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Inside the Fires of Imperialism
Crusade of Surge and Siege, Part Three -
Part Two Here
Through Middle East Eyes
By Manuel Valenzuela
26/02/08 "ICH"
-- - In order for the peoples of America and the West to
understand what has been and is currently being done to the
peoples of the Middle East we must envision ourselves as human
beings living and going through life in that most troubled of
regions. We must exercise a humanist form of empathy that places
us squarely inside the lands of desert and sand, the lands of
the people of the Bible, of terrain full of mirages and
complexities, of alien and unfamiliar cultures and languages and
religions, of a history that predates any western beginning or
thought, of a complexity we know almost nothing about.
We must see through the eyes of peoples we do not understand and
are completely ignorant of, of peoples we have been conditioned
through ceaseless propaganda to disdain and oftentimes hate. We
must, in order to see into resurrected Crusades, know the
unknown, so that we cease to fear what is foreign and alien. We
must contemplate life as it currently exists for the people of
the region, not the life we are made to believe in, nor the hazy
reality imagined in our minds. For the sake of the millions now
dead and dying, for the sake of the dispossessed and the
suffering, the maimed and mentally destroyed, we must have an
understanding of life in the Middle East, life inside the fires
of imperialism.
We must, in order to comprehend the catastrophe befalling the
peoples of the Middle East, imagine ourselves as people living
under tyranny, under occupation, under oppression and modern day
colonialism, in lands where the devil’s excrement abounds, where
it makes blind monsters of men, where conflicts are born from
the interpretations of fables and mythology, where theological
differences succeed in both dividing and conquering, and where
western colonialism has and continues to inflict great damage on
millions of Arabs and Muslims.
If we are to understand the suffering and oppression of the Arab
and Muslim people of the Middle East, we must confront the
Empire and its omnipresent grip over the region; a powerful
nation with omnipotent control over lands whose resources are
needed to run the engines of hegemonic power; a hegemonic
Goliath that methodically and calculatedly rules over dozens of
little David’s by proxy, intimidation and through puppets.
Indeed, to fully understand the 21st century’s version of
yesteryear’s crusades, we must journey to the lands where greed
and petroleum mix, where neoliberal capitalism and market
colonialism fuse, where economic genocide and hegemonic drive
intermingle and where the grand pieces of the global chess match
collide.
For this present Crusade is not about reclaiming Jerusalem or
the Holy Land, or of converting the heathens and barbarians into
good Christians. It is not about conquest in the name of a god
or a religion, nor a crusade to determine a clash of
civilizations. No, this Crusade is about conquering and
controlling petroleum, a resource unknown by past Crusaders.
This Crusade is about conquering and controlling geostrategic
land, about appropriating for the Empire the region’s vast
fields of oil and natural gas and the waters of the Tigris and
Euphrates.
This Crusade is a neoliberal one, designed to inject American
style debauched democracy and corrupt capitalism into the Middle
East. This Crusade, this invasion and occupation, this folly
into mass murder and mass destruction, this criminal enterprise
to appease the gods of greed and of the Almighty Dollar, is an
ideological struggle initiated by the masters of neoliberal
economics, who, together with those enamored with American
Manifest Destiny, have for decades decimated the lives of the
people who inhabit this condemned region.
As such, as much as we must see ourselves through Arab and
Muslim eyes, we must also look inwards, towards our own selfish
way of life, searching our self-centered egos and our
ethnocentric bubble of delusion. We must learn to see and accept
the role we have in the great damage done in our name. We must
learn to understand, and acknowledge, that so much of the
Crusade of Surge and Siege is a direct consequence of our
gluttony and greed, our insatiable hunger for wealth and
materialistic goods, our addictions to comfort and convenience
and our complete and utter abandonment of humanist values as
death and destruction is rained down on Arab and Muslim peoples.
In many ways, we, with our ever-expanding demands for better and
greater standards of living, for more complete comfort and
luxury, are the engine that runs the Empire’s economy and thus
its power, and that of its rulers. It is the People that give
sustenance to the Empire’s actions, and it is us who inevitably
depend most on Middle Eastern petroleum. Indeed, every engine
needs energy to give it life, to keep it operational, to
maintain its many parts in harmony, to make sure of sound
performance and of engine health.
This energy, of course, the energy we depend on for the
continued survival of our “way of life” and our “values,” -- by
which we naturally mean greed, comfort, gluttony and the
standard of living no other nation enjoys – the energy that
helps guarantee our “democracy and capitalism,” -- by which we
mean the exploitation of the people of undeveloped nations and
the market colonialism holding them hostage, all to maintain our
“way of life” – as well as our addictions of mass consumption
and materialism, comes directly from the black gold that
permeates beneath the surface of the lands we inhabit, mostly
from the nations of the south, whether it is the lands of Arabs
or Muslims or Latin Americans or Africans.
The Crusade of Surge and Siege is thus a natural manifestation
of our own vices and sins, of our unwillingness to part ways
with a life no other people can claim to possess, and which
becomes ever harder to simply abandon the longer it lasts and
the more it continues to grow. Our gluttony has continued its
devastation on the peoples of the region, decade after decade,
because those living inside the Empire refuse to part ways with
an unsustainable way of life due to an uncontrollable addiction
to greed and a plague-like, insatiable appetite for
materialistic goods. In the end, while we can feel good by
blaming corporations or leaders, it is We the People who
ultimately shoulder the blame for an indifference and a gluttony
that stoke the flames that grant life to the engine of the Pax
Americana.
Region Condemned
At the crossroads of humanity, connecting east and west, located
in vitally geostrategic positions, the Middle East has long been
a prize for any aspiring Empire. Many powers have invaded and
occupied these lands and peoples, only to inevitably be
violently thrown out over time. History is saturated with the
hubris and folly of Empires long since disappeared, whose
arrogance and wealth ended up but rotting, decaying carcasses
when their adventures with the Middle East came to a less than
triumphant conclusion.
The Middle East has always been resistant and hostile to
invasion and occupation, with its people using the accumulated
wisdom of generations, and that of thousand years old
civilizations, together with a silent patience that buys time
and studies how best to defeat its enemies, preying on its
victim like stealthy lions on a hunt. Over time, these peoples
have developed guerilla warfare and the experience of multiple
occupations, slowly, and methodically, castrating the invader,
one soldier, one supply line at a time. In a region that has
seen much suffering, destruction and death, a war of attrition
against these peoples cannot be won. Ideas of time, of black and
white thinking, of the definition of victory, of analysis and
reason, of the necessity for vengeance, of death, and of war and
battle are interpreted and seen differently from western views.
The failure to understand this reality has ruined the armies of
powerful empires.
Many of the now defunct powers, it seems, failed to learn and
understand human history, only to repeat the mistakes and the
delusions of predecessors. They failed to read between the
lines, failing to see a cornucopia of red flags. The region is
as dynamic and as complicated as it is tempting, with theology,
history, culture, society, territorial claims, commerce, ethnic
and tribal affiliations mixing in a cocktail of fiery anger,
aggression and turmoil against those powers that have tried to
tame such a varied and mysterious land.
With the short-sighted machinations and the complete ignorance
of the region of the last century’s western European powers the
fate of the modern day Middle East was sealed. Like Africa, the
Middle East we know today is one of artificiality, one that
never before existed until the west imported the fictions of
imaginary lines of division. Western, colonial power
exceptionalism, with its belief in Judeo-Christian superiority
and its belief that it was civilizing the inferior, “sub-human”
Arab and Muslim peoples, created imaginary borders out of thin
air, as always in its ignorance and hubris and geopolitical
self-interest, carving nations where none dared exist, and where
none should ever have been birthed.
Dividing lands, sects, ethnicities, tribes and peoples based on
colonial powers’ interests and intentions was a mistake that
condemned millions of people and resulted in a contemporary
Middle East whose volatility, and importance to the world’s
powers, makes it a region of immense conflict and of potential
danger to the world entire. Colonial follies have led to the
region’s greatest animosities and injustices, together with its
greatest crimes against humanity, fating millions to live inside
a geopolitical puzzle carved by the hands of the west.
Failing to take into consideration tribal, sectarian, ethnic and
cultural dynamics, or the realities of Islamic theological
differences, or centuries-old territorial claims to land, or the
longstanding resistance to foreign invasions and occupations, or
the injustice of claiming and stealing the land of continuously
native peoples, or the sensitivity of the Islamic faith to and
resentment in foreign entities occupying lands deemed sacred and
holy, European powers set in motion the inevitable clash between
the rich north and the resource rich, geopolitically necessary
Middle East.
Of course the indigenous peoples of these lands had their
destinies, and that of their descendants, decided for them by
yesteryear’s colonizers. Today’s Crusade of Surge and Siege owes
its genesis to Europe’s indifference and ignorance, to its
catastrophic errors. In its short-sighted appetite for power,
the long-term volatility of the region has been compromised. Yet
since only sub-human infidels would feel the consequences, the
west continued adding fuel to the fire.
Claws of Control
When the volatile liquid of petroleum, together with that of
natural gas, are included into the Middle East cauldron – a
reality that escaped all previous powers exerting force in the
region before the turn of the 20th century – what emerges is a
geopolitical and geostrategic prize on a scale not seen by
emerging Empires before. Indeed, control of the region and of
its resources – for oil, natural gas and water are today and
will invariably be into the future of great strategic importance
– will decide the fate of the present Empire, as well as those
waiting in line to rise when America begins her decline, as she
is presently doing. It is in this region where the destiny of
the modern world will be decided, and it is those who dwell
there who will be forced to endure the grand chess match played
between powerful competitors.
Control of the region, while signifying control of its
resources, also means control of the spigot, of the pipelines
feeding and fueling economies, of access to these same resources
by other nations, as well as control of the waterways granting
passage to tankers headed to all corners of the globe. Control
the Middle East’s oil fields and you control the world.
Controlling the Middle East, especially having a firm grip on
those lands where oil and gas abound, virtually guarantees that
the Empire’s oil and gas companies, today gorging on the profits
that war, insecurity and control engender, will assume major
investments in, and the enormous profits from, extracting,
refining, transporting and selling the Middle East’s resources.
It guarantees the continued plunder of the Middle East’s oil by
American energy giants.
Through control of resource-rich nations, the Empire’s energy
conglomerates are granted access to and possession of these
precious and finite resources, such as oil and gas, that would
otherwise escape their colossal grasp. Such was the purpose of
illegally and aggressively invading and occupying Iraq, where,
years prior to invasion, the state and the industry
unilaterally, and in secret, carved up Iraq’s existing and
potential oil fields. This symbiotic relationship between the
state and the corporate world, whereby the muscle and the power
of the state are used to protect and further the interests of
the energy industry, at great detriment to the people of the
resource-rich nation, along with the knowledge, capital and
resources of the industry being used to impregnate the Empire
with cheap and abundant oil and gas, to the great benefit of its
economy and hegemony, to the great detriment to all other
potential rivals, is a classic example of corporatism, the
fusion of state and profit.
The state thus secures for the energy industry those nations
possessing large amounts of tapped and untapped oil reserves,
only to later receive the benefits from conglomerates in the
form of subsidized petroleum prices, control of oil and gas
supplies, along with tax revenues from these companies and their
products which, thanks to rising petroleum prices, further
enhance the state’s coffers and further enable a transfer of
resources, in the form of paying exponentially higher prices at
the pump, away from the pocketbooks of the American people and
towards the corporate and establishment world.
With a government saturated with corporate executives, lawyers
and lobbyists, many from the energy and defense industries, and
a revolving door of opportunity between the halls of power and
the halls of profit that never seems to stop and in fact only
continues to gain momentum, it is easy to see why America’s
foreign policy in many ways mirrors the interests of the
corporate world, especially those of the energy-industrial
complex. Thus, the Crusade of Surge and Siege is a reflection of
a corporate world swarming the Middle East like vultures ready
to feast on the spoils of war. It is easy, too, to foresee where
America will be focusing its muscle and its might in the near
future, for one simply needs to follow the trail of black gold,
the trail of greed and money.
As such, Central Asia, with its collection of despotic Stans,
together with Iran, with its vast oil and gas fields, will most
likely follow in the footsteps of Iraq – with her oil – and
Afghanistan – with her strategic location and pipeline route –
as the next targets of the Empire, whether militarily, through
buying off of leaders or through market colonialism. Already on
the radar screen are the countries of Western Africa, with
valuable proven and potential oil reserves, with nations such as
Nigeria already feeling the strain of possessing the devil’s
excrement, already reeling both from western energy
conglomerates meddling in the domestic affairs of these
governments and through the pillage of their natural resources.
It is the people of these lands which are at present already
feeling the effects of oil and its many vices and corruptions.
As usual, it is the native people inhabiting oil rich lands that
will never see one drop from the massive profits oil creates.
The thirst and addiction for oil is also the reason Venezuela
has become of such importance, for Hugo Chavez has become the
exception, not the rule, to the Empire’s demand that a nation’s
oil not be used for the good of the people. He has not sold out
his nation, and his people, to the dictates of the Empire. With
enormous reserves of proven oil, said to rival or even surpass
those of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela is an obvious choice for
American intervention, and will most likely become a victim of
the Empire’s hegemony before too long. Its intransigence against
the Empire’s commands will not be tolerated much longer.
Its crime, indeed, Hugo Chavez’s crime, which no oil-rich nation
or leader is allowed to commit, is redistribute the nation’s oil
profits to its citizens and to the state’s growing treasury.
Venezuela’s crime, and why she is now a target of the Empire, is
having the audacity to use its own resources for the betterment
of the population, and the state itself. What has made the
Bolivarian state a pariah of the Empire, placed in the waiting
line for the Empire’s firing squad, is that it refused to comply
or sacrifice its people to the demands of America. Her great
error, in the minds of the American establishment, was to
destroy the cancer of neoliberal economics, the so-called
Washington Consensus, the disaster of debauched capitalism and
market colonialism. For this indiscretion, together with its
decision to keep oil revenues within the interests of the
nation, instead of allowing American energy conglomerates to
pillage oil and revenues, Venezuela is now a target of American
hegemony.
The lessons to be learned from the harsh teachings of the Empire
have been absorbed by the Middle East’s kings and dictators. The
oil beneath your sand belongs to the Empire, not your people. It
belongs to America’s energy-industrial complex. You will sell
your oil at the prices selected by the Empire, at the supplies
it seeks, as always in American dollars. You will increase or
decrease supply as the Empire sees fit, as always to the benefit
of America. The spigot ultimately is under the control of the
Empire and, if your oil supply is threatened by an enemy of the
Empire, your nation will be invaded and occupied by America’s
legions. You will be protected only because the Empire protects
its lifeblood.
If you obey and remain loyal to the Empire, not your people, you
will be rich beyond your wildest dreams, allowed to rule over
your lands, allowed to remain a viable Middle East leader. If
you fail to learn the lessons of those who no longer rule, or
those no longer alive, you will cease to rule, cease to exist
and cease to be a friend. You will be overthrown, replaced and
forgotten. From Mossadegh to Saddam, from Iran to Iraq, to
question or challenge the Empire is to seek the wrath of blood
and the full might of America’s military. To even think of
nationalizing your oil, or of retaining its wealth for the
benefit of your people will unleash shock and awe on your land.
These lessons have been memorized and incorporated, never to be
broken, never to challenge the dictates of Empire and never to
interfere with its unquenchable thirst for the devil’s
excrement.
Empire Unhinged
What is transpiring in the Middle East is, more than anything
else, a symptom of a disease a long time in the making, of the
natural tendencies of Empire to accumulate for itself the blood
that grants it life and the oxygen that makes it grow. Empires
old and new have always sought to maintain and indeed expand
their power, their hegemony, their standards of living, their
“way of life.” They never seek to reduce their influence or
minimize their footprint on the world; they can never lower the
expectations of their population nor slow down the engine that
has brought them to such power. They almost always seek to
expand their economies and their domain, always trying to
increase growth.
As such, with sustainability being anathema to their chosen
path, with Empires becoming victims of their own hubris and
success, with greed and thirst for power consuming its elite,
with comfort, laziness and gluttony possessing its people, the
Empire, either willingly or forced, must stay on the present
course and must retain and ratchet up the same machinations that
have for decades assured supremacy. Thus, caught in a vicious
circle of its own making, the Empire must increase its power and
domination and must continue its path of imperialism, of
conquest and of pillage, all in order to satiate its people, its
elite, its economy and its own power-induced, greed addicted
ego.
Failure to maintain the ever-more difficult course of Empire
would allow rivals the fresh air to grow and challenge, it would
result in the growing unease of its people, and it would open
the door for maturity and decline. The Empire is akin to a
massive corporation succeeding under a neoliberal capitalist
model, where to survive and thrive, expansion and dictatorial
power are the rule, not the exception, where return on
investment is demanded, with expectations of profit and returns
higher every year, with market share growth part of the formula,
with success ultimately lying in the exploitation of worker and
Earth, of the uncompromising, merciless crushing of competition,
and the buying, or acquisition of, smaller potential rivals.
By placing high barriers to entry, by possessing unmatched
capital and profit, by integrating vertically and horizontally,
by accumulating the infrastructure, resources and relationships
its challengers need to grow, by dominating the market through
its sheer size and strength, and by securing the unilateral
power of monopoly a corporation can maintain its dominance and
power, thereby keeping potential rivals at bay, and its
stockholders happy. Failure to grow and expand exponentially
usually means failure to survive, with investors fleeing what is
perceived to be a sinking ship, and competition ready to
cannibalize a dying company. Without growth on an almost annual
basis, decline is sure to follow. Such is the reality of empire,
much to the detriment of the empire itself, much to the
detriment of humanity, and much to the detriment of Earth.
Empires continuously seek to maintain and grow, not slow down
and shrink. For this reason America will not slow down its
imperial ambitions, just as it will only demand that its
hegemony be allowed to expand. It will seek to crush all
competition, just as will try to grow at the expense of the rest
of the world. The Middle East, the breadbasket of the world’s
energy needs, is a region, and a prize, that no modern empire
can be without, and thus, of paramount importance to those elite
for whom imperialism and Empire is the next logical step in the
evolution of America. The pursuit, protection and control of
Middle East oil and gas is the only logical answer to the
question of why America has established permanence in the
region, why she invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, why
she seeks to impose her will on Iran, and why she supports,
finances and helps maintain in power the cadre of puppet kings,
princes, sheiks, generals and dictators that rule the nations of
the region.
What is occurring today, and will continue to intensify well
into the future, is the expropriation of the Middle East
directly into American hands, with the Empire planting the seeds
of hegemony and control over the region’s vitally important
natural resources, as well as its vitally important geostrategic
terrain, for a permanent – or “enduring” in Orwellian speak –
and unchallenged stay. Every new military installation or base
already or presently being built confirms to the thinking world,
which excludes the American masses, that the United States seeks
not only complete control of the Middle East, but the exclusion
of all potential rivals. Through its actions, America has let it
be known that the Middle East is off limits to Russia and China,
with Europe allowed inside the fringes, that it is the sole
domain of the Empire, and that she will be in the region for as
long as oil and gas flow freely from the inner organs of the
Arab and Muslim underground.
The American flag has firmly been planted in the great majority
of Middle East nations, with the Empire’s military establishing
permanent Crusader castles and garrisons and bases, in dozens of
countries, to secure for the realm the spoils and rewards of the
region. At present, in the Middle East is where the lifeblood of
the Empire lies, along with that of the industrialized world,
where its energy for the foreseeable future is secured.
Naturally, then, it is this region, more than any other, that
must be protected and defended and taken off the grand
chessboard before emerging rivals rise and old challengers think
themselves resurrected. It is in the Middle East where a
permanent footprint must be established, where the Empire must
claim the divine right to plunder, rape, destroy and subjugate.
The great catastrophe of the Middle East will thus continue well
into the future.
It is the black energy that lies below humanity’s feet that
propels the Empire and its people to unmatched wealth and power.
And so, in order to understand the Crusade of Surge and Siege,
in order to give prominence inside the conscious mind of
billions to the genocide inside Iraq, the crimes against
humanity in Afghanistan and the human rights violations
throughout the Middle East, we must come to an understanding
that as long as petroleum fuels the human condition, as long as
carbon-based engines and products dominate our civilization,
wars and invasions and occupations and the oppression of entire
peoples will continue unabated by today’s present Empire, with
its corresponding brutality and barbarity and violence and
destruction and mass murder continuing to haunt us until either
we put an end to our insatiable thirst for oil, or our
insatiable thirst for oil puts an end to us.
Part
Four Will Be Posted 27/02/08
Due to the great response and interest "Crusade of Surge and
Siege" has had over the last week, I have written a fourth and
final part to the series. Along with part three, "Inside the
Fires of Imperialism," part four, "Into the Valley of
Catastrophe," has now been published.
For those wishing to read more about the brutality of
America's occupation in Iraq, along with its consequences, I
suggest my previous essays, "Operation
Iraq Forever,"
"Holocaust
Redux" "The
Killing Fields:
Ghosts of the Walking Dead,"
and "Dear
Terrorist Child."
These essays convey aspects of America's Crusade that are not
covered in this essay.
Also, it should be noted that the Israeli/Palestinian
issue has largely been left untouched in this series. That topic
is an issue reserved for its own essays, some of which have been
written already, and so which are yet to come. For those
interested, please see "The
Untermensch Syndrome:
Israel's Moral Decay," "A Malignant Tumor On the World," and
"The Walls That Divide Us."
Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic, commentator, Internet
essayist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published
by Authorhouse.com . His essays appear regularly at various
alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela
welcomes comments and can be reached at
manuel@valenzuelas.net
.
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