Praguer

I?m lucky. I?ve never experienced a bomb blast. The closest I?ve come was one of those vivid dreams where you think you?re about to die and you?re terrified. Then you wake up to a racing heart and a purple pre-dawn calm.


The terror of real bombs is easy enough to imagine, and in this season of war, it?s our duty to do so. Ceilings collapse, everyone screams, the ground shakes. The chemical winds burn. Blindness cracked by fire flashes and ear-splitting booms. Every second an eternity. The bombs finally stop ? but for how long? People are missing. Bloody torsos lay silent. The wailing that rises up with the dust and the smoke is the original soundtrack to hell on earth.


Also imaginable is the distant post-bomb chatter in Washington and London, Warsaw and Prague. In these civilized cities, men who slept the previous night under crisp sheets will discuss regrettable losses and unfortunate necessities. As the second wave of cruise missiles rains down on mothers clutching children in Baghdad basements, the spokespeople will calmly assure angry publics that all precautions are being taken to spare innocent lives. Many thousands will perish, of course, but the bombs are smart, the bombers kind. In any case, they will say, Saddam Hussein is the one who bears ultimate responsibility.


How exactly Saddam caused the bombs to fall on his own country ? this we all know. ?Despite extensive cooperation with UN arms inspectors, Saddam Hussein is hiding stores of illegal deadly weapons, and therefore must be toppled, even if it means shooting thousands of missiles around the dwellings of his poor and battered subjects, who will welcome foreign troops as liberators.?


All together now . . .


Put any song on repeat for long enough and people will eventually start humming. Although this popular tune denies logic (inspections are working, Iraq is totally hamstrung) and the facts (no weapons have been found) the official lies have swayed public opinion in more than one country. But the cover has frayed badly, and even most hawks now admit the obvious: this is a straight-up resource war, for oil.


Pessimists who warned that the 21st century would be a century of resource wars ? for energy, for water, for fertile land ? look scarily prescient as the US digs in around Iraq?s mighty oil reserves. (Ironically, the US is now doing the same thing Iraq did in 1990, thus triggering the first Gulf War.)


The Bush administration is chock-full of veteran oil industry heavyweights, all well-versed in global energy trends. They all know the world is about to enter the downside of global oil production. They know US dependence on foreign oil will rise to as much as 70 percent in coming years. They know Iraq sits on the world?s second-largest untapped oil fields. For them, this war is about staking out valuable turf prior to the chaos likely to accompany the looming era of ?permanent oil shock.?



This isn?t a conspiracy theory or a science-fiction scenario. One of the first things the Bush team did in office was commission a report on energy security. Prepared by the Council on Foreign Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, the resulting paper documented the decline of oil production and mentioned the need for military intervention to secure supplies. It referred to oil as a ?security imperative? and projected a period of exploding US energy prices, economic recession and social unrest unless answers are found. With a tone of urgency, it urged the Bush Administration to admit ?these agonizing truths to the American people.?



But admitting these truths to the American people would be problematic. People might start to question our dependence on such a limited, unstable energy source. Who knows, they might not think oil justified mass slaughter. They might even question our profligate energy use, as they did in the 1970s, under Jimmy Carter?s brave and wise attempt to wean the country off foreign oil.



Rather than starting a discussion on these key issues, and rather than emulate Carter?s ?Project Independence? (which sought to reduce US oil dependency through conservation and renewable sources of power), the Bush crew has gunned for a short-sighted, destructive and deeply immoral path. Instead of curtailing consumption and pumping money into research for alternative energy technology, they?re plunging the world into war, with potentially dire consequences for both international order and the Iraqi people.



The idea that Iraqis are going to throw a welcome party for US/UK troops is
a sick joke and an obscene expression of criminal vanity. Before the Gulf
War, Iraq had one of the best education systems in the Arab world, advanced
health care and a per capita GNP of more than $3,000. After 10 years of
sanctions and low-intensity BOMBING, this number is now $500, with high rates of
children dying from curable diseases like typhus and diarrhea. Once a
prosperous Middle Eastern state, Iraq is now one of the poorest countries in
the world.



There is precious little historical evidence that the United States is going to suddenly start caring about Iraq once it gains control over its oil. Crucially, even before the US has a chance to show its true intentions, it will have killed many innocent people.



A report titled ?Collateral Damage,? issued last November by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, estimates the total possible deaths on all sides during the war and immediate aftermath to be between 48,000 and 260,000. The organization, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, says subsequent deaths from post-war epidemics and the collapse of already damaged infrastructure could reach 200,000. If nuclear weapons are used, the death toll could near 4 million. In all of these scenarios, the majority of casualties will be civilians.



The next time a hawk tells you this war will be good for the Iraqi people, tell them you?ll see them in hell. Soundtrack available at record stores throughout Baghdad.

The Prague Pill, February's Issue

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twistyneck

Kill the fuckers.