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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E, OCTEMBER 2003
The increasingly unfavorable balance of power in the
Middle East was used by the oil companies as a justification for
the rape of wilderness areas in Alaska and on the West Coast
for oil development and for the massive expansion of the
nuclear power industry in the 1970s. Fortunately, however,
other forces in the U.S. were finding more realistic responses
to the crisis — such as energy conservation and development
of renewable energy sources and alternative fuels. By the late
1970s, energy demand had ceased growing in the U.S., contra
dicting predictions such as that of the Ford Foundation in 1974
that energy demand would only continue to be present at an
ever-accelerating rate. In 1975, Congress passed the Energy
Policy & Conservation Act that mandated both automobile fuel
efficiency standards and the creation of the Federal Strategic
Petroleum Reserve, an underground emergency oil storehouse
designed to cushion the U.S. from the impact of any future
embargoes. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter established the
Federal Solar Energy Research Institute.
Nonetheless, American reliance on Middle East oil
remained overwhelming. The principle U.S. sources now that
IPC had been taken over by Iraq were Aramco in Saudi Arabia
and the Shah of Iran’s dictatorship — which was having to resort
to ever more brutal methods to maintain its grip on power in the
face of growing unrest.
The nationalist regimes in the Arab world were basically
modeled after that of Nasser's Egypt — secular and socialist,
supported by Soviet military and economic aid despite the fact
these regimes frequently persecuted their own Communists.
This Arab nationalist camp was not monolithic — it was divided
by bitter rivalries such as that between Iraq's Saddam Hussein
and Syria’s Hafez Assad, who led opposing factions in the Arab
nationalist/socialist Ba ath Party. However, in 1979 the Shah of
Iran fell to a revolution that brought a new kind of nationalist
regime to power — the fundamentalist Islamic theocracy of
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, equally hostile to both the U.S.
and the USSR. The U.S. lost yet another Middle East oil main
stay, prompting a second petroleum squeeze almost as severe
as the one of 1973-74. Pro-Khomeini students seized hostages
at the U.S. embassy in Iran to press their demands for the life of
the ousted Shah.Pro-Khomeini guerrillas briefly seized the Great
Mosque in the Islamic holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia in an
effort to launch a second fundamentalist revolution but were
shortly dislodged by Saudi forces. Skillful media manipulation
of the hostage crisis created a wave of jingoism and xenophobia
in the U.S. that swept Ronald Reagan to the Presidency in the
1980 elections. President Reagan quickly reversed the progress
toward conservation and energy efficiency.Yuppie extravagance
and resurgent militarism became the theme of the decade.
It was also in 1980 that Iraq’s army invaded Iran, spark
ing a war that lasted eight years and cost over a million lives.
Portraying himself as the defender of Arab nationalism from
the threat of Iran’s brand of Islamic theocracy, Iraq’s Saddam
Hussein succeeded in securing funding for his war effort from
the oil-rich Persian Gulf ministates — especially Kuwait, which
was awash in Japanese yen. Iraq purchased arms from the
USSR and France while Iran relied on the massive military that
had been built up by the U.S. under the Shah.
United States involvement in the Iran/lraq War bore
hallmarks of schizophrenia. Certain sectors were apparently
relieved that two of the U.S.'s biggest potential enemies in the
Middle East were busy hurling rockets at each other’s capitals
and slaughtering each other’s draftees. In 1986, Reagan’s secret
'Contragate’ network smuggled a huge shipment of sophisticated
antitank missiles to Iran, using Israel as a conduit (and using the
profits to fund rightwing rebels in Nicaragua). However, the U.S.
generally considered Iran to be the greater threat, and when
Iranian officials leaked the secret deal to a Lebanese newspaper
the following year, exposing Iran/Contra and subsequent
Congressional probe, the U.S. started to “tilt" toward Iraq.
American warships were sent to the Persian Gulf, ostensibly to
protect Kuwaiti oil tankers (which were hauling both Kuwaiti and
Iraqi oil, mostly to Japan) from Iranian attack, even though most
of the interruptions in Persian Gulf shipping were caused by Iraqi
attacks on Iranian ships. U.S. involvement climaxed in 1988
when U.S. warships laid waste to an Iranian oil rig, and a U.S.
missile cruiser “accidentally” shot an Iranian civilian airliner out
of the sky, killing all 290 passengers, including 66 children.
This “tilt" toward Iraq was apparently unaffected by the
fact it was Iraq that launched a missile attack on the L/SS Stark,
crippling the ship and killing 37 American sailors — or by Iraq’s
unprovoked poison gas attack on a remote Kurdish market city
within its own territory, instantly killing 5,000 civilians and maim
ing 7,000 others, a simple act of genocide against an ethnic
THE OIL WAR MEMORIAL
The Oil War memorial should be black. It's a good
color for war memorials. Black for the color of crude oil. Black
for the hearts of those whose greed demands lives. Black for
the filth they have smeared in our skies, bled on our beaches,
excreted across our economies.
It should soar above our heads, like the Washington
Monument or the Statue of Liberty. Its awesome mass will
remind us of how small we puny citizens are to the privileged
few. Those persons in government and industry who decided
decades ago (and now) that we should follow the policies of
waste and greed. A broad cylinder of featureless black, gently
rimmed at a few regular spaces down its length A vast oil
drum. Perhaps a reflecting pool of the turgid liquid at its base
There should be no names on this one. Already its victims
number in the billions. Billions whose lives have been adversely
affected by the renewed frenzy over energy costs. Where is
room for all those names?
The Monument should be in the center of a great
circular amphitheater. It should be able to seat thousands
to remind us of how we all watched the Gulf War unfold on
the Flickering Blue Eye. Our government does not need to
put things in our houses to watch us, they know where we
are every night, and they tell us all what to believe
It would be hard to send a replica of this Memorial
all around the country as we did with the Vietnam Memorial.
Instead, we could remember the war by reeducating ourselves
We could teach each other how to break the addiction to
waste.
-LOUIS ALVIS
(NOTE, October 1990)
minority not even involved in the war. In the meantime the
Reagan/Bush(Sr.) administration authorized shipment of deadly
chemical agents and biocides to Iraq when it got rattled over the
prospect of Iran threatening Iraq on the Basra front which was
believed would destabilize Kuwait, the Gulf States and Saudi
Arabia and jeopardize U.S. oil supplies.
The Iran/lraq War prompted dramatic changes in the
world oil economy. In 1986, in an effort to weaken Iran, Saudi
Arabia’s powerful oil minister, Shiek Zaki Yamani, induced
the other Arab states to follow his nation’s lead in raising oil
production, with the effect of lowering prices. The global market
was instantly glutted and oil prices plummeted. Although oil-
producing areas such as Texas, Alaska and Southern California
were hurt economically, U.S. policy makers were overjoyed.
It was the exact opposite of 1973-74. Iran, with a war effort to
finance, was furious and started making veiled threats about
instigating fundamentalist Shiite Muslim rebellions within Saudi
borders: Saudi Arabia, like most Arab nations, is dominated by
the less orthodox Sunni Muslims, while Iran is predominantly
Shiite.
In July 1987, Shiite Muslims making their pilgrimage to
Islam's holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, rioted, battling Saudi
police in the holy city itself, resulting in 400 dead. Shiek Yamani
was ousted as Saudi oil minister, a post he had regarded as
permanent, and Saudi oil production quickly slowed down. Yet
regional production levels never returned to pre-glut levels and
Iran continued to assail Saudi Arabia for not doing enough to
pressure the other Arab states to roll back production, which
helps to explain the U.S. tilt toward Iraq.
Due to less favorable geology and technology, Iran must
spend far more money than the Arab states to extract oil. (The
U.S., due to still less favorable geology, must spend even more,
which is why the U.S. relies heavily on Middle East oil despite
sizable domestic sources, especially in Alaska.) Therefore Iran
was seriously hurt by the glut while Saudi Arabia, the Gulf minis
tries and even war-stricken Iraq could ride it out.
But while good for American motorists, the glut caused
economic crises in oil-producing nations that had nothing what
ever to do with the intrigues in the Middle East, such as Mexico
and Nigeria. The value of the Mexican peso took a nosedive,
while the military repressed a wave of angry labor protest in
Nigeria.
In 1988, the Iran/lraq War ended in a stalemate, leaving
both countries economically devastated. Now it was Iraq's turn
to press Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf ministries to lower
production. With massive war debts to repay, principally to
Kuwait, and war-crippled production infrastructure, high prices
were in Iraq’s interest. Continued high production and low prices
would only mean more suffering for Iraq’s people — and thwart
Saddam Hussein’s personal ambitions to emerge as the leader
of the Arab world, a successor to Egypt's late President Nasser.
CREPES <a PASTA ra
WINE & BEER
•
SOUPS «I SALADS
ESPRESSO
1114 MARINE DRIVE, ASTORIA, OREGON
From Hussein's point of view, the Gulf states’ continued
high oil production was slavishly pro-West and violated every
principle of Arab nationalism. It deprived the Kuwaiti regime
any claim of legitimacy. By conquering and annexing Kuwait,
Hussein could simultaneously achieve two goals: erase the
Iraqi debt to Kuwait and drive up the price of oil. Whatever
else the invasion of Kuwait may have been, it was not irrational.
So, in the predawn hours of August 2, 1990, he did it. Oil prices
rose like a barometer in response to the threat of war.
The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq unleashed a frenzy of
bellicose patriotism in the United States. Within days a marriage
of convenience with a dictator was reversed; the divorce
occasioned the swiftest and most massive military mobilization
in history Americans poured into Kuwait’s large oil rich neighbor
Saudi Arabia until they outnumbered the barrels of oil they were
there to protect, joined by troops of several other nations fearful
of losing their heartlines of oil which the invasion threatened, and
waited five months to remove the muzzle from their monstrously
powerful war machine Homefront patriotism in the USA was
cleverly stagemanaged, a yellow ribboned war fever that insisted
all Americans support the troops sent to the Persian Gulf
The actual war was anticlimactic: an intense bombing
campaign of Baghdad and frontline Iraqi positions in Kuwait that
left thousands dead — the American commanding general, the
briefly lionized “Stormin Norman" Schwartzkopf, demanded that
at least 50% of Iraqi troops be destroyed by air attacks before
the ground war was to start; and when it did start it was a route
that slaughtered still more thousands of Iraqi conscripts.
By seizing Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was reminiscent of
local emirates or bandits who occasionally and ruthlessly choked
off the ancient Silk Road and extorted tariffs and tolls until either
Rome or China or some other displeased power (perhaps armed
by one or the other Imperial) sent an army to chase the spoilers
or usurpers off. In response to the invasion of Kuwait barrels of
blood were offered in exchange for barrels of oil. The world has
a glut of human blood but oil is finite and will likely dry up in this
new century.
Weinberg wrote that “the U. S. consumes a highly
disproportionate 30% of the world’s oil. The notion that the U.S.
as a democracy' has a 'right' to this oil, a right which madman'
Hussein (demonized as a 'Hitler') is unworthy, holds little water
for many observers in the Arab world and elsewhere."
Perhaps the greatest irony in the war that was to
be called by Americans ‘Desert Storm," was in the fact, as
Weinberg wrote, ‘the very thing being contested...is the same
thing which is destroying our planet day by day — oil. With the
world economy dependent on oil, even the peacetime economy
is an incessant war on the biosphere Oil is making the air of our
urban areas unbreathable Oil is contributing to the greenhouse
effect and acid rain. Oil development is laying waste to pristine
wilderness areas from northern Alaska to the rainforests of
Latin America, contributing to the massive die-back in species
diversity Oil spills are fouling our coastlines from Prince William
Sound to Staten Island The ubiquitous use of oil-derived plastic
packaging is creating solid-waste nightmares for our cities. Over
reliance on oil-derived fertilizers is destroying the natural soil
fertility of our vital agricultural heartland, threatening a second
Dust Bowl ."
Weinberg wrote that this is the silent war, ‘the war on
the planetary ecology that (was) waged continuously throughout
the 20th century, accelerating horribly since World War 2, but
which has only started to make headlines.
"The global economy which the U.S. is currently risking
global war to protect is an economy that is daily propelling us
into a global economic collapse, a future of dying forests,
depleted soils and catastrophic climate shift."
Billy Hutts again: "Until the world realizes the effect of
oil and those who control it on the economy, environment and
politics of each and every one of us, we are doomed to contin
uous war and environmental disaster And that 's the good news
With the current administration of the only remaining superpower
controlled by oil men, we 've reached the tipping point"
(MPMc)