http://www.thenation.com/article/154009/no-empire-doesnt-always-win
No, the Empire Doesn't Always Win Alexander Cockburn The Nation: In the August 30/September 6, 2010 edition "The US isn't withdrawing from Iraq at all-it's rebranding the occupation.... What is abundantly clear is that the US...has no intention of letting go of Iraq any time soon." So declared Seumas Milne of the Guardian on August 4. Milne is not alone among writers on the left arguing that even though most Americans think it's all over, Uncle Sam still rules the roost in Iraq. They point to 50,000 US troops in ninety-four military bases, "advising" and training the Iraqi army, "providing security" and carrying out "counterterrorism" missions. Outside US government forces there is what Jeremy Scahill calls the "coming surge" of contractors in Iraq, swelling up from the present 100,000. "The advantage of an outsourced occupation," Milne writes, "is clearly that someone other than US soldiers can do the dying to maintain control of Iraq." "Can Iraq now be regarded as a tolerably secure outpost of the American system in the Middle East?" Tariq Ali asked in New Left Review earlier this year. He answered himself judiciously: "[Iraqis] have reason to exult, and reason to doubt." But the thrust of his analysis depicts Iraq as still the pawn of the US empire, with a "predominantly Shia army-some 250,000 strong...trained and armed to the teeth to deal with any resurgence of the resistance." The bottom line, as drawn by Milne and Ali, is oil. Milne gestures to the "dozen 20-year contracts to run Iraq's biggest oil fields that were handed out last year to foreign companies." Is it really true that, though the US troop presence has dropped by almost 100,000 in eighteen months, Iraq is as much under Uncle Sam's imperial jackboot as it was in, say, 2004, even though US troops no longer patrol the streets? If Iraq's political affairs are under US control, how come the US Embassy-deployed in its Vatican City-size compound, mostly as vacant as a foreclosed subdivision in Riverside, California-cannot knock Iraqi heads together and bid them form a government? Those 50,000 troops broiling in their costly bases are scarcely a decisive factor in Iraq's internal affairs. Neither are the private contractors, whose military role should not be oversold, unless the Shiites are supposed to quail before ill-paid Peruvians, Ugandan cops and the like. Is a Shiite-dominated government really to America's taste and nothing more than its pawn? It was Sistani, denounced by Ali as America's creature, who called Bush on his pledge of free elections in 2005, thus downsizing the excessive representation of the Sunnis, who chose to boycott the elections anyway. And if all this was a devious ploy to break "the Iraqi resistance," by which Ali means the Sunnis, why does the United States constantly invoke the menace of Shiite Iran and decry its influence in Iraq? If the Sunni "resistance," honored without qualification by Ali, ever had a strategy beyond a sectarian agenda, it wasn't advanced by blowing up Shiite pilgrims and setting off bombs in marketplaces. Muqtada al-Sadr, lamented by Ali as sidelined by the United States and Sistani, has been described as the "kingmaker" since his success in the parliamentary election this past March. If this really was a "war for oil," it scarcely went well for the United States. Run your eye down the list of contracts the Iraqi government awarded in June and December 2009. Prominent is Russia's Lukoil, which, in partnership with Norway's Statoil, won the rights to West Qurna Phase Two, a 12.9 billion-barrel supergiant oilfield. Other successful bidders for fixed-term contracts included Russia's Gazprom and Malaysia's Petronas. Only two US-based oil companies came away with contracts: ExxonMobil partnered with Royal Dutch Shell on a contract for West Qurna Phase One (8.7 billion barrels in reserves); and Occidental shares a contract in the Zubair field (4 billion barrels), in company with Italy's ENI and South Korea's Kogas. The huge Rumaila field (17 billion barrels) yielded a contract for BP and the China National Petroleum Company, and Royal Dutch Shell split the 12.6 billion-barrel Majnoon field with Petronas, 60-40. Throughout the two auctions there were frequent bleats from the oil companies at the harsh terms imposed by the auctioneers representing Iraq, as this vignette from Reuters about the bidding on the northern Najmah field suggests: "Sonangol also won the nearby 900-million-barrel Najmah oilfield in Nineveh.... Again, the Angolan firm had to cut its price and accept a fee of $6 per barrel, less than the $8.50 it had sought. 'We are expecting a little bit higher. Can you go a little bit higher?' Sonangol's exploration manager Paulino Jeronimo asked Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani to spontaneous applause from other oil executives. Shahristani said, 'No.'" So either the all-powerful US government was unable to fix the auctions to its liking or the all-powerful US-based oil companies mostly decided the profit margins weren't sufficiently tempting. Either way, the "war for oil" isn't in very good shape. Ali and Milne are being credulous in taking at face value declarations by US officials that the United States is not wholly withdrawing and will stay in business in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Those officials don't want to see their influence go to zilch, so they have to maintain that their power in Iraq is only a little affected by the steady reduction of troops. The left-or a substantial slice of it-snatches defeat from the jaws of a decisive victory over US plans for Iraq by proclaiming that America has established what Milne calls "a new form of outsourced semi-colonial regime to maintain its grip on the country and region." Yes, Iraq is in ruins-always the default consequence of American imperial endeavors. The left should hammer home the message that the US onslaught on Iraq, in terms of its proclaimed objectives, was a strategic and military disaster. That's the lesson to bring home. Alexander Cockburn *** http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/health/policy/25stem.html?_r=1&ref=us WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Tuesday that it would appeal a court ruling challenging the legality of President Obama's rules governing human embryonic stem cell research, as the head of the National Institutes of Health said the decision would most likely force the cancellation of dozens of experiments in diseases ranging from diabetes to Parkinson's - - - http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/24-10 Scientists Attack Court Ruling Against Barack Obama's Stem Cell Policy Order blocking government funding of stem cell research is a serious setback in search for cures to diseases, say scientists by Chris McGreal The Guardian/UK: August 24, 2010 American scientists have reacted with anger at a court ruling that strikes down Barack Obama's decision to greatly expand medical research using stem cells taken from human embryos. Scientists described the order by a federal judge in Washington, who said that the president had overstepped a law barring the government funding of research in which human embryos are destroyed, as "deplorable" and "a serious setback" in the search for cures to major diseases. Lawyers for an alliance of Christian groups who brought the case, which tied opposition to experiments on embryonic stem cells to the anti-abortion campaign, said the ruling appeared to go further than restrictions under President George Bush and bar all government funding for such research. It also pushes the ever-contentious issue of abortion to the fore again in the runup to November's mid-term elections and presents Obama with the difficult choice of whether he wants a battle in the courts and in Congress to repeal the legislation. The court order came after an executive order by Obama in March last year that lifted restrictions put in place by Bush eight years earlier. Those restrictions limited government funding to a small number of existing lines of human embryonic stem cells. The administration had allocated about $250m (£160m) to the research. The National Institutes of Health added an additional 70 lines after Obama's order. But Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the president's decision was in conflict with the Dickey-Wicker amendment, a 1996 law that bars the use of government funds for "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed". The law has been renewed by Congress each year. Scientists swiftly condemned the ruling. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (Cirm) said the court order would disrupt advances in research for cures to diseases such as diabetes and Lou Gehrig's. "The decision is a deplorable brake on all stem cell research," said Cirm's president, Alan Trounson. "Many discoveries with other cell types ... would not happen without ongoing research in human embryonic stem cells." Steven Aden, a lawyer for the Alliance Defence Fund which brought the case, said: "We're gratified that the court accepted what we think is a plain and commonsense reading of the applicable law and we're hopeful that ultimately this will result in the renewal of good, science-based funding for adult stem cell research." Scientists were also left confused over whether they had to immediately halt embryonic stem cell work paid for with government funds or if the ruling only prevented federal authorities from distributing more grants. Cirm said the order appeared to bar research permitted even under the tighter regulations imposed by Bush. Aden said he believed the ruling prohibits any government-funded research involving embryonic stem cells. "We think that's right. When congress passed the Dickey-Wicker amendment back in the days of the Clinton administration the reason for that was to get the American public out of funding research that involves the destruction of human life," he said. An opinion poll by the Pew foundation last year found that 54% of Americans support research using human embryos. © 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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