Why Saddam Is Important

Let us roll up our sleeves and be frank. The United States did not enter Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. Nor was the euphemism of Saddam being a "threat to his neighbours" -- read the state of Israel, not Kuwait or Iran on Iraq's borders -- credible. The United States waged war on Iraq because the oil economy is on death row. At current rates of consumption, it has 35 years left. So the world's most oil-dependent economy, backed by the world's least ethically educated military, took advantage of the opportunity of the "new Pearl Harbour" that was 11 September in one of the most audacious moves in the history of power politics. But ours must be an infamous age, because none could tell the truth of what was really in play. Every justification, bar the honest one, was evoked: weapons of mass destruction, Saddam's regional ambition, ties to Al-Qaeda and the events of 9/11, gross human rights violations. While the majority of the world's population instinctively understood the lie, corporate media -- fearful of government disfavour -- fell into line. The best we get now is "We should have probed deeper." Yet truth was on the surface. Who but the gullible or idle was convinced by Powell's UN performance? Not even he is proud of it. And who believed Hans Blix had a free hand, or that anyone would have listened if his final report contradicted what had already been decided, as indeed it did?

The neocons who staged a coup d'etat in Washington in 2000 prepared for regime change in Iraq in the 1990s. This was their contribution to the legacy of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Everything now was possible. And by the time they were ready, Saddam wasn't playing ball. On 1 November 2000, Iraq began selling oil in euros, and others (Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Libya) soon followed. Later Iraq converted its $10 billion reserve fund at the UN, also to euros. So in the aftermath of the 7 November 2000 presidential election, with a supplicant media and collapsed domestic opposition, time was not merely ripe but urgent. Having seized enough room for manoeuvre, the Republican right dusted off their wildest dreams, driven by their gravest nightmares. If the oil economy were to shift to euros (the US long having forced the situation whereby OPEC oil sales would be transacted only in dollars, in exchange -- particularly in the case of Saudi Arabia -- for security guarantees), the American economy would collapse. This is the context surrounding the secret deliberations of the Bush energy policy task force in early 2001. All indications are that this was also the time when the draconian measures later embodied in the Patriot Act, Patriot Act II and the Homeland Security Bill were drafted. The ground was being prepared not only for the destruction of Iraq, but ahead of the global war sure to occur -- most likely in the middle period of this century -- as capitalism confronts the largest challenge it has ever faced: the end of the oil economy, and the dollar economy with it.

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Why Saddam is important (Al-Ahram Weekly)

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