They Lied To Us

October 31, 2005
     The cry across the land grows increasingly shrill: "THEY LIED TO US!"

     For going on three years, the American public, especially on the political left, has been complaining that the Iraq War was some kind of a shuck-and-jive. The Bush government pulled the wool over everybody's eyes. They ran a vicious propaganda operation. We were fooled by all those fairy tales about WMDs, Saddam and Osama, and African radioactive yellowcake.

     Now, through the fog of the Valerie Plame affair and the indictment of Scooter Libby, the cry is reaching a crescendo: "THEY LIED TO US!"

      Being a Democrat myself, and therefore nominally in opposition to Bush-and-Cheneyism, one has to contend with all sorts of embarrassing nonsense emanating from one's own side. In Sunday's New York Times op-ed section, for instance, Nicholas Kristoff wrote: "Mr. Cheney, we need a stiff dose of truth." I'm sorry to tell you this Nick (and the rest of my homies), but what Jack Nicholson's character said in that court martial movie some years back still applies: you can't stand the truth.

      If the American public could stand the truth, we would stop calling it the Iraq War and rename it the War to Save Suburbia. Of all the things that Bush and Cheney have said over the last six years, the one thing the Democratic opposition has not challenged is the statement that "the American way of life is not negotiable." They're just as invested in it as everybody else. The Democrats complain about the dark efforts by Bush and Cheney to cook up a rationale for the war. Guess what? The Democrats desperately need something to oppose besides the truth. If they would shut up about WMDs for five minutes and just take a good look around, they'd know exactly why this war started.

     When the American people, Democrat and Republican both, decided to build a drive-in utopia based on incessant easy motoring and massive oil dependency, who lied to them? When tens of millions of Americans bought McHouses thirty-four miles away from their jobs in Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Dallas, who lied to them? When American public officials adopted the madness of single-use zoning and turned the terrain of this land into a tragic crapscape of strip malls on six-lane highways, who lied to them?  When American school officials decided to consolidate all the kids in gigantic centralized facilities serviced by fleets of yellow buses that ran an average of 150,000 miles per year per school, who lied to them? When Americans trashed their public transit and railroad system, who lied to them? When Americans let WalMart gut Main Street, who lied to them? When Bill and Hillary Clinton bought a suburban villa in farthest reaches of northern Westchester County, New York, who lied to them?

     You want truth, Progressive America? Here's the truth: the War to Save Suburbia entailed an unavoidable strategic military enterprise. Saving Suburbia required that the Middle East be pacified or at least stabilized, because two-thirds of the world's remaining oil is there (and in case you haven't figured this out by now, Suburbia runs on oil, and the oil has to be cheap or we couldn't afford to run it). The three main oil-producing countries in the Middle East, going from west-to-east are Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. We had serious relationship problems with all of them at various times, and they with each other, leading at frequent intervals to a lot of instability in that region, and consequently trouble for us trying to run Suburbia on cheap oil (which they sold us in large quantities).

     After nineteen religious maniacs from the Middle East, mostly Arabs (though unaffiliated officially with any state in their actions) flew planes into our skyscrapers and a big government building, we had to kick someone's ass. We decided to start by kicking the ass of Afghanistan, where one particular mischievous maniac, Mr. bin Laden, had set up operations connected with 9/11. It wasn't enough. We never could find Mr. bin Laden, Afghanistan wasn't really in the Middle East, and whatever else they were, the Afghans weren't Arabs. We had to find somebody else's ass to kick to reinforce the idea that religious maniacs unaffiliated with any particular state could not pull off lethal stunts like 9/11 without bringing substantial pain down on their own home places. To put it plainly, we had to kick some Arab ass. We picked Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Not because he had anything to do with 9/11-- which we couldn't pin on any Muslim nation -- but because Saddam's Baathist regime was Arab, and the same general religious brand as the guys who did 9/11, Sunni Muslim, and because Saddam had already proven to be a freelance mischievous maniac quite in his own right over the years, worth getting rid of, and most of all (from a strategic point-of-view) because Iraq was the perfect place geographically to open a US police station in the Middle East. It was right between those two other troublemakers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and setting up an American military presence between them, it was hoped, would moderate and influence their behavior, and discourage them from doing anything to interfere with the indispensable supplies of oil that we desperately required to run our beloved, non-negotiable Suburbia. It was even hoped, by a band of extreme idealists in the US Government, that in the process of setting up a military presence in Iraq, we could convert this troubled, fractious nation into a peaceful, cohesive, beneficent democracy, establishing a shining example, blah, blah. . . . But such is the nature of idealism.

      I apologize for taking two long paragraphs to tell you the true origins of the War to Save Suburbia, but it was, after all, only two paragraphs, and the truth is sometimes not so simple. The American people have gotten exactly the war that they bargained for. The outstanding obvious question is not by what wicked and recondite means the War to Save Suburbia got started, but how come once started, we did such a poor job of resolving it, specifically why, after nearly three years, our vaunted technological mastery couldn't get the electricity running more than a few hours a day in Baghdad, why we let squads of redneck moron enlisted personnel beat up on prisoners and videotape their own antics, and why we can't even get the oil equipment in good enough shape so the Iraqis can sell us the oil we still need to run our non-negotiable way of life?

     So, as a card-carrying Democrat and as a Progressive who would like to see his country successfully adapt to the changing realities of the world, I propose we stop making ourselves ridiculous by whining about being lied to, because we've only been lying to ourselves. We walked into the War to Save Suburbia with, as the old saying goes, our eyes wide shut.

Comments

[Ed]

So Gore would have invaded Iraq (assuming he let 9/11 happen)? I don't get it, why back a war that you admit is doomed to failure?

[hopping madbunny]

So it really IS true when they told us that the "American Way of Life" is not negotiable? If we slow it down, everything collapses?
Well, the rot goes back a long time. All that 'bigger and better' stuff with strip malls and freeways being seen as a sign of progress. When Looking back at the past decisions of civic minds it's difficult to resist the thought that they must have all been insane. Ultimately you'd probably have to blame that guy Henry Ford for building cheap cars in the first place.
I do miss the trains though. The destruction of the public transit systems in places like LA are, I think, one of the crimes of the last century.

[hopping madbunny]

There is one fallacy in your argument. Oil isn't much good to people who don't need to burn it for heat or transport. It's something that is SOLD. I can't believe that we couldn't have bought the stuff for whatever price the Arabs wanted to charge for it. It would have ultimately cost far less in money, blood, and national standing.
Anyone ever figure out why it was considered better to steal it than to just pay for it?

[Jim]

Well written and entertaining as usual. I have always thought the war was a strategic blunder due to the inevitable clusterfuck consequences. But here are some additional Bush/Cheney rationalizations to consider:
-The sanctions program was untenable due to Arab public opinion (i.e. it made us look bad)
-US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia was also untenable due to Saudi extremist anger at our presense near Mecca and Medina
(move them to Iraq!)
-Saddam's sons may have been a long term threat to the region
(Uday was insane!)
-Iraq probably would have priced oil in Euros, hurting our Petro-Dollar domination
-Iraq was a long term threat to Saudi Arabian oil and the region

Bottom Line: The war was an effort to stablize and economically vital region.

[Mark K]

Jim,
I sense a little anger coming through in this latest post instead of your usual cynicism. I am sorry to see this change in tack. Trying to straighten out people who are so heavily invested in their own small-minded and self-interested position is an exercise in utter futility, a waste of time, and an invitation to reproach. People can't handle the truth? Most people in this country don't seek and/or deserve the truth. Politicians instinctively know this. Everything is as it should be. The environment is fine. The economy is strong. There is plenty of everything for everyone. Distraction is their ally. They pit people against one another on a mind-numbing array of divisive issues of no importance. This is their game, their ability. You are right, people can't handle the truth and railing at them won't help. For them, nothing needs to change until they start to "feel the pain" for themselves. By then it will be much too late. You know it, and so do I.

[Heretic]

Hopping Madbunny -

It's not a fallacy for many reasons, but I think the key ones are :

1. Without bombing Iraq back into the stone age the military/industrial complex and corporations like Halliburton couldnt have made obscene amounts of money off US tax payers. And believe me, this is very important to the Bush crime family.

2. Iraq is a seller of oil, yes, but there is nothing to stop them from selling that oil to China and any other number of nations who are now (or soon will be) desperate for more oil. Having already decimated Iraq once and having imposed 10+ years of sanctions on them, they weren't exactly eager to deal with us when there's so many other prospective buyers.

3. As Jim pointed out, Iraq was preparing to make the pricing transition to Euro's, a move I believe Iran has also been considering. The only reason the US can support our huge trade deficits and keep this giant "you give us cheap walmart crap and in exchange you have the privledge of buying our debt" scam going is by maintaining our petro-dollar dominance. The PNAC crew decided that an example needed to be made for any other nation (like Iran) that was thinking about interfering with out global hegemony.

Mark K -

There is truth in much of what you say and I am constantly saddened and bittered by the sheer ignorance in this country, but.... at the same time, if we don't at least TRY to inform them, try to wake them up, are we much better?

They may be lemmings headed for a cliff, but that doesn't mean we should entirely give up on them. We WILL all be in the same boat when the sh*t hits the fan, after all.

[Heretic]

Correction : with OUR global hegemony.

No edit button, damn :p

Might as well introduce myself while I'm at it....

Hello, I'm Heretic ^_^

I've been lurking here for quite a while, but hopefully I'll post now and then.

[scrutiny hooligans]

Amen, brother! We simply must make some major changes in our infrastructure and do it now. Keep up the good work, Kunstler, we hooligans bow before your wit, wisdom, and truth.

thought we can't handle it either.

=P

[donna]

Welcome, Heretic. Glad you're going to post--those are good thoughts.

Hopping Madbunny: Go back and read Jim's essay more carefully and you'll see the answer to your question. It's not that we couldn't pay for the oil (if, as Heretic notes, Iraq would keep selling it to us)--we need to =control= the oil, and the region, in order to keep the American empire going.

[george]

Jim's post this week is absurd. You think Cheney gives a s%$t about "surburbia" or anyone in it? Cheney and Bush wanted the Iraq oil THEMSELVES (or their Texas buddies in the oil bidness) to SELL to surburbia and glean untold wealth in the process. They made the crucial, fatal, immoral decision (that will chase them to their graves) to waste a few hundred American troops and a few thousand Iraq men, women, and children and thought the cost would be worth it. This from gutless pieces of garbage like Cheney who hid out from the draft in Vietnam or hid in Daddy-procured Guard slots like Bush. Iraq blew up in their faces and they don't have a clue as to what to do about it. As American citizen WE are responsible for this mess and have the obligation to get our country out of it, and to bring justice to the morons that got us into it. Jim's geopolitical blather makes as much sense as Kissinger's land war of attrition in Asia made a generation ago-NONE. We are sacrificing out nation's laws, standards, ideals, and morals over the price of a gallon of gas?

[OliFromParis]

Hi all,

As I was buying some food in my favorite supermarket, my attention was caught by some appealing fresh shrimps from Brasil for only 10€/kg (less than $6/pound)! The problem? I live in Paris, France which is 9200km or 5800miles away from Rio de Janeiro! Along were standing a heap of juicy lemons from Argentina (7000miles).

Last week, I was interwieved for a position in a high tech compagny. The department's head spent some time explaining me how most of the production was outsourced to Asia and Magreb.

Finally last Wednesday, our very own Eminence the prime minister Villepin said for the third time in a month that the "post petroleum era" was contemplating us. This short brianstorm was quickly wiped-down by the SNCF (a rail state company that the Bulgarian would be proud of) annoucement of the possible disruption of several loss-making local lines.

Despite the fact that the Frenchs rejected with a strong NO the European so called constitution and the "virtual economy", it seems like our elite on both sides are not getting the message and are instead rather willing to thatcherise even more the French society. This is problematic, because we import 98% of our fossil fuels.

So, is the French way of live non negotiable as well? Being
cynical, it appears to me that when your mid-teens-army took control of bagdad and cut our juicy oil contracts with Saddam, you decided for us. Will we have to beg of Putin to reroute some of its pipelines from China to Europe? Should Algeria be afraid of the second era of "civilisation" that we are about to bring them within a decade? And at last but not least, what will our representation do of our huge pile of plutonium, if bread and cakes become scarce? May-be we will just stop shipping you every day two million barrels of refined gasoline and try to concentrate the coming demand destruction on your soil before it catches us. Why not?

Sorry for the Frenglish.

[JB2]

Jim -

Fine, as far as it goes, but you might want to add:

"I, and most of the Neo-Cons, blithely assumed that 'kicking Saddam's ass' and setting up our 'police station' in the Middle East would be relatively easy."

In all your comments, from 9/11 up to the invasion, you never envisioned that the whole "police station" scenario was an impossible fantasy; that the Sunnis and Baathists knew a little about fighting; or that, in guerilla warfare, home-field advantage is a big deal.

A lot of us "whiners" understand the whole realpolitik thing; that's why we were against this war.

[Finn]

http://antiwar.com/justin/

"But the oil is just the gravy on the meatloaf, or perhaps the dessert that comes after the main course, which is Israel's improved geopolitical position as a result of the Iraq war…this war was, and still is, all about protecting Israel's security and plans for expansion – at our expense."

I would urge critics of Israel to take some solace in the words of John Derbyshire, Goldberg's colleague at National Review, who invokes what he calls:
"Derbyshire's First Law": Anything – anything whatsoever – that a Gentile says about Jews or Israel will be taken as rabidly antisemitic by somebody, somewhere."

http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com/

[loyal_opposition]

Clusterf*ck Nation, circa 1890:

"The cities are doomed. The streets are clogged with the excrement of horses and the air is clogged with the excrement of the coal-burning furnaces of the evil capitalists who destroy our way of life. This is unsustainable. Only immediate, urgent exploration into the pristine, virgin forests of the outlying areas can hope to save us from this doomed way of life.

Coal is not the answer; it is surely the bottom-dealing of the coal merchants off the deck of life that has given us this horrendous mockery of True Life. Nor can horses supply us with the form of transportation that will save us from this disastrous way of life.

Only the advent of horseless carriages, and the consolidation of many disparate, beleagured farming communities into giant "super-centers" can possibly save us now. We are doomed. The coal-merchants and horse salesmen have consigned us to a way of life that is unsustainable. What is worst of all is, there is no answer anywhere. No new technology is possible, as all the coal there is to be found has already been exploited, and therefore, we are doomed. DOOMED!

We must all take sail immediately into ships back unto those fair and unspoilt lands of the south pacific, where the women are plump and fair and the fruit falleth off the trees aplenty; all else is folly.

Repent, now! The end of the easy coal and horsing era is nigh!

[Dave]

The suffering this war has caused is the first and last thought we need to hold in the forefront of our minds. It is a needless waste of the few reserves of human decency that remain and leads on to the destruction of the human in service to the megamachine of which suburbia is the deceptive mirage beckoning us on to our demise.

[Reluctant Lemming]

Okay, so we know how we're screwed, we know why we're screwed and we know by whom we are screwed. But what are we doing or going to do about it?

Over the last year and a half I have gone through the usual mental stages after learning about Peak Oil: horror, anger, depression, and calm resignation but now I am frustrated. Is anyone out there doing anything to sincerely prepare for the chaos JHK et al predicts? I can't find anyone near me even aware of the idea.

Sometimes I think peakniks (myself included) are worse than the lumpenproles. Most people are standing on the tracks, blissfully unaware that a train is bearing down on them. But we stand with them on the tracks, watching the approaching train through binoculars and wittily muttering among ourselves about how fast the train is moving, who built it, and how long it took to build. We comment on the interesting metal work on its front grill and just how gory the tracks may be when it finally plows through our crowd. But who among us is actually getting the hell off the tracks and moving to a safe distance?

Or are we just waiting for the satisfaction of being able to walk around and smugly say, "yeah, this is as bad as I expected it to be?

Don't get me wrong: I'm not mocking anyone here. But I fear that simply being hip and knowledgeable will make things no less desperate for us if these events do come to pass. When do we put down the keyboard and actually start doing something?

[Mark K]

Heretic:
Same here. Thought I'd contribute something to the discourse after awhile. Yes, I know we will all be in the same boat. The shrewd manipulators of these "lemmings" are also in this boat with us (even though they don't as yet reallize it). One of the problems with trying to educate or enlighten or "wake up" people is that people like to be told and to feel within themselves that they are good and decent, that morality and God are on their side. Many people in this country imagine inequity and inequality as being something apart from themselves. What they fail to perceive is that evil abounds in places they do not wish to look. When reassured often enough of their own innate goodness it becomes easy for them to believe that they are capable of righting the injustice that is in the world. What they do not understand is that they, themselves, are often the culprit of the grievous ills they seek to remedy. Even if the truth which belies this notion becomes apparent to them, they do not care. They even perform the work of censure for the ruthless because they actually do not want things to change in any profound way. In this way those who would sell out humanity for profit get those who don't even know they are being used to do their work for them. The sad part for most is that they don't seem to know or care what is in their own best long-term interest. Not all are this way. Visitors to this site are among those who probably understand what is going on as well as anyone. It is not so much apathy as it is reality. People who are ready for the truth go looking for it. Those who aren't ready don't see it unless it hits them in the choppers. Thanks for taking an interest.

[SqueakyRat]

Uh, I guess I see. They lied us into the war, but we really have nothing to complain about because JHK believed them and suburbs are bad. Let's all just apologize very sincerely. Is that all right?

[Nicholas Paredes]

Hopping Madbunny,

Great name btw... The dismantling of the "public" transportation system was certainly a bargain with the devil by making shiny objects for people to buy, but the big three did something much more sinister. They purchased transportation companies, many of which were private at the time, and simply closed them. Much information is available on this subject.

Certainly, people like Chomsky would argue that we have always behaved in exactly the same manner, and that the difference bewteen parties is subtle at best. Acting locally, keeps one sane.

[ross]

After this week's JHK post I am reminded of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. Mark K touches on what I will dub "the truth of truths."

As near as I can tell, The Iceman Cometh, distilled, is about the need we humans have to dream, to hold onto fantasies, even detrimental fantasies, no matter what. The hero of the The Iceman Cometh, a reformed alcoholic named Hickey comes back to the bar where he once dissipated himself to give the alcoholic patrons a big swig of his newfound truth. But the truth of truths is that Hickey's former barmates can't, and I mean can't subscribe to Hickey's truth, which is a truth too cruel and barren to be acceptable by all but a very few. Hickey's truth is that his fellow bar mates must give up all their dreams. That is impossible. And therein lies the "truth of truths." Men, nay, mankind, MUST have dreams in order to live. To even attempt to try and remove that from one's experience, to attempt to remove the very impulse to dream is itself the work of the most deluded of dreamers.

Which brings me to Santayana who said,
"The only true realists are idealists."

[Stranger]

In Reply To Iran's Euros:

Ignore the article title as it's a incorrect summary:

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=35269&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

[carlostheobscure]

There's a lot of confounding of Kunstler's explanation of the Iraqi with some notion that he some how approves of the the war. Why, I don't know. Geo-politically, his explanation is short, sweet and to the point. We're burning colossal amounts of oil (picture a convoy of tractor-trailer tanker trucks stretching from N.Y.C. to Chicago to supply one day of America's gas), and will be for the forseeable future. Its the proximate cause of the U.S. imperial overstretch in the M.E.

We gotta have the gas. The gang of thugs running the country believe in hard power, thought they could secure the oil with it but instead have created a clusterfuck of massive proportions (remember how Iraqi oil was going to pay for the war?).

If the conflict becomes regional (which is very plausible), and Saudi and Iranian oil production is badly compromised, the Long Emergency will end up playing in fast forward.

[curious]

Reluctant Lemming--I agree with you; many of the responses here go along the lines that Americans will not change their ways until it is too late, so why bother? I asked a while back if anyone had attempted to raise the consciousness of their local coummunity and how this was accomplished, but no one answered my question, iirc. There's a lot more finger-pointing being done than positive constructive suggestions as to how we can persuade ppl that the problem is real. After all, where rational discourse fails perhaps rhetoric can succeed. Whatever his flaws may be, at least JHK travel and try to educate those who are willing to listen.

[anon e muss]

Good article, but I take exeption with your belief that some so-called idealists in the government ever truly hoped to set up anything even closely approximating a real democracy. Real democracies resist oustide hegemonic influences and grow in autonomy, and this means, at a very minimum, they get to control their own resources. At that's a no-no, from the U.S. perspective.

No, we're far more interested in destabilizing the democratic or pre-democratic systems of other (mostly Latin American) countries that refuse to play "the American way."

Witness Venezuela.

[Azuki beans]

Hello everyone,
This is my first time posting, though I’ve been lurking in the shadows for a few months now. I wanted to share some inside information related to peak oil.

I work for a very old, large Japanese company that’s involved in various activities around the world, which include the exploration, production and trading of oil and natural gas through our headquarters and a number of subsidiary companies. One of our subsidiaries, though not a major player, is engaged exclusively in the exploration and production of oil, and holds the rights to a number of oil blocks around the world (East Asia, Middle East, Gulf of Mexico, etc.), producing around 10,000 barrel per day. Four or five months ago the annual report on the production of this subsidiary for 2004 came across my desk. I quickly noticed that compared with the figures from 2003, which showed production increases of 10-20% compared with 2002, this time around production increased by 0-8% depending on the well and they had actually abandoned a few wells as it was judged no longer economically feasible to continue production. Many of the wells have already reached or passed their production peaks according to the data.

Now last week, another document came across my desk concerning the sale of 100% of the shares of one of our oil trading subsidiaries. This subsidiary, founded in 1988, trades around 800,000 physical barrels of oil per day (a considerable quantity), and last year the company recorded its highest net profit ever of around $57 million. My company has the strict policy of withdrawing from any business that it judges to be unsustainable, and listening to the opinions of the numerous oil experts in their employ, the head honchos decided it was a losing proposition and that profits could not be sustained much longer into the future, so the best strategy was to exit as soon as possible. Evidence, perhaps, that some of the rats have recognized a sinking ship and are starting to bail.