Adonis Diaries

Why the invasion of Iraq? Because of China! (May 3, 2007)

I am sick and tired reading whole books about the two dozens probable causes for the invasion of the US to Iraq.   Most of these causes sound as by-products or side consequences that belittle the over one million dead and as many Iraqis injured.  It is hubris to maintain that the whole US administration is a bunch of Christian Conservatives with religious agenda and that every one in the administration and policy makers was fouled about the real objective of this invasion. It hubris to believing that the intelligence of the CIA and other European and Russian sources of surveillance of the non availability of arms of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein were not confirmed. 

Some Arab leaders went as far as claiming that George W. Bush was forced to divulge the real aim as drawing the Al Qaeda terrorists into Iraq instead of the USA soil, as if Afghanistan was not the ideal place to draw, encircle and fight Al Qaeda.  The invasion of Iraq was in fact the center policy, though non public, of the Bush team for the Republican candidates’ selection campaign: this invasion was planned and executed because of the economical expansion of China, period. 

China was the only giant capable to effectively check the world hegemony of the USA even before the fall of the Berlin Wall.  China is becoming fast the biggest importer of oil and has been investing heavily in Africa, in oil fields of Sudan, Nigeria and the Congo.  China’s balance of payment with the US is positive in the hundred of billions of dollars and the biggest importer of technologies and the largest exporter of the affordable items of every kind.  

The US wanted to physically control the largest oil reserve in the world so that it could pressure China to continue buying the US bonds and infuse the US treasury with unlimited amount of liquidity, in an economy suffering from chronic deficit by the trillions of dollars.  The US wanted to continue the control of the oil market price, raising it when China export more to the US and lowering it when China encourages importation of US goods and services.

It is the same old control of market prices that the colonizing powers exercised for centuries.  In 1923, the USA forced Great Britain to repay the guaranteed loaned to the Balkan countries during WWI; Great Britain obliged and the USA realized that this Empire was actually repaying money generated from the private US citizens.  How?  It turned out that Great Britain was the sole exporter of rubber from its colonies in India and Malawi and it kept increasing the prices of caoutchouk (rubber) and the Ford Motor company had to pay the price and the US citizens had to buy cars at a higher price for the increased cost of tire production .  This was the primary cause that the US multinationals forced Congress to change the laws of land ownership in the US colony of the Philippines so that these multinationals might grow caoutchouk trees on vast areas.

The invasion of Iraq was bipartisan with the tacit agreement of the Democratic Party and the major US news media.  The main G8 economical powers knew exactly the main purpose of that invasion but it is taboo to hang the dirty clothes in front of the third world to see, even for their own citizens: France, Germany and Russia had heavy commercial interests with China and made sure that the UN would not give a green light for that enterprise.  The US and Britain undertook it on their own; Blair had to lie to his citizens through his teeth because he could not let the US down at the expense of irking China.

What was to be a slam dunk affair turned sour after three years in the Iraqi morass; the US people coughed up already a trillion dollars with no tangible returns except a few billions dollars contracts for rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure by a few US and British companies such as Halliburton.  The Iraqi oil fields were to increase its production to over 3 million barrels a day but it is barely exporting half a million as of 2006; the US was to keep troops in Iraq but this is becoming very doubtful. It appears that the US has to settle for a Federated Iraq instead of a central government at its direct order and, at least, the US might enjoy total control of the oil production in the Kurdish enclave of Mossoul and Kirkuk.  The southern Shiaas who were becoming Iraqi nationalists are reverting to an Iranian control of influence as it has been historically. 

Israel was the only winner so far in that masquerade of weakening a central Iraqi government but could not achieve total victory because the 2006 July War against Hezbollah and Lebanon resulted in a debacle and a resurgence of the resistance spirit among the Islamic and Arab peoples.  The Olmert PM government is teetering and Israel political structure based on militarism is undergoing a serious revision.  The USA has realized that Israel is no longer a viable heavy stick it can rely on to scare off the resistance to further expansion, oppression, and apartheid policies.

The strategy of the US to have physical control of the oil fields in Iraq could be understood in a global world hegemony policy but the tactics were flawed, ill conceived and immature. How could you expect 140,000 invading soldiers, totally ignorant of the language and the culture of the Arabs and Moslems and who have been bombarded for four decades of heavily skewed propaganda describing Arabs as illiterate, pre-historic and terrorists, to behave as a civilized army?  This invading army entered Iraq as if coming to an exotic territory, already terrified and terrifying a whole population by brute and nervous heavy handedness, shooting at civilians, torturing randomly, flaunting the Geneva Convention code of conducts in occupied territories; behaviors that were frequently described as psychotic reactions to an unwelcome land. 

What was to be a slam dunk US invasion turned out a slam dunk opportunity to the Chinese government because China signed lately an important energy agreement with Russia; a 3,000 kilometer oil pipeline is underway and 500 kilometers are already achieved.  China has also infiltrated Africa with heavy investment in energy and rare minerals fields and the US is now highly eager to replace the European Union for high tech export items to China in order to lure increased bond liquidity in its coffer and reduce its commercial balance of payment with the vast country experiencing the strongest rate of development in this decade.