Ellington

According to a New York Times book review, Kevin Phillips' new book, "American Theocracy," warns not only about the dangerous policies of the current administration—but of the American trends that put them there:

Although Phillips is scathingly critical of what he considers the dangerous policies of the Bush administration, he does not spend much time examining the ideas and behavior of the president and his advisers. Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world.

One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.

The American press in the first days of the Iraq war reported extensively on the Pentagon's failure to post American troops in front of the National Museum in Baghdad, which, as a result, was looted of many of its great archaeological treasures. Less widely reported, but to Phillips far more meaningful, was the immediate posting of troops around the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which held the maps and charts that were the key to effective oil production. Phillips fully supports an explanation of the Iraq war that the Bush administration dismisses as conspiracy theory — that its principal purpose was to secure vast oil reserves that would enable the United States to control production and to lower prices. ("Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath," an oil analyst said a couple of years ago. "You can't ask for better than that.") Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, tyranny, democracy and other public rationales were, Phillips says, simply ruses to disguise the real motivation for the invasion.

Previous Comments

ID

105349

Comment

I'm wondering when the public will ever be presented the truth in all of these matters. It hurts when someone spends the time and effort to uncover these atrocities, yet the right-wing neo-cons portray the authors and their stories as liberals and liars.

Author

Skinnyp

Date

2006-03-19T21:52:38-06:00

ID

105350

Comment

IMO, odds are fairly good we'd still be in there even without the oil factor. Remember that Religious Right is a strong Bush base. You don't need an anti-Semitic conspiracy to believe that Israel's security was as much a factor as well. All you have to do is remember that (and I say this without any sense of sarcasm. I only say what is sincerely taught in churches - especially Baptist and certain non-Denominational ones). Certainly the strongly Evangelical types don't need the "oil" argument to believe that we had to go into Iraq, particularly with Saddam paying families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Whether Saddam actually did this is beside the point; and I myself am pretty open-ended on that matter. The point is that this story did make the rounds, and so this was seen as "a threat to Israel". This alone would have been sufficient provocation for many within the Religious Right. I repeat, you don't need to believe some paranoid "Jewish Conspiracy", or even that Israel was actually egging certain people on, to believe thst the Israel-Palestine conflict was a factor getting us into Iraq. After all, a lot of conservative denominations (and non-denominational churches) frequently teach that God will bless those who will bless Jews/Israel and chosen people, and will curse those who curse Jews/Israel. Do I even have to elaborate about in The Book of Revelation? So while I find the oil argument plausible on certain levels, it remains to be seen whether oil was the a/the prime motivator or just a side benefit secondary to the desire to tilt the balance of power in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Author

Philip

Date

2006-03-20T08:32:58-06:00

ID

105351

Comment

The following comments were moved from a thread about gay marriage: Head: I can support the idea of favoring regime change in Iraq, but it should have been done by a U.N.-led coalition, not by the United States. Of course if it had gone well, I would be praising him to the stars and whaling against Clinton's containment policy, which is responsible for the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of children who, thanks to U.N. sanctions and government corruption, died from inadequate medical care. How much can I condemn Bush for Iraq when I'm not 100% sure I wouldn't have felt that it was necessary to do the same thing? I don't know, but he should have at least let the U.N. weapon inspectors do their jobs and taken a humbler approach in dealing with potential coalition allies. Cheers, TH Jun 04, 06 | 3:08 pm _______ pneville: Tom-you appear to be a conflicted thinker, which speaks well of you. Let me make a few points that everyone seems to forget. 1. The "containment" of Iraq in 1999-2000 was collapasing due to the pressure of the left along with France and Russia's interest in developing their oil concessions in Iraq. (We did not know at the time that Iraq was also bribing everyone in sight through the corrupt UN "oil for food" program.) Even Bush, through Powell, was designing something called the "smart santions" program-what ever that was-as a rear guard action before 9/11. 2. Although, there was a cease fire after the First Gulf War we never ceased the war with Saddam or he with us. Our planes patrolled the no fly zones in the North and South and were regularly attacked. We regularly fought back and were accused of atrocities against civilians which is where Saddam put his anti-aircraft batteries. In 1998 the Congress passed and Clinton signed legislation that established regeme change in Iraq as official US policy. The principal basis of this law was that Saddam had kicked out the UN inspectors and was resuming his WMD programs. Clinton and Blair in 1998 launched a bombing war on Iraq that lasted a week. The targets that were attacked were plants and facilities that were manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. (I guess Clinton lied about this and he really attacked civilian facilities). 3. After several false starts we were able to get the Kurds in Iraq to stop fighting each other, and under the protection of the no fly zone, to start a democratic mini-state in Northern Iraq under Saddam's very gaze. This probably led us to believe it would be as easy in the rest of Iraq. 4. "The war against terror will not be finished as long as he (Saddam Husssin) is in power." Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan) December 16, 2001 appearance on CNN. For other Iraq pronouncements by Democrats that they have now conveniently forgotten see: http://www.frontpagemag.com/blog/printable.asp?ID=559 Jun 04, 06 | 4:18 pm _____

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-06-04T20:32:19-06:00

ID

105352

Comment

ladd wrote: pneville, we have long discussed the Iraqi War here; you're coming in late on the game. You might Google around on our site to see the discussions that have occurred; about every possible excuse that apologists use to try to find a justification for the Iraqi war has been thoroughly discussed in the past. You're beating a dead horse. And, please, use better sourcing than David Horowitz if you want to convince intelligent thinkers of anything. ;-) Jun 04, 06 | 4:21 pm ____ pneville: ladd-its just a list of Democratic quotations, duly sourced. I am reminding, not trying to convince "intelligent minds". You seem to know little about David Horowitz, may I suggest his book "Radical Son" which tells of his journey from Berkley radical leader in the 60's to Republican in the 90's. Jun 04, 06 | 4:46 pm _______ ladd: We've talked a lot about him already, neville. I know a lot about him based on past research; I've already told you that I think he's a putz out for media attention, more than anything else. He doesn't get a lot of it these days after his antics of the past. He's just not a relevant source, or very educational. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, but maybe not everyone has bumped into this man in the past and knows his game. Jun 04, 06 | 4:50 pm ______

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-06-04T20:33:21-06:00

ID

105353

Comment

pneville: David's efforts singlehandedly put a stop to the "slave reparations" cause and as an out growth of this experience his efforts to restore true academic freedom to the nation's campuses has been adopted in many states. It soon will become a part of national education policy by Congressional Act. I would say he has been pretty successful. Jun 04, 06 | 5:19 pm ____ ladd: That's not true, neville. For one, the slave reparations movement is not over. And anyone looking at it with intellectual honesty knows some of the the movement's biggest problems come from within, and from the need to define exactly what was meant so that putzes like Horowitz don't even have the ability to try to muddy the waters with inaccurate facts and allegations. You're deep into the Horowitz koolaid, aren't you!? Sorry to tell you this, but he made a fool of himself with that series of ads, even among conservatives. Again, and we're way off-thread here, this issue had nothing to do with "academic freedom." And if you want to discuss it further, go start a thread on it. Let's get this one back to gay marriage where it belongs as of right now. Jun 04, 06 | 5:24 pm _____

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-06-04T20:34:25-06:00

ID

105354

Comment

Tom Head: (1) The sanctions system obviously wasn't working, I'll be the first to agree, and it's one of the things I hold against Clinton. I remember a conversation I had with a devout Muslim, from the UAE, who was somewhat anti-U.S. primarily because of the Iraqi sanctions. He said something to the effect of "For the love of God, either invade Iraq or let its people live in peace." That conversation has crossed my mind an awful lot over the past few years. (1a) The Russians and French, by and large, have an insane foreign policy--and the argument could be made that, by stonewalling further U.N. action under both Clinton and Bush and thereby blocking the best venue for multilateral action, French and Russian leaders are at least as responsible for the Iraqi situation as the Bush administration is. (2) Clinton did indeed launch a missile strike on Iraqi targets to eliminate alleged WMDs, and he made this very clear in his speech. (2a) That said, this doesn't really have much to do with Bush's policies. I think it's entirely accurate to say that both Clinton and Bush shafted the Iraqi people, and that they really share responsibility for the situation in Iraq today. Just as the Treaty of Versailles created the economic conditions that allowed Hitler to take power, Clinton's enforcement of long-term sanctions created economic conditions that contributed to a climate of terrorism and isolation. (3) That's entirely possible, but anyone should have been able to tell them that the Kurds are only one-third of the Iraqi proposition. Kurdish support completely alienates the Sunni bloc, and doesn't do much for the radical Shi'ite faction, either. Now we face the very real and disturbing prospects of a Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iraq led by al-Sistani and his goons, even as Sunni militants kill our soldiers with IEDs. I'm not at all sure that we won't end up with a country that is actually worse off, more inhumane to its people, than Iraq was under Hussein. (3a) But I'm not suggesting that we should have just accommodated the guy, either. I'm not sure what the right solution would have been. I do know that a unilateral invasion-occupation, conducted almost exclusively by the one country that the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites can all agree to hate, is the one scenario I would see as likely to actually make things worse. (4) I'm no fan of David Horowitz, but I have no reason to believe the list of quotations isn't genuine. Of course there's a parallel list of quotations from Republicans who opposed Clinton's intervention in Kosovo that appears to be equally genuine (and I suppose Kos is the left-wing equivalent to Horowitz, to boot). Kosovo, of course, went much better: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/18/161016/461 Cheers, TH Jun 04, 06 | 5:44 pm ______

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-06-04T20:35:26-06:00

ID

105355

Comment

pneville: Tom-before we are exiled the two list of quotations are not the same. You do not have a long list of Republican quotations in favor of action in Kosovo followed by a diametrically different policy after Clinton got the country involved and airplanes in the air. I supported Clinton then and I even supported General Clark's decision to bomb the Chinese diplomatic facilities in Belgrade since thay were used for cover in helping the Serbs. It appears that with the Serbian acceptance of Montenegro's independance vote that we may be looking at an end game-SEVEN YEARS LATER although the real test will be the decision in Kosovo. We could easily sink back into civil war. Anyone could have told Clinton that the Balkans are the cauldron of instability in the underbelly of Europe and that efforts to stablize that area have defied the Hapsbergs, the Otterman Turks and the Soviets. How about giving Bush or his successor at least 7 years to accomplish his policy in the Middle East. Other than our interest in the stability of Europe the Balkin problem never threatened the US. The forces that have been loosened by Islamic Fundamentalism/Fascism have been at actual war with us long before Bush took office. Many American soldiers died before the attack on our shores on 9/11 and the threat of further attacks are more threat to us than a civil war in Kosovo. Jun 04, 06 | 7:21 pm _____

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-06-04T20:36:58-06:00