Eight years ago ago today, March 20, the U.S. invaded Iraq.
We’re still there.
Then we invaded Afghanistan.
We’re still there.
Yesterday, March 19, 2011, we launched air strikes over Libya. 110 Tomahawk missiles. President Obama claims this will last days, not months or years. But as Jonathan Alter of Newsweek put it, “It’s a third war.” Grounds troops haven’t been ruled out. The international coalition Obama mentions consists of the U.S., the U.K., and France. And oh, we having the blessing of the Arab states, who don’t like Gaddafi. Then why aren’t the Arab states firing missiles? Why aren’t they sending in ground troops?
Are we going to launch missiles against Yemen and the Sudan, too? Or against every other Arab state where the people rise up against despots? Why are we the world cop? We have huge problems in our own country and we’re more than $14 trillion in debt.
According to infoplease.com, the cost of the war in Iraq has, so far, cost the U.S. $802 billion and, in Afghanistan, $455.4 billion. By the end of the fiscal year in 2011, these two wars will have cost $1.29 trillion. Yes, you read that figure correctly.
Meanwhile, the richest 1-2% of Americans are enjoying large tax cuts for another few years (Bush started that and Obama perpetuated it), and the Republicans in Congress talk about how imperative it is to cut spending. You know, cut spending through social program like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, through public education, NPR, the arts…well, you – get the picture. The poor and the middle class are supposed to pay for these wars.
These wars aren’t just about despots and the hunger of the oppressed for freedom. They’re about resources that richer nations want and which the poorest nations have – start with oil. In her brilliant book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein illustrates how disaster capitalism – “the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock” works. And she takes you back through 50 years of history – from Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973 to the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 and to Hurricane Katrina and beyond.
So what is it the U.S. is really protecting in Libya? Even though Libya produces only 1.6 million of the 87 million barrels of oil used on this planet daily, it produces the highest quality of light, sweet crude oil. And this stuff is easily refined into gasoline and diesel and is lower in sulfur, so it’s cleaner to burn.
We’ll see if/how the shock doctrine plays out in Libya.














