[Reader-list] Debate on Iraq (1) OIL

[Jamie Dow]

I'm still not clear on what case you are making. Your paragraph below is
hard to understand - you allude to lots of things, in a long list, as though
it were obvious from them what the case is. Your last sentence has me
baffled for its syntax. I am truly not skeptical about this. I just can't
hear the argument for the rhetoric.

"What if you were also a serial rapist framing another serial rapist to get
off and then claim the reward?"
Yes, that would be a bad motivation. But to pass on true and accurate
information that helped with a just conviction would still be a good thing
to do. Of course you changed the word to "framing" (a rhetorically charged
word, and crucially with a different meaning), and this does affect whether
it's a good thing to do. Framing implies misleading information to engineer
a miscarriage of justice. Do you see? It is the rights and wrongs of the
case that is the issue. Nobody thinks that the US is an altruistic regime.
The question in hand is not about the niceness of regimes, nor even about
their integrity over a period of time (e.g. frequent mention of UK use of
nerve agents in 1930's....). That is an interesting question, but leaves
unanswered the crucial question which is "WHAT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO?".

To return to the oil question. The only thing that arguments here can
possibly even hope to establish is poor motivation on the part of the west.
And that leaves untouched the question of what is the right thing to do.

I hesitate to write this, but your argument (1) by allusion, and (2) based
on motive, and (3) not in fact recommending any course of action at all is
quite a nice example of what has frustrated me in this debate. These are
life and death issues, and we need better than this.

respectfully,
Jamie


<snip>
>
> The lobby anti-war
>
> - Oil. It almost seems enough to mention the word oil to make the case, in
> some people's minds. Such minds are debased if the mere hint of a slur
> counts as an argument. To say that oil has something to do with a reason
> against (see how vague the case is!) requires an argument that war would
> bring some oil-related advantage to the US (and perhaps the west in
> general). EVEN THEN, the case is insufficient, since all that would be
shown
> by that would be that there is a possible motivation for the US & UK. It
> does not tell us ANYTHING about the rights and wrongs of war. (Let me
> illustrate: suppose the police offer a reward for information leading to
the
> conviction of a serial rapist, does the advantage to me of the reward make
> it wrong for me to bring forward the information? Does it make it wrong to
> bring forward the information even if my ONLY motivation is the reward?
The
> answer to both is a clear NO. If I was only motivated by rewards, I would
be
> a sick sort of person, but if I helped in the conviction of a serial
rapist,
> I would have done the right thing, even though through base motives.)
There
> is an additional problem about oil. Even to show that the US has bad
motives
> is pretty tricky. The west needs low oil prices. War would raise the price
> of oil. So where is the advantage? I'm not saying there's not a slur to be
> made on America's motives here, I'm just saying that noone's making it! A
> closer look at the facts on oil might make the slur difficult to
> substantiate. And it horrifies me at how so vague a case is so easily
> accepted.
>

What if you were also a serial rapist framing another serial rapist to get
off and then claim the reward? Plenty of people are making the case for oil,
from the US's 59% reliance, to the problems in Venezuela, to the diminishing
domestic reserves, to the control of a truly price fixing depository, to the
Saudi relations breaking apart, to the Iraq switch to the Euro, to the Bush
cronyism fortune amassed since Prescott hosted the Nazis and Georgie traded
inside with Harken and lobbied for Enron and Condies oil tanker...and so on
and on. The other question is of you think gaining control of another
country's natural riches qualifies as legit, and if economic imperialism is
OK and on a par with the _progress_ of corporate globalization.