The earnest war protestor brandished his sign in front of television cameras: "No Blood for Oil." Did he look familiar? Wasn't he among activists protesting oil and gas leasing of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain? Didn't he also resist drilling on leases in Wyoming and anything having to do with oil in California?
Maybe not. Activists all look alike after a while. But it might have been the same guy. Opponents of the war in Iraq tend also to oppose oil and gas leasing of federal land. And they eagerly load up their arguments by insisting the war was fought for oil.
"Control over oil is a central motivation for the Bush administration's military confrontation with Iraq," proclaims Greenpeace. The Sierra Club deduces a revolting formula: "Oil = war = blood; therefore, oil = blood." Both organizations can be counted on to protest oil and gas leasing nearly anywhere.
The motive
As has been argued here before, control of Iraqi oil didn't compel the US and its allies to expel Saddam Hussein from power (OGJ, Mar. 24, 2003, p. 19). To assert that it did makes no sense.
How could the US control Iraqi oil? Why would it even try to control Iraqi oil? In fact, it has no need to control Iraqi oil. It needs only to buy internationally traded oil, of which exports from Iraq normally account for about 2 million b/d. Before the war the US had no lack of access to this supply. Last year, Iraq ranked seventh among foreign suppliers of oil to the US, providing an average of 440,000 b/d.
The US didn't have to invade Iraq to sustain this arrangement. In fact, it invaded Iraq for an altogether different reason: to rid the world of a cruel dictator who threatened not just his neighbors but, in growing degrees, the world. And it was induced to act by having been attacked on its own soil by Saddam's kind of vermin on Sept. 11, 2001. Claims to the contrary ignore too much.
Allegations of imperialist intent are hardly flattering to the US. But they'll go the way of all misapprehension when US troops leave Iraq—the sooner, the better. For groups that both insist that the US invaded Iraq for its oil and oppose development of domestic resources, however, more is involved than a simple misreading of US purposes.
Why does anyone cling to the worst possible suspicions about US designs for Iraq, when the supposed motives so clearly conflict with US interests? The answer can be simply that some people confuse cynicism with insight. To assume the least savory motive on the part of others can look wise. It also can be wrong and often is. Some observers, too, can't refrain from ascribing to modern events the imperialistic impulses of a different age.
But the conjunction of this type of thinking with resistance to resource development compounds the allegation. According to the American Petroleum Institute, citing Bureau of Land Management statistics, 314 million acres out of 658 million onshore acres owned by the federal government are unavailable for leasing. Offshore, federal leasing is negligible or nonexistent along both major coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. As an act of political will, the US thus forswears development of much of the federally owned oil and gas resource. For it to proceed from that position at home to the appropriation of oil fields abroad would be hypocritical and politically unacceptable.
Convenient lever
While that's not what happened during March and April in Iraq, it's what much of the world believes. And US-based opponents of resource development, who helped construct the real part of the hypocrisy—the antidevelopmental leanings of American politics—stand among the accusers.
For many of them—certainly for Greenpeace and the Sierra Club—the war argument is just a convenient lever of polemics. It's a way to disparage oil and promote an energy agenda centered on alternative fuels and conservation, a combination able to satisfy a mere fraction of US and worldwide energy needs. Relying as heavily as it does on opportunistic misrepresentation of US intentions in Iraq, that agenda deserves the same fate as the Baathist regime lately of Baghdad.
