No Blood For Oil – A Rallying Cry That Does Not Reflect Our War With Iraq

With military action against Iraq looming large on the horizon (by the time this column hits the presses, war may well have begun), protesters took to the streets in Washington, D.C. and many other cities around the world on Saturday afternoon, in an attempt to send a message to the international community that a strong body of popular opinion opposes any military action against Saddam Hussein.

Among the charming signs carried by the anti-war crowd (including: “Jim Moran [the Virginia congressman who recently blamed the war on the Jews] is right,” “9/11 was an inside job,” and a drawing of George W. Bush and Colin Powell in Nazi garb), many displayed one of their movement’s most effective rallying cries: “No Blood for Oil!” The assumption that underlies this slogan has won over a lot of people – including presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who proclaimed a few months ago that “This war is about oil.”

And perhaps it is. But from whose perspective? America doesn’t rely much on Iraqi oil at present, and even if we were to confiscate all of Iraq’s oil reserves (which we unquestionably won’t), it would bring a maximum benefit of $40 billion per year. But a war against Iraq will cost us at least $100 billion right from the get go. That’s not a sound investment, and the Bush administration knows it. If we really wanted the economic benefit of having cheap Iraqi oil, we could simply help lift the international sanctions against them and immediately reap the fruits.

Which may be exactly what the French have been trying to do. Since the Gulf War, they have opposed the following U.N. efforts: a 1995 Security Council resolution to find Saddam Hussein in material breach, a 1996 resolution to condemn him for his slaughter of the Kurds, a 1997 resolution to block travel by Iraqi intelligence and military officials, and the 1999 resolution that created UNMOVIC (the inspections team in which the French now place their unwavering hopes for preserving “peace”). And in 1998, the French announced that Iraq was free of all weapons of mass destruction, even though the entire international community knew this to be false.

Meanwhile, France has sold munitions and other products to Iraq for decades (including nuclear reactors in the 1970s), and Iraq owes them a large monetary debt. And unlike the U.S., France relies heavily on Iraqi oil. French President Jacques Chirac has a lot to gain by supporting Mr. Hussein against international pressures – and a lot to lose if things change.

Of course, none of these facts matter to the fanatics who organized last Saturday’s protests. Most of the leaders of International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) are members of a radical communist organization called the Workers World Party. The WWP may not have any ground to stand on when they claim that Bush is fighting this war for oil, but they don’t really care: their unconditional anti-war stance fits in quite well with their anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-Semite and anti-capitalist platforms. These are the same kinds of people who supported Stalin, Mao, Castro et al against attempts to bring down oppressive communist regimes; they’re so far beyond reason that they will use anything at their disposal to fight against American interests.

Don’t get me wrong – there are many solidly principled reasons to oppose military action against Iraq. Among them are questions about how a preemptive military strike fits into just war doctrines, worries about the cost that a war will have in terms of lives and taxpayer dollars and the possibility that it might lead to a renewed outbreak of terrorism, and questions about what sort of outcome we are looking for when we rebuild Iraq and whether we can feasibly achieve such goals. And recent comments by religious leaders, including Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls asserting that a war would be unjust at this time, should give one significant reason for pause. I tend to think that these issues can be addressed, and that military action to disarm Iraq is our best and last resort. But there’s clearly a debate to be had.

My point, though, is that claiming that Bush wants to shed blood for oil is fanciful at best. It’s a rhetorically effective thing to say, but it’s baseless. After actually looking at the reality of the international situation, only a fool or a reflexive Bush-hater could take this allegation to be true.

Why, then, do so many citizens and international leaders support immediate strikes against Iraq? Here are a few of their true motives:

Upholding the Law. Saddam Hussein is in violation of the cease-fire signed at the end of the Gulf War, and of no less than seventeen United Nations resolutions calling for him to disarm and comply with international laws.

Self-Defense. Hussein has given no solid evidence to show that he has destroyed the massive quantities of weaponized anthrax, VX nerve agent, mustard gas, botulinum toxin, aflatoxin, ricin, plague, typhus, cholera, camel pox, hemorrhagic fever, and ebola that he is known to have had in the late 1990s. Even very small amounts of these chemical and biological agents could kill millions of innocent people, and he has repeatedly said that he would use them against Americans.

Humanitarianism. Hussein’s tyrannical regime has brutally murdered countless Iraqi citizens. For example, last Sunday marked the fifteenth anniversary of his chemical attack against his own people in Hajbala: 5,000 died from the attack, and 10,000 were injured; the people of Hajbala still suffer from high rates of birth defects, cancer, blindness, and respiratory illness.

Again, there is room for disagreement about whether these motivations constitute just cause for war. But it is for these reasons and others that President Bush has assembled a powerful international coalition set on disarming Iraq, freeing the oppressed Iraqi people, and establishing a just regime in place of the existing one. It is for these reasons and others that they are willing to sacrifice lives and resources to form a true and lasting peace in the region. It is for these reasons and others that they will not allow blood to be shed for oil.

John Schwenkler is a senior philosophy major.