Oil Addiction: The World in Peril - 30
by Pierre Chomat (Universal Publishers, 2004)
translated from the French by Pamela Gilbert-Snyder
Part IV. Our Suicidal Quest for Energy
Chapter 30. The bin Laden Catapult
To gain control over the price of his own country's oil on the international market, Saddam Hussein believed he had to acquire ergamines on a scale to match those of Saudi Arabia. If he had succeeded in getting his hands on the ergamines of Iran or Kuwait - a purely hypothetical notion, of course - Iraq would have had as much clout within OPEC as the Saudis, and American corporations would probably have lost their controlling influence over the black gold market. In attempting to do this, however, Saddam launched military operations that he never submitted for approval to the United Nations. Twice, in Iran in 1980 and in Kuwait in 1990, Iraq violated its obligations under the United Nations Charter {a} and was punished by that organization. After 1991, subjected to sophisticated surveillance and daily bombing by British and American forces, Saddam seemed more or less neutralized. This was the state of Iraq's relationship with the West when, on September 11 2001, bin Laden struck the United States. The world was shocked, horrified. America wept. Its government promised to avenge it.
With no inkling as to why their "good" country had been so brutally assaulted, many Americans hoped that President Bush would appeal to the world to demand that those responsible for the attack reveal and explain the meaning behind this symbolic act that had cost so many lives. I believed, naively I suppose, that for the first time in history, a nation's highest authority was going to seize the opportunity to ask an enemy to explain its action. Members of the terrorist group al Qaeda had paid with their lives to defend a cause that, in their eyes, conferred on them the status of martyrs with all of Heaven's rewards. Men do not sacrifice themselves for nothing; it would have been to our advantage to understand the motives of those who had organized this terrible aggression. But the American government never asked this question, at least not openly. I concluded that it must already know the answer, and I deeply regretted that it did not share it with the American people.
The American public, which until then had mainly experienced only the positive aspects of energy, now had experienced its most destructive aspects on a catastrophic scale. It is also conceivable that, until September 11, no one had realized that it was possible to topple a building the size of the tallest Manhattan skyscraper with just the fossil fuel contained in a commercial aircraft. For it was, indeed, the energy contained in the ergamines used to fly the planes that had reduced the World Trade Towers to ashes, not the impact of the planes.
As we know now, America's counterattack targeted bin Laden's hidden base camps in Afghanistan and drove the ruling Taliban there from power. If, by attacking America, bin Laden had hoped to reverse the humiliating destiny that the West has in store for the Middle East, he grossly miscalculated, just as Saddam Hussein did in 1990. For, in fact, he succeeded only in providing the United States with the pretext that it needed to penetrate even farther into the outer reaches of the Caspian Basin, for which American oil companies had been preparing development plans for more than ten years without ever daring to implement them. Thanks to bin Laden, American troops could now easily, without any opposition or other justification than self-defense, establish themselves in the new El Dorado for liquid gold: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and as far as the remote country of Kyrgyzstan. {48} In sacrificing the victims of the World Trade Center, bin Laden had done no more and no less than to catapult the American oil companies directly into the oil fields of the Caspian Basin!
Notes
{a} Chapter I, Article 1.2 of the United Nations Charter states that one of the purposes of the United Nations is to "develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of people ..." Article 2.2 guarantees these rights to all Members, which "shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter".
{48} Lutz Kleveman, The New Great Game (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003), 1.
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/
translated from the French by Pamela Gilbert-Snyder
Part IV. Our Suicidal Quest for Energy
Chapter 30. The bin Laden Catapult
To gain control over the price of his own country's oil on the international market, Saddam Hussein believed he had to acquire ergamines on a scale to match those of Saudi Arabia. If he had succeeded in getting his hands on the ergamines of Iran or Kuwait - a purely hypothetical notion, of course - Iraq would have had as much clout within OPEC as the Saudis, and American corporations would probably have lost their controlling influence over the black gold market. In attempting to do this, however, Saddam launched military operations that he never submitted for approval to the United Nations. Twice, in Iran in 1980 and in Kuwait in 1990, Iraq violated its obligations under the United Nations Charter {a} and was punished by that organization. After 1991, subjected to sophisticated surveillance and daily bombing by British and American forces, Saddam seemed more or less neutralized. This was the state of Iraq's relationship with the West when, on September 11 2001, bin Laden struck the United States. The world was shocked, horrified. America wept. Its government promised to avenge it.
With no inkling as to why their "good" country had been so brutally assaulted, many Americans hoped that President Bush would appeal to the world to demand that those responsible for the attack reveal and explain the meaning behind this symbolic act that had cost so many lives. I believed, naively I suppose, that for the first time in history, a nation's highest authority was going to seize the opportunity to ask an enemy to explain its action. Members of the terrorist group al Qaeda had paid with their lives to defend a cause that, in their eyes, conferred on them the status of martyrs with all of Heaven's rewards. Men do not sacrifice themselves for nothing; it would have been to our advantage to understand the motives of those who had organized this terrible aggression. But the American government never asked this question, at least not openly. I concluded that it must already know the answer, and I deeply regretted that it did not share it with the American people.
The American public, which until then had mainly experienced only the positive aspects of energy, now had experienced its most destructive aspects on a catastrophic scale. It is also conceivable that, until September 11, no one had realized that it was possible to topple a building the size of the tallest Manhattan skyscraper with just the fossil fuel contained in a commercial aircraft. For it was, indeed, the energy contained in the ergamines used to fly the planes that had reduced the World Trade Towers to ashes, not the impact of the planes.
As we know now, America's counterattack targeted bin Laden's hidden base camps in Afghanistan and drove the ruling Taliban there from power. If, by attacking America, bin Laden had hoped to reverse the humiliating destiny that the West has in store for the Middle East, he grossly miscalculated, just as Saddam Hussein did in 1990. For, in fact, he succeeded only in providing the United States with the pretext that it needed to penetrate even farther into the outer reaches of the Caspian Basin, for which American oil companies had been preparing development plans for more than ten years without ever daring to implement them. Thanks to bin Laden, American troops could now easily, without any opposition or other justification than self-defense, establish themselves in the new El Dorado for liquid gold: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and as far as the remote country of Kyrgyzstan. {48} In sacrificing the victims of the World Trade Center, bin Laden had done no more and no less than to catapult the American oil companies directly into the oil fields of the Caspian Basin!
Notes
{a} Chapter I, Article 1.2 of the United Nations Charter states that one of the purposes of the United Nations is to "develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of people ..." Article 2.2 guarantees these rights to all Members, which "shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter".
{48} Lutz Kleveman, The New Great Game (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003), 1.
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/
posted by Bill Totten at
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