The Final American Coup in Iraq?

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

  The Baker/Hamilton “Iraq Study Group” has announced America’s end strategy to reap the benefits of three years of murderous conflict.  This end plan, announced in today’s New York Times, calls for the orchestration of control over Iraq’s oil riches in what appears to be an act of enlightened liberalism.  In fact, it poses two very retrogressive problems.  First, it turns all the persons and peoples of the Fertile Crescent into socialist welfare addicts.  Second, and almost equally important, it seems to assure that they will remain under foreign control.

  The American plan, now to be imposed willy-nilly on the peoples of Iraq by the passage of a new oil law within the next three weeks, calls for distributing oil profits on a per capita basis to the autonomous regions.  This is a good start on addressing the single issue that now has been admitted to be the key to peace in this region of the world.  But, this still does not address the issue of peace through justice because it is fundamentally unjust to concentrate political power in a central government by giving it control over a centrally empowered oil corporation based on a business model of power through concentrated ownership. 

  It now appears that foreign control is what such enlightened liberalism is all about.  The only remaining issue is whether the Kurds will lose control over contracting with foreign oil companies over future oil exploration and production.  The Kurds recently discovered two new oil fields after signing exploration contracts with a Turkish company and a Norwegian company.  American officials are trying to convince the Kurds to give up such regional autonomy by arguing that a national oil law could attract more foreign oil companies to exploration and development in Kurdistan.  Specifically, “A large foreign oil company would have more confidence in signing a contract with the Kurds if it were to operate under the law of a sovereign country rather than just the law of an autonomous region.”

  The American advisers are willing to compromise by allowing revenues collected by the central government to be redistributed into sub-accounts dedicated to the three regions, because this would have no effect on the central goal, which obviously is to concentrate political power in a central government more responsive to foreign investment.

    According to the NYT report, “The North and South Oil Companies, which currently manage production in their regions, would fall under the umbrella of the Iraq National Oil Company.  Any exports would still be sold through a state marketing company. ... The working draft of the oil law re-establishes the state-run Iraq National Oil Company, which would operate using a business model and not through a government budget process.  Iraqi and American officials say that would make management of oil production more efficient and separate it from the Oil Ministry, which has been rife with corruption.”

  This sophisticated language may serve only to cover up a hidden foreign agenda designed to assure that one or more big multi-nationals will control both the governments and persons in this natural-resource rich region of the world.

  The only way to remove such suspicions would be to privatize ownership of all oil resources in the Fertile Crescent through equal shares of inalienable and voting stock to every resident of this region.  Such economic democracy, in turn, would make possible real political democracy with power residing in the people not in some state corporation beholden to outside interests. 

  The details of this strategy have been spelled out for several years by the Center for Economic and Social Justice in cooperation with the Freedom Party and other visionary leaders in Iraq and are available in the article by CESJ’s founding president, Dr. Norman Kurland, “A New Model of Nation-Building for Citizens of Iraq.”  This was updated on July 27th, 2005, and republished last week on December 3, 2006, in http://www.theamericanmuslim.org.  Although the title perhaps should have read “A New Model of Liberation for the Nations in a Federated Iraq,” this article spells out better than any other source the principles of economic justice with all the necessary details for implementation. 

  In Alaska, the distribution of oil revenues at the discretion of centrally controlled power was acceptable because everything was American, but in Iraq such manipulation by legerdemain may run into the problem of “not invented here.”  Instead of diffusing power downward, which is the key to stability in Iraq, the new plan is to concentrate it upward under the appearance of doing the opposite.  It is tempting to speculate that the chaos in Iraq has been designed to make possible what now in the eleventh hour will eventually be seen by the peoples there as a coup in consolidating American control over their economic and political destinies.

  The challenge now before the leaders of partial regime change in America is to change America’s foreign policy paradigm from “stability through power” to “peace through compassionate justice.”  Empowering others, rather than merely itself, is the only way to recover America’s role as the “last best hope for the world.”