiss, something sinister in the land of the Garden of Eden.
After several meetings with top Iraqi officials, it was time for the perfunctory press conference, when Chaos appeared at Destiny’s door, reared his ugly head and said … “Whut’s uuupppp!?!”
An irate Iraqi journalist, a Sunni Muslim and devotee of Saddam Hussein, was angry at President Bush and exercised his freedom of speech rights, stood up in the middle of the press conference and did the unthinkable. The event reads it part:
The president successfully ducked both throws. Photos show him with his head down near the top of the podium. The embarrassing incident marred a visit meant to show off the improved conditions since the troop “surge” dramatically reduced casualties to U.S. troops.
“This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” the journalist shouted (in Arabic), Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reported in a pool report to the White House press corps.
Myers reported that the man threw the second shoe and added: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”
Journalists at the scene said the hurler was Muntadar al-Zaidi, a reporter for Al-Baghdadia TV, an independent satellite channel based in Cairo.
Remember: No good deed goes unpunished.
The good news was Bush had quick reflexes, like he was expecting this insult and wasn’t hit by the shoes, the bad news is the picture of Bush ducking at a news conference in Iraq will be his eternal legacy – incompetence, insult and dishonor.
Conservative intellectual Michael Savage was right all along, but few people listened. Savage contended that at the start of the Iraq war in February 2003 that Bush should have gone straight to the Iraqi oil fields, put them under American authority and started shipping oil tankers filled with black gold back to the U.S.
Why? To pay the $1 trillion war debt we incurred fighting this miserable, ill-defined war for over five years, longer than World War II. Why? To make the 4,200-plus American soldiers who gave their lives have a tangible reason for their heroic service to their country other than the invisible “weapons of mass destruction.”
Admittedly, Bush would have had to endure the caterwauling from the liberal left of, “War of oil,” “No blood for oil!” but most Americans would accept the rationale for the Iraq war for the following reasons:
- America fought the war in Iraq to remove an evil, irascible dictator hell-bent on destabilizing the Middle East;
- America set up a viable Iraqi government in that strategic area;
- America exercised hegemony in the Middle East, replenished our oil reserves here in America;
- America drove down gas prices to pre-1990s levels;
- America retired the escalating debt and fought a war as the Roman Empire did in antiquity – we fought a war for a profit not a net loss.
Who but the most reactionary liberal could argue against this kind of reasoning for the Iraq war?
But with President Bush, it was not to be. Instead of being Ronald Reagan II, Bush was Bush II. He is indeed his father’s son. Not only that, Bush didn’t even fight the war as competently as his father, who in Operation Desert Storm (1991) completed his task in 100 days, yet allowed Saddam Hussein to escape and exact revenge on the Kurds by the thousands, raised taxes, squandered a 91 percent approval rating as a wartime president and set the stage 12 years later in 2003 for the son to further denigrate America’s international standing by the bumbling, stumbling way Bush has fought Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Who got the oil? – It seems like everybody but America. The ingrate Iraqis recently took a break from daily burning Bush in effigy, chanting “death to Israel” and denigrating the American flag to give a 20-year exclusive oil rights contract to our avowed geopolitical enemy – China.
With all of the financial problems America is having since the collapse of the financial markets, banking, mortgage, auto industries, and even with the several states, wouldn’t five years of free Iraqi oil have gone a long way toward defraying the exorbitant costs of this war and mitigate the ill effects of these historic financial crises that have befallen the nation?
Summarily and efficiently winning the war in Iraq, President Bush could have gone down in history like President Truman, who decisively finished FDR’s war in 1945 (World War II). To coin a phrase from Godfather I, Bush could have been our “Wartime Consigliore.” However, by not confiscating the Iraqi oil fields and sending free oil to America until Iraq’s war debt was paid in full, Bush has instead been embarrassed by an obscure little Iraqi journalist who vividly and outrageously demonstrated Iraqi ingratitude to America for saving their people and their country.
Bishop T.D. Jakes once said in a sermon on the Old Testament judge Gideon – “Listen at the gossip.” What this means is sometimes God will speak through your enemies to predict your deliverance or to outline a winning strategy for you to effectively deal with geopolitical tragedies like war if you have an ear to hear.
After Bush launched Operation Iraqi Freedom in February 2003 to overthrow the evil Saddam Hussein and to destroy his weapons of mass destruction, liberals crowed, “Bush went to war for oil.” Instead of being defensive, Bush and his advisers should have replied, “That’s a great idea, since we’ve got to pay for this war. A ‘war for oil’ policy will give tax relief to the American people by lowering the cost of domestic energy consumption until the war is won.” However, it wasn’t to be, because Bush seems comfortable with his own bewildering mind and not at all interested in hearing wise counsel from his own foreign policy advisers.
Nevertheless, there is an unintended blessing from this appallingly embarrassing shoe incident in Iraq … at least President Bush won’t have to wait for the other shoe to drop.
