No, the Empire Doesn't Always Win
Alexander Cockburn
The Nation: In the August 30/September 6, 2010 edition
"The US isn't withdrawing from Iraq at all-it's rebranding the
occupation.... What is abundantly clear is that the US...has no intention of
letting go of Iraq any time soon." So declared Seumas Milne of the Guardian
on August 4.
Milne is not alone among writers on the left arguing that even though most
Americans think it's all over, Uncle Sam still rules the roost in Iraq. They
point to 50,000 US troops in ninety-four military bases, "advising" and
training the Iraqi army, "providing security" and carrying out
"counterterrorism" missions. Outside US government forces there is what
Jeremy Scahill calls the "coming surge" of contractors in Iraq, swelling up
from the present 100,000. "The advantage of an outsourced occupation," Milne
writes, "is clearly that someone other than US soldiers can do the dying to
maintain control of Iraq."
"Can Iraq now be regarded as a tolerably secure outpost of the American
system in the Middle East?" Tariq Ali asked in New Left Review earlier this
year. He answered himself judiciously: "[Iraqis] have reason to exult, and
reason to doubt." But the thrust of his analysis depicts Iraq as still the
pawn of the US empire, with a "predominantly Shia army-some 250,000
strong...trained and armed to the teeth to deal with any resurgence of the
resistance."
The bottom line, as drawn by Milne and Ali, is oil. Milne gestures to the
"dozen 20-year contracts to run Iraq's biggest oil fields that were handed
out last year to foreign companies."
Is it really true that, though the US troop presence has dropped by almost
100,000 in eighteen months, Iraq is as much under Uncle Sam's imperial
jackboot as it was in, say, 2004, even though US troops no longer patrol the
streets? If Iraq's political affairs are under US control, how come the US
Embassy-deployed in its Vatican City-size compound, mostly as vacant as a
foreclosed subdivision in Riverside, California-cannot knock Iraqi heads
together and bid them form a government? Those 50,000 troops broiling in
their costly bases are scarcely a decisive factor in Iraq's internal
affairs. Neither are the private contractors, whose military role should not
be oversold, unless the Shiites are supposed to quail before ill-paid
Peruvians, Ugandan cops and the like.
Is a Shiite-dominated government really to America's taste and nothing more
than its pawn? It was Sistani, denounced by Ali as America's creature, who
called Bush on his pledge of free elections in 2005, thus downsizing the
excessive representation of the Sunnis, who chose to boycott the elections
anyway. And if all this was a devious ploy to break "the Iraqi resistance,"
by which Ali means the Sunnis, why does the United States constantly invoke
the menace of Shiite Iran and decry its influence in Iraq?
If the Sunni "resistance," honored without qualification by Ali, ever had a
strategy beyond a sectarian agenda, it wasn't advanced by blowing up Shiite
pilgrims and setting off bombs in marketplaces. Muqtada al-Sadr, lamented by
Ali as sidelined by the United States and Sistani, has been described as the
"kingmaker" since his success in the parliamentary election this past March.
If this really was a "war for oil," it scarcely went well for the United
States. Run your eye down the list of contracts the Iraqi government awarded
in June and December 2009. Prominent is Russia's Lukoil, which, in
partnership with Norway's Statoil, won the rights to West Qurna Phase Two, a
12.9 billion-barrel supergiant oilfield. Other successful bidders for
fixed-term contracts included Russia's Gazprom and Malaysia's Petronas. Only
two US-based oil companies came away with contracts: ExxonMobil partnered
with Royal Dutch Shell on a contract for West Qurna Phase One (8.7 billion
barrels in reserves); and Occidental shares a contract in the Zubair field
(4 billion barrels), in company with Italy's ENI and South Korea's Kogas.
The huge Rumaila field (17 billion barrels) yielded a contract for BP and
the China National Petroleum Company, and Royal Dutch Shell split the 12.6
billion-barrel Majnoon field with Petronas, 60-40.
Throughout the two auctions there were frequent bleats from the oil
companies at the harsh terms imposed by the auctioneers representing Iraq,
as this vignette from Reuters about the bidding on the northern Najmah field
suggests: "Sonangol also won the nearby 900-million-barrel Najmah oilfield
in Nineveh.... Again, the Angolan firm had to cut its price and accept a fee
of $6 per barrel, less than the $8.50 it had sought. 'We are expecting a
little bit higher. Can you go a little bit higher?' Sonangol's exploration
manager Paulino Jeronimo asked Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani to
spontaneous applause from other oil executives. Shahristani said, 'No.'"
So either the all-powerful US government was unable to fix the auctions to
its liking or the all-powerful US-based oil companies mostly decided the
profit margins weren't sufficiently tempting. Either way, the "war for oil"
isn't in very good shape.
Ali and Milne are being credulous in taking at face value declarations by US
officials that the United States is not wholly withdrawing and will stay in
business in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Those officials don't want to
see their influence go to zilch, so they have to maintain that their power
in Iraq is only a little affected by the steady reduction of troops.
The left-or a substantial slice of it-snatches defeat from the jaws of a
decisive victory over US plans for Iraq by proclaiming that America has
established what Milne calls "a new form of outsourced semi-colonial regime
to maintain its grip on the country and region." Yes, Iraq is in
ruins-always the default consequence of American imperial endeavors. The
left should hammer home the message that the US onslaught on Iraq, in terms
of its proclaimed objectives, was a strategic and military disaster. That's
the lesson to bring home.
Alexander Cockburn
***
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/health/policy/25stem.html?_r=1&ref=us
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Tuesday that it would appeal a
court ruling challenging the legality of President Obama's rules governing
human embryonic stem cell research, as the head of the National Institutes
of Health said the decision would most likely force the cancellation of
dozens of experiments in diseases ranging from diabetes to Parkinson's
- - -
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/24-10
Scientists Attack Court Ruling Against Barack Obama's Stem Cell Policy
Order blocking government funding of stem cell research is a serious setback
in search for cures to diseases, say scientists
by Chris McGreal
The Guardian/UK: August 24, 2010
American scientists have reacted with anger at a court ruling that strikes
down Barack Obama's decision to greatly expand medical research using stem
cells taken from human embryos.
Scientists described the order by a federal judge in Washington, who said
that the president had overstepped a law barring the government funding of
research in which human embryos are destroyed, as "deplorable" and "a
serious setback" in the search for cures to major diseases.
Lawyers for an alliance of Christian groups who brought the case, which tied
opposition to experiments on embryonic stem cells to the anti-abortion
campaign, said the ruling appeared to go further than restrictions under
President George Bush and bar all government funding for such research. It
also pushes the ever-contentious issue of abortion to the fore again in the
runup to November's mid-term elections and presents Obama with the difficult
choice of whether he wants a battle in the courts and in Congress to repeal
the legislation.
The court order came after an executive order by Obama in March last year
that lifted restrictions put in place by Bush eight years earlier. Those
restrictions limited government funding to a small number of existing lines
of human embryonic stem cells. The administration had allocated about $250m
(£160m) to the research. The National Institutes of Health added an
additional 70 lines after Obama's order. But Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that
the president's decision was in conflict with the Dickey-Wicker amendment, a
1996 law that bars the use of government funds for "research in which a
human embryo or embryos are destroyed". The law has been renewed by Congress
each year.
Scientists swiftly condemned the ruling. The California Institute for
Regenerative Medicine (Cirm) said the court order would disrupt advances in
research for cures to diseases such as diabetes and Lou Gehrig's. "The
decision is a deplorable brake on all stem cell research," said Cirm's
president, Alan Trounson. "Many discoveries with other cell types ... would
not happen without ongoing research in human embryonic stem cells."
Steven Aden, a lawyer for the Alliance Defence Fund which brought the case,
said: "We're gratified that the court accepted what we think is a plain and
commonsense reading of the applicable law and we're hopeful that ultimately
this will result in the renewal of good, science-based funding for adult
stem cell research."
Scientists were also left confused over whether they had to immediately halt
embryonic stem cell work paid for with government funds or if the ruling
only prevented federal authorities from distributing more grants.
Cirm said the order appeared to bar research permitted even under the
tighter regulations imposed by Bush.
Aden said he believed the ruling prohibits any government-funded research
involving embryonic stem cells.
"We think that's right. When congress passed the Dickey-Wicker amendment
back in the days of the Clinton administration the reason for that was to
get the American public out of funding research that involves the
destruction of human life," he said.
An opinion poll by the Pew foundation last year found that 54% of Americans
support research using human embryos.
© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited
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