THE
CHENEY-HALLIBURTON CONNECTION
The
most direct and obvious beneficiaries of imperialism are government
contractors – those American companies and transnational
consortiums that build and maintain the physical and financial
infrastructure of America's global empire. A good example
is the Halliburton Company, where Dick Cheney was CEO until
he was tapped for the vice presidency. Cheney is the virtual
embodiment of what Dwight Eisenhower called the "military-industrial
complex," who segued easily from Bush's defense secretary
to CEO of Halliburton, a major defense contractor as well
as the biggest infrastructural engineer for oil drilling worldwide.
In tracing the trajectory of "Cheney's
Path: From Gulf War to Mideast Oil," the New York Times
perfectly described the revolving door that hardly separates
the corporate world from the US government: "Four years after
helping to win the Gulf War and reclaiming the oil fields
of Kuwait from Iraq, Dick Cheney, a former secretary of defense,
went from fighting for oil to running a Dallas-based company
that he has helped transform into the world's largest oil-field
services company." Cheney was indispensable to Halliburton
– and its subsidiary, Brown and Root, which has the contract
for outfitting our Balkan occupation army – in a way
only a former top foreign policy official could be: "Since
joining the company in 1995, Mr. Cheney's background as a
leader in the Gulf War has seemed tailor-made for Halliburton,
since much of its business is done with Arab governments.
Almost 70 percent of Halliburton's nearly $15 billion in annual
sales comes from outside the United States."
USA
ENGAGE – THE HALLIBURTON CONNECTION
The
Times also reports that Halliburton under Cheney became
a leading force behind "USA Engage," a coalition of trade
associations that opposes the imposition of unilateral economic
sanctions. Now this is a very curious group that, on the surface,
appears to be doing some good work. The front
page of their website is devoted to news and notes criticizing
the counterproductive arrogance of sanctions, from Cuba to
North Korea. Sanctions against Iran are deplored in particular
as being contrary to US economic interests. But a search for
the word "Iraq" will not find it on this page or any other.
The biggest and most destructive example of a barbaric policy
– a policy of genocide denounced by the Pope, the National
Council of Churches, and such experts as former UN arms inspector
in Iraq Scott
Ritter – is not even mentioned by a group supposedly
devoted to a great humanitarian cause. In an
exchange with Elliot Abrams, who takes USA Engage to task
for being insufficiently belligerent toward "rogue nations"
such as Iraq, the group's Vice President, Frank D. Kittredge,
protests that not a single press release or article put out
by USA Engage calls for ending all sanctions:
"Elliott
Abrams misrepresents the position of USA Engage and the business
community when he states that 'the explicit goal of the several
hundred business and trade associations that make up USA Engage
is to end the use of sanctions as a tool of U.S. foreign policy,'
he is simply incorrect. . . . We have gone to great lengths
to point out that, yes, sometimes sanctions are necessary
– and that national security should always be the paramount
concern."
IRAN
SI, IRAQ NO?
USA
Engage – and behind them, Halliburton – chooses
its causes with calculated precision. When some dotty Massachusetts
town council banned all commerce with Burma because of alleged
human rights violations, USA Engage went
to court to stop the sanctions. The group argues that
sanctions against Iran are counterproductive
and that the time has come to "seek a modus
vivendi with the rogue state." One USA Engage report
argues, curiously, that sanctions have been good for
Iran, which has prospered not only in spite of but because
of the US attempt to isolate it. This has resulted in a popular
mobilization, and has uplifted the economy. Business is good
in Iran, whatever the reasons, and the general message, in
short, is that there are profits to be made in Iran by US
investors.
SURPRISE
SURPRISE
But
the omission of Iraq from the laundry list of USA Engage's
favorite causes should hardly be any great surprise –
except for those naïve souls (again, nearly all of them
Americans) who expect some sort of intellectual consistency
or even honesty in the realm of public policy. Behind the
mask of USA Engage lurks the grinning visage of Big Oil –
and he has good reason to smile. For the denouement of a long
campaign to solve the "problem" of Saddam Hussein is coming
to a head in late August, when the UN Security Council
is meeting on the matter of Iraq's refusal to allow arms inspectors
back in unless and until the killer sanctions are lifted.
As Scott Ritter and others maintain, Iraq has long lacked
any sort of military capability that represents a credible
threat to the US or its allies in the region – yet still
the US and Britain continue their relentless bombing campaign.
Yes, incredibly, the bombing of Iraq continues to this day,
occurring well under the radar screens of the American public:
children, hospitals, and other civilian targets have been
hit. With Bush and Gore engaged in a chest-beating match to
show who can be the toughest on Saddam, this bombing campaign
is certainly going to escalate no matter which of the two
major party candidates gets into the Oval Office The only
question is who gets to give the order to attack, and
when.
OEDIPUS
REX
With
the elevation of Cheney to the number two spot on the Republican
ticket, however, it appears that Dubya is the chosen candidate
of Big Oil – in spite of Gore's own intimate
ties with the oil industry. As the Eastern wing of the
Republican Establishment, the old Rockefeller faction, tightens
its grip on the GOP and prepares to take the White House,
it looks like President Dubya will give us a rerun of Desert
Storm, in which the son may seek to redeem the perceived failures
of his father – a dangerous possibility with unpleasant
Oedipal overtones. Unless, of course, Bill Clinton pulls an
"October surprise" and beats him to the punch. . . .
A
FINAL SOLUTION
The
choice of Cheney as Dubya's paladin and running mate is enormously
significant. Big Oil has long sought a final solution to the
Saddam Hussein problem, and when Dubya inherits his father's
presidential mantle the lords of the gas pump hope to implement
it. Bush's top foreign policy advisors, such as Richard Perle,
have long advocated taking Baghdad and installing an army
of occupation, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, a semi-permanent garrison
to enforce to "democracy" at gunpoint – and, by the way,
police the oil fields. Cheney is their man – and so,
I'm afraid, is the affable and no doubt well-meaning but enormously
ignorant Dubya.
WAR
PROFITEERS OF THE LEFT
Now
don't get the wrong idea: the profiteers of globalism are
by no means exclusively Republicans. I may have a special
animus toward the Republican variety, as I'll readily admit,
but the Cheney-Halliburton connection is small potatoes compared
to some of the big boys, like
George Soros. While Halliburton's subsidiary, the engineering
firm of Brown and Root, has the contract for building the
extensive infrastructure required by US troops in the Balkans,
Soros has set himself up as the official
banker and chief
investor of the region – under US government auspices
and with US taxpayers money. Soros Fund Management LLC is
investing $50 million in a project to aid business expansion
while the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)
– an agency of the federal government – will put
up another $100 million in "loan guarantees." At an official
ceremony inaugurating the program, Soros declared ``Of all
the people present, I'm the most nervous, because I actually
have to deliver.''
DELIVER
US FROM EVIL
But
it was NATO that delivered first. Soros was a key
figure in the propaganda campaign leading up to the Kosovo
war, first through his financing of the American Committee
to Save Bosnia and a whole bevy of groups, many of them militant
Muslims, preaching intervention in the Balkans on behalf of
"human rights" The Soros propaganda machine ceaselessly agitated
for war with Serbia, and when it came he and his pet
"human rights" activists applauded the longest and the
loudest. Now that NATO has come through, Soros must "deliver"
– that is, create profits for himself and his investors.
While known as a philanthropist, if a highly eccentric one,
Soros emphasized that his fund would practice "tough love"
and, in the words of the Bloomberg News report, "be driven
purely by profit." To the victor goes the spoils.
THE
PROPHET MOTIVE
But
all of us are driven by profit, even the ascetic Ralph Nader
and the hermits who mortify the flesh and live out in the
desert – for there is such a thing as a purely psychic
profit, that is a value that is not monetary but which exists
in our minds nonetheless: religion, obligation, love, revenge,
or any number of other purely human motives, both sacred and
profane. Through his Open Society Institute (OSI), which has
insinuated itself into academia, government, and every level
of public discourse, Soros has poured his fantastic wealth
into causes as various as cheerleading US intervention in
the Balkans, funding Arianna Huffington's three-ring "Shadow
Convention," and calling for drug decriminalization –
and he reaps his psychic profit, i.e. the personal satisfaction
of seeing his ideas take root. With branches throughout Europe
and Asia, OSI preaches a "free-trade" version of international
socialism, a universalist creed hostile to the idea of national
sovereignty. He for some reason is particularly concerned
with the problem of how to manage international monetary institutions
via a single centralized authority, a world
central bank run by global economic planners. In spite
of the fact that he made his fortune as a speculator who famously
broke the Bank of England, Soros has denounced laissez-faire
in a very
boring book, and has also called for international regulation
that would prohibit the very activities that have made him
one of the richest men on earth.
A
MATTER OF TASTE
Between
these two varieties of war profiteers – between Cheney,
on the right, and Soros on the left – the differences
are purely stylistic. While the lefty Soros is constantly
taking up loopy causes(euthanasia, drug legalization, Arianna
Huffington) and Cheney has a reputation for hardheaded realism
and social conservatism, when it comes down to dollars and
cents both have their snouts in the same public trough: both
are in on the Bosnia-Kosovo foreign aid gravy train, with
Halliburton profiting from the physical reconstruction work
while Soros builds up (and seizes control of) the financial
infrastructure. This symbiotic relationship symbolizes the
essential unity of "right" and "left" when it comes to the
realm of foreign policy: working sometimes in tandem, and
less often at cross-purposes, but always to their mutual profit,
both wings of the ruling elite seek to create and extend the
power of government – and consolidation of a single global
authority. Whether it be some woozy Wilkeite One-World version
of it, as projected by the universalist blatherings of Soros
the Philosopher King, or the more realistic projections of
an American empire extended to include a good deal of the
civilized world (possibly excluding France, by mutual consent),
is purely a matter of taste – and not much of a choice.
This is what the two parties are offering this year in the
realm of foreign policy: the internationalism of the right,
as symbolized by Dubya-Cheney, and the "humanitarian" interventionism
of the liberal-left, as personified by Gore and whomever.
Anyone who thinks one or the other can deter us from our course
of Empire – and the concomitant destruction of our old
Republic – is fooling themselves.
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