As the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq enter its sixth year, with no apparent end to the occupation for the foreseeable future, and with more saber rattling concerning Iran, and having no other choice, the Arab nations have finally come together, using the only weapon they have, high oil prices, to shield themselves from a complete invasion and occupation of their sovereign lands by Bush and others, who are hell bent on redrawing the Middle East map to secure the world’s last remaining oil reserves.  Any attack on Iran would push oil prices up $200.00 per barrel or more. The pretext justifying the occupation of Muslim lands is the possible use of Islamic terrorism at some possible future date.  Even as the Bush/Cheney junta tries it best to label Iran as a rouge terrorist state, Switzerland and India have signed natural gas contracts with Iran worth billions and lasting for decades.

However, the Bush/Cheney junta believes they are saving the Muslim nations from themselves, using the old adage from the Native American period: we must save the Indians from the Indians.  The logic behind this thinking is the same logic the United States used to over-throw 14 sovereign nations, to tenderize them into capitalists so a small group of elite investors could exploit the natural resources of the countries in question, putting must of the indigenous population in poverty. A perfect example is the aforementioned genocide and the resulting internment of the Native American population onto reservations in America. The Native Americans survived US government programs of Sterilization and Termination, and are now gaining political power to enforce treaties that removed them from their own lands, in methods that were brutal and sub-human.  Termination was the “legal process of depriving an Indian of his Indian-ness, divesting him of all his inherited treaty rights, usually in exchange for a cash settlement representing his per-capita share of his or her tribes ‘liquidated assets!’” 2  Again, the same techniques are being employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it would not surprise this author if the entire populations of the aforementioned countries were interred onto reservations, or perhaps concentration type camps, while the oligarchs busy themselves with removing the last remaining oil reserves from these Muslim countries. 

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost the US taxpayer trillions per year in fuel costs alone.  The US Military is one of the largest consumers of crude oil on the planet.  For example, During World War II, the average fuel consumption per US soldier was approximately 1.67 gallons per day.  In Iraq, it is 27.3 gallons per day.  If 130,000 US soldiers are serving in Iraq, they use 3,549,000 gallons of oil per day.  That is approximately 1.3 billion barrels per year.  The United States uses approximately 20.7 million barrels per day, or approximately 7.6 billion barrels per year.  At $145 dollars per barrel, the net cost to US taxpayers for the fuel to sustain the Iraq war is about 1.1 trillion dollars per year.3 The Iraq and Afghanistan wars use about one fiscal quarter of fuel supply that could be used by consumers in the US.  All of this net war consumption depletes a finite reserve of fossil fuel and drives up the price of crude oil on world markets.  The irony in this war on terror has been a massive redistribution of wealth from the American consumer to the very people who Bush/Cheney claim are terrorists.  Many oil-rich Arab countries are undergoing massive building campaigns to such an extent that they are running out of steel for skyscraper construction. 

To drive this monstrous US military machine the Federal Reserve is printing money like a drunken sailor (no offense to drunken sailors!).  This huge addition to the money supply is causing inflation and the devaluation of the US dollar in relation to other currencies like the Euro.  The Bush tax cuts have driven the US government debt to over 9 trillion dollars, while tax revenues have been falling due to the slow economy.  The United States has lost a tremendous amount of its manufacturing and oil producing capability.  In fact, manufacturing represents about 12 percent of Gross Domestic Product, while the financial services sector represents about 20 percent of the same.  In August of 2007, a perfect storm converged on the financial sector and the consumer sector of the US economy.  One massive storm converged over the US in the form of the housing and credit crisis, and the other storm collided with the first as crude oil prices shot to record levels.  The Bush/Cheney junta complete with what Kurt Vonnegut affectionately refers to in his book, A Man without a Country, as “upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography.”  These C-students from Yale started to dream and fantasize about, what Kevin Phillips, in his book, Bad Money, calls “military and financial imperialism, about exporting mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations to a grateful world.”4 5  Of course the mortgage crisis hit home as thousands of Americans lost their homes, and the oil crisis is depleting much of the American consumer’s disposable income, thereby changing spending habits, and slowing the economy into a recession.  While the American consumer suffers, the oil companies are enjoying record profits, the defense industries as well, and as a final coup de grace, the already overtaxed American consumer must now bail out the big banks and financial institutions that relied on junk bonds and derivatives to make a huge profit, but ultimately lost it all.  Lastly, the Bush administration has finally delivered on no-bid contracts for American oil companies to pump Iraq’s oil reserves, while in the background, Bush fights EPA fuel standards and Global warming initiatives, staying on the same course of oil addiction, thereby enriching his friends in the oil industry, like Dick Cheney.

1. Meacher, Michael. “This War on Terrorism is Bogus.” Guardian/UK 6 September 2003
2. Hough, Henry W.  “Development of Indian Resources.” Denver: World Press, Inc. 1967, p. 160.
3. Flaherty, Anne. “Troops in Iraq feel pain at pump.” The San Diego Union Tribune 4 April 2008, SignOnSanDiego.com.
4. Vonnegut, Kurt.  A Man without a Country.  New York: Random House, 2007.
5. Phillips, Kevin. Bad Money.  New York: Penguin Group, 2008.