Greenspan, oil, and Osama bin Laden: Bernd Debusmann
(Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alan Greenspan, the anti-war U.S. left, virtually the entire Arab world, and Osama bin Laden have something in common: they think the war in Iraq is mainly about oil.
The former Federal Reserve chairman's view is expressed with such crystalline clarity, on page 463 of his just-published memoir, that it's hard to believe it comes from the same man whose convoluted utterances on the U.S. economy drove to the edge of despair market professionals paid to decipher them.
But there's nothing ambiguous about this: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
This is remarkable language from a life-long Republican deeply embedded in a Washington establishment whose members, from either party, do not find it convenient to ascribe selfish motives to the U.S. use of force.
Military intervention is acceptable, of course, to remove tyrants, spread democracy, bring freedom to the oppressed, or save the world as we know it from annihilation by weapons of mass destruction.
Among the Washington power elite, publicly using the word "oil" in connection with the war in Iraq is a bit like talking about bodily functions at a formal dinner party.
It is best avoided, which made Greenspan's statement all the more startling.
Subsequent "clarifications" brought back some of his customary convolution - oil wasn't the only motive but, yes, oil security is critically important - but no change in the substance. Administration spokesmen shrugged off the remark.
PERCEPTION IS REALITY
Much of the Arab world saw oil as the driving factor of the Bush administration's Iraq policies even before the 2003 attack.
Those who had doubts lost them in the chaotic first post-invasion days when U.S. troops guarded the Ministry of Oil and the Ministry of Interior and stood by as looters picked bare and torched official buildings all over the city and ransacked Iraq's national museum.
Perception is reality, as they say on Wall Street, where Greenspan honed his economic expertise. The American tanks that blocked every entrance to the sprawling oil ministry provided an image that stuck.
The millions around the world who had demonstrated against the war, many hoisting placards that said "No Blood For Oil", felt vindicated.
For al Qaeda and the mass murderer who masterminded the attacks on New York and Washington, it was a propaganda windfall. Continued...
