Over a million killed for oil
The memoirs of Alan Greenspan, a well respected American establishment figure who headed the U.S. Federal Reserve for 18 years, are due to be published tomorrow. In them, he writes,
“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil”.
Wow – Iraq was about oil? Get outta here! Greenspan’s declaration is news primarily because of who he is – a well-respected Republican who is about as mainstream and establishment as you can get. It’s also news because the Bush administration and the corporate media have been successful in making “oil” a dirty word as an explanation for the invasion of Iraq, something only said by idiots or conspiracy theorists. If the media had done their job and examined the reasons for the invasion properly, there would be nothing newsworthy whatsoever about Greenspan’s ‘revelation’. But they didn’t, and so there is.
This comes an Opinion Research Business (ORB)-run poll has suggested that roughly 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed “as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003″. The estimate is based upon a survey conducted last month of 1,461 adults, who were asked,
“How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.”
The data was then extrapolated to provide an estimate for the total death toll. As Juan Cole notes, the poll makes the conclusions of last year’s Lancet study – which estimated that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had caused 655,000 “excess” deaths, around 600,000 of them violent – “seem unassailable and if anything conservative.” Robert Naiman, of JustForeignPolicy.org, agrees, as does Les Roberts, author of the Lancet study, who comments that the results of the Lancet study and those of the ORB poll “seem very much to align”.
So…over a million Iraqis killed for oil. Who’da thunk it?
Filed under: Iraq, UK, US | 8 Comments
Tags: International & Foreign Policy, News, War
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Really? Oil?? No! Surely not! It was freedom and democracy and all that good stuff, wasn;t it?
Really: oil?
Apparently so. I’m still recovering from the shock of it, to be honest. I mean, fancy that!
But Saddam was evil! That *clearly* justifies an invasion!!!! Really!
Oh, undoubtedly. And let’s not forget those WMDs (still hidden away under Euphrates, obviously).
Perhaps it would be nice for a blog which always drones on about how the media lies and deceives in order to further their agenda to actually give the quote in context. Here’s what he also said:
“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive. I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”
It’s hardly fair to blame the Shi’ite-Sunni war on the Americans either – it’s not their fault that the these two groups hate each other, but rather their own; it would be a logical fallacy to say the Americans ’caused’ that (much like it would be a logical fallacy to say that George W. Bush’s mother ’caused’ the invasion of Iraq by giving birth to him.
I’ve been silently reading this blog on occasion just out of genuine curiosity to see if you have anything interesting to say, but I’m afraid the only thing I’ve found is one of those blogs purporting to be a media watchdog but which actually advances its own political agenda which is so far removed from what most sensible people believe that I’m not surprised you think there’s some conspiracy of censorship. What you publish here doesn’t live up to your claims of media deception; it’s very disappointing to see this is all you can muster.
* * *
I should have known, really, seeing as you worship Noam Chomsky – and speaking of a horrific number of deaths, I trust you know what he said about Mao? Just in case you haven’t stumbled upon ‘The Chomsky Hoax’ (http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html; http://www.paulbogdanor.com/200chomskylies.pdf) yet, I’ve included it below:
“Of course, no one supposed that Mao literally murdered tens of millions of people,
or that he ‘intended’ that any die at all.”
(http://www.zmag.org/chomreply2.htm)
In reality, Mao spoke of sacrificing 300 million people, or half of China’s population. He
warned that the policies he later adopted would kill 50 million people. Grain exported by the communists was sufficient to feed the numbers who starved to death, which they privately estimated at 30 million.
Whilst I’m not trying to engage in ad hominem attacks deliberately to deviate from my main point (that’s why I’ve split the post into two sections), I can’t understand how you can worship someone who thinks that ‘[In China] a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step’ – perhaps the fact that the communists reduced 550 million peasants to slavery (forcing ninety million to work on furnace-building projects alone) and cut the food ration during their famine and used mass terror to stop the peasants from eating their own harvest (torturing, strangling, mutilating and burning alive those who didn’t comply – including children) is actually a great media conspiracy, but somehow I doubt it; more likely – and this blog is a very good case-in-point – those who hold Chomsky’s nutcase views are so deluded they assume it’s the media who’ve got it wrong rather than themselves.
Arite Javid.
Firstly, I quoted Greenspan from his book. He may have later “clarified” what he meant, but I was certainly quoting him in context (the bit you quote wasn’t in the book at all, as far as I know). But anyway, what he wrote in the book was clear: “the Iraq war is largely about oil”. There’s no ambiguity about that statement. It’s quite clear – the Iraq war was primarily about oil. There’s no way that statement could simply be read as saying that it is “fortunate” that we took out Saddam.
The invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent disastrous policies of the occupation, created the conditions that allowed this violence to happen. The Bush and Blair governments absolutely bear responsibility for it – this was even recognised at the Nuremberg tribunals, where the crime of aggression was described as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. [my emph.]” Now, that’s not to take away responsibility from Iraqis who kill other Iraqis in sectarian attacks – responsibility is not a zero sum game. There’s plenty to go around.
Finally, you describe my “political agenda” as “so far removed from what most sensible people believe that I’m not surprised you think there’s some conspiracy of censorship”. Well, firstly, when it comes to Iraq I’m in the firm majority. Most of the British public, and the American public, and the Iraqi public, and indeed the population of the entire planet want a withdrawal from Iraq. Secondly, and we’ve been through this several times before, no-one has posited a media “conspiracy”. The Chomsky/Herman propaganda model is a structural analysis – if I claimed the corporations are driven by profit-seeking motives, would that be a conspiracy? Of course not. If you want to keep engaging with me on the topic of corporate media propaganda, at least take the time to find out what the propaganda model actually posits.
As for your Chomsky point – I haven’t read his writings on China, and I haven’t heard of this criticism before. He’s certainly not a Maoist, and I’d be incredibly surprised if he really did deny Mao’s atrocities. I very much doubt he did – he’s also been accused of apologising for Pol Pot, and being a Holocaust denier, and being an anti-Semite, etc. etc., and every single one of those claims is based on quotes taken out of context, willful misunderstanding or outright fraud. But like I say, I haven’t come across this particular allegation before and so I can’t really comment.
(By the way, I’m afraid calling someone a “nutcase” counts as an ad hominem attack, and it’s really out of order in Chomsky’s case. But he can defend himself, more than adequately).
[p.s.: sorry it didn't show up straight away. WordPress automatically filters out comments with more than one hyperlink in them, and so I have to 'approve' it before it shows up].
Quite why Javid thinks that trying to prove Chomsky wrong on his analysis of Chinese history has got anything to do with stating the bloody obvious about one of the main motives (if not *the* main motive) for the occupation of Iraq is anyone’s guess. However… if you must:
I have read what Chomsky writes about Mao. There is an essay in Rouge States on the media’s reviews of the Black Book of Communism. Without getting into too much detail, what he basically says is fairly obvious really if you think about it: the economic and political structure of Mao’s China were what led to the deaths of 100s of millions of Chinese peasant deaths, rather than direct massacre. He then compares this to deaths caused by the economic and political structure of Capitalism in India
An extract: “In both cases, the outcomes have to do with the “ideological predispositions” of the political systems: for China, relatively equitable distribution of medical resources, including rural health services, and public distribution of food, all lacking in India. This was before 1979, when “the downward trend in mortality [in China] has been at least halted, and possibly reversed,” thanks to the market reforms instituted that year.
Overcoming amnesia, suppose we now apply the methodology of the Black Book and its reviewers to the full story, not just the doctrinally acceptable half. We therefore conclude that in India the democratic capitalist “experiment” since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of the “colossal, wholly failed…experiment” of Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens of millions more since, in India alone.”
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2000-01/10chomsky.htm
But again, this all sort of irrelevant. Javid is just trying to divert attention away from the issue at hand.
Thanks, Asa. I suspected the quote was taken out of context, as is often the case with Chomsky-bashers (who are therefore committing the very sin they accuse Chomsky of – oh, the irony!
).