The Bush administration has sought approval from the Senate of its estimated budget for the year 2007-08 to carry on its war in Iraq, which is nearly a whopping US $ 190 billion. Originally the administration had asked for US $ 147 billion but later on Pentagon increased it by US $ 42 billion. If the Senate approves this budget, it will be the biggest for a single year since the invasion of Iraqi. Since September 2001, the US Congress has approved of US $ 620 billion to keep Mr. Bush’s war machinery in Iraq well oiled. And what this well-fed war machinery is doing in Iraq is a well-known fact; it is killing the Iraqi people to give them democracy.
Why this whopping amount of nearly a trillion dollar has been spent on a war which has become greatly unpopular in USA. Few Americans and fewer people elsewhere ask such disturbing questions. The reason is that most people are ignorant of the role of the non-state players in the formation and construction of the US foreign and military policies. Washington never misses any opportunity to accuse other regimes, specially the ones which are opposed to it, that their policies are often influenced by non-state players.
Who are the non-state players? A non-state player is the influential and powerful person or company that works to influence the decisions of the government for serving some vested interests. These non-state players are quite active in dictatorial states. But democracies, too, are prone to the machinations and influence-peddling of the non-state players. The US democracy was never devoid of such elements but of late it seems to have become a hapless victim of powerful lobbies operating in Washington. These lobbies are no longer composed of just people who try to influence politicians and public officials to adopt a policy beneficial to or convenient for their interests. Instead they seem to have been taken over by cartels and mafias with criminal bent of mind whose only purpose is to earn money, and if innocent people are killed in realizing such a goal, it hardly matters for, according to them, they are not worth a dime.
The arms and oil lobbies are quite powerful in Washington. The world knows that America is the biggest seller of weapons internationally. What, however, is not known universally or popularly is that fact the US army is the biggest buyer of weapons manufactured and produced domestically.
The US is a huge country and has the biggest network of air and land communication which works effectively because of excellent airports and roads. Therefore the country’s sky is all the time dotted with high fuel-consuming aeroplanes and high-speeding cars always crowd the roads. In sum, the US communication services are heavily dependent on oil making it the biggest consumer of energy.
It should not surprise any one that Washington is always under the grip of lobbies which work for arms-factories and oil companies, and despite being non-state players, it is they who shape or formulate policies relating to these sectors of US economy. So, it is the combination of the arms and oil lobbies which have been influencing and shaping the Iraq policy of the Bush administration.
People may recall that towards the ends of the 20th and in the beginning of the 21rst centuries, it was believed world wide that the UN would remove the tough sanctions it had imposed against Iraq. The removal of sanctions was conditioned with the elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Sensing that the lifting of sanctions was imminent, a good number of international firms and important countries like Russia, France and China rushed to Baghdad seeking and securing huge projects for reconstructing war-hit and sanction-ravaged Iraq. Conspicuous by absence were America and Britain and the firms owned by their citizens. These companies were either still engaged in reconstructing Kuwait or were about to finish their projects. They were perhaps hoping that their costly services would be hired by Iraq which was destroyed by the armies of their countries. One may also think in hindsight if Saddam’s mistake was to ignore the American firms which brought about his decline.
Initially the construction firms, which had hired the services of retired generals of the US army, decided and accordingly began to spoil Saddam’s party. They influenced the American administration to work for the continuation of the sanction till the Saddam regime was coerced into hiring their services for reconstructing Iraq. Later the arms and oil lobbies also joined them in this sinister game. And ultimately they succeeded in their design when the US occupied Iraq. Today, America’s construction and oil firms are reaping rewards or looting Iraq’s oil wealth and its arms factories have pocketed substantial amount of the nearly a trillion dollar spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[December, 2007]
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