The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

A lot of people seem to think that the problem with Mr. Saddam Hussein and Iraq is a new and wholly artificial one that has been cooked up by a sinister claque of American oil hustlers. I disagree. While Iraq's considerable oil reserves may be in the background of US strategy, what we are seeing in the foreground is the culmination of a half-century of anxiety over the issue of nuclear proliferation.

Proliferation has been an orphaned issue of international affairs (another one is world population) because neither has afforded any easy answers. There has always been a sense that little could be done about proliferation until after the fact -- until some rogue state or freelance gang of maniacs acquired weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). There has long been a sense that any solution to the coming problem would have to be an impromptu one. Well, the decades have rolled, so to speak, and we are now there, squarely face-to-face with the proliferation problem.

President Bush's position is not unreasonable. Do we wait until Mr. Hussein uses a nuke (or a bio-bomb, or a chem-bomb)? Or, if he happens to get some working models of any of these, do we stand by while he lends one to a terrorist group?

This begs the question of how we then disarm Iraq. (Also the question of North Korea.)

I believe that we most likely have to go in on and the ground and see what is there. It could be a much bigger military mess than civilian America is prepared for. Contrary to our own propaganda, the Iraqis may actually stand behind their leader and fight for him. Who knows? And if the war doesn't go his way -- which is a likely -- Saddam Hussein might use WMDs on our soldiers, or Israel, or perhaps even by some stealthy means on US soil. I'm convinced that he would blow up his oil wells and pipelines before he went down for the count.

I do not believe that over the long run the US can unequivocally "control" any oil infrastructure that we might wish to control in that region. There will still be plenty of Iraqis (and others) left after a war who will want to sabotage our hegemony there, and oil infrastructure is easy to destroy. (Reminder: the oil and the wealth it represents would remain under Iraqi soil in any case).

The Bush team may include a number of unsavory characters who have engaged in corporate larceny -- Vice-President Cheney and Army Secretary White, the President himself (in the Harkens affair) -- but I don't believe that necessarily means they would not try to act in the best interests of their country in the matter of weapons proliferation.

And what about North Korea (or any other rogue state with WMDs)? I don't have a clue. That will also probably be an impromtu deal.