Ever since we set up shop as a superpower, the whole world has understood that any threat to America's appetite for oil means war, and right damn now. Called the Carter Doctrine by some, it has actually been our perennial policy for sixty some years.
"Just keep it comin'" is the cornerstone of our consumer civilization and our character, and the foundation of our foreign policy. As long as everyone grasps that any aggro about our incoming oil earns you an immediate invasion, why we can have peace all around.
Hoo-ah! The original zero tolerance policy.
Aye, we've always stood ready to put petroleum before peace. We keep the nuclear navy, air assets and amphibious armor to put boots
`bang on the ground' wherever and whenever we want to. We make missiles that can fly through given bedroom windows in given buildings. We're a nuclear nation; we're Star Wars savvy.
We tend to ask questions afterwards. Our military, like Tom Clancy's literary beast, the Red October, is built primarily for devastating first strikes. From the ground up, that's what it's for. We don't defend; we win by hitting hard and first. We do defense by means of offense - by making sure all the fighting happens in your house, not ours. We have contingency plans for every square yard on the planet, and we're ready to jump, ready to roll. We have the flags, coffins, yellow ribbons, bumper stickers and body bags waiting in the warehouse. Just step over that line, pal, and we'll put you in a world of hurt.
Ever since Dick n' Dubya set up shop on Pennsylvania Avenue in 2001, we've discerned deepening demand for oil worldwide, but we've seen no surge on the supply side to satisfy it. Suddenly, the jig is up; demand can no longer be met, and the era of cheap gas is over. From petrol to plastic to transportation and trucking and flying and fertilizers, everything petroleum-derived is going to cost a lot more now, and then even more, all over the world.
And what do you know -- Dick n' Dubya soon saw the need to amp up America's perennial policy to its next logical level.
That is to say, less than zero tolerance.
That is to say, preemptive war.
Shock n' Awe. Keep it Comin'. First Strike. Shoot n' Loot. Blitzkrieg.
That is to say, piracy.
Oh, they didn't sell it that way, but that's what it is. Bullets and bombs and bodies go into Iraq, and oil comes out. The Chinese and Indians and Russians don't get first crack at it. The military bill goes to you and me, and the profits go to the oil and war corporations, and their wealthy investors. More piracy.
So far, we've walked well over a hundred thousand Iraqi citizens off the plank, and every one of them knew the reason why -- because "The American way of life is not negotiable."
We Americans know that phrase, but not what it means Over There. Not the human meat in the street meaning of it, not the coppery smell of clotting blood and burst bowels meaning of it. We know we drive home every night to watch yet another TV war ten thousand miles away, with our weary soldiers yet again held back by political bungling, and yet again we sit there and we say it sure is a shame.
But we never finish that thought. We never connect the dots, or do the math. We never say sorry about all this, but we will have that oil.
It's not negotiable. Got to have it. Got to have it. Brother, can you imagine life around here without it?
Why, we would be forced to . . . change. Live within our means, and stuff.
And that would be . . . awkward.
That is to say, uncomfortable, unpleasant, and embarrassing.
So we hear variations on the default non-decision decision:
"I don't want to be poor. If that means certain unpleasant things need to be done overseas, then send someone to do them. Get `er done. And don't tell me about it, either."
Even with the scant support for this war that remains, do we discuss downsizing our livin' large to let Iraq's citizens live at all? No. Never comes up. Our public parlance bats sham shuttlecocks back and forth - empty euphemisms like fostering freedom, keeping on course, noble intentions, spreading democracy, and finishing the job. All piffle, polish and packaged words with no content. Macho metaphors for keep it comin', keep on killing anyone between us and that oil.
When Karl Rove recently stated that there is no real anti-war movement in America, this is what he meant. Like you, he's seen so many Americans flash the peace sign at war protesters from inside their SUV as they drive past. But Herr Rove finished the thought. He knows how to add that gesture up - in miles per gallon. In bodies going in and oil coming out. When Karl sees these friendly flashers selling their SUV's, then he will know they mean it in a way he can't polish or package. Until then, we are pirates as much as he is.
Is that harsh? Is that who we are? Are we that? Can we get out of being that? Are we doing unto others as we would have them do unto us? Or do we praise the Lord and pass the ammunition? Do we do unto others before they do unto us? Is that what Jesus would do? Do we more often ask ourselves What Would John Gotti Do, than WWJD?
These are fair questions, private and personal questions, and answering them for yourself will set you on one course or another from here. It matters to every one of us what you choose. Where you stand on this says where we all go. Rest assured that there are already millions of Americans who have put down the cutlass and pistol, and will not thrive by stealing oil, no matter what it costs them or our nation. They will not walk in fear of George Bush and his phantoms, and they will not send him their sons and daughters.
So far, talk of stopping the war has cost most Americans little. Some discretionary income for yellow ribbons and now for gasoline, and some leisure time for perusing opinion columns for or against the war.
Blithely voting with our pocketbooks, we drive to protests and performances and marches and meetings all alone in a big V8 vehicle; we critique concepts like clashing civilizations over salads flown in from New Zealand and guacamole trucked up from Mexico. We blog over broadband about the better than six billion members of our species who live very close to the dirt, on less than a dollar a day, and always will. And we worry about our weight.
It's a bloody good life, compared to some others.
Which is to say, livin' large as we do is the opposite of stopping this war, or the coming wars over other resources we will also need to keep comin'. This war is for that salad, that SUV, and that guacamole, and for all the comfy, free and easy we still enjoy in America, currently courtesy of some grunts sweating out their second or third tours in Baghdad. Comfort isn't free or painless.
What will stop this pirate war, and future resource wars over water, food, lebensraum,and whatever else gets scarce -- is for Americans to look at this harsh thing we are doing to Iraq in order to keep our creature comforts, and turn away from it, even at the cost of some of those comforts. It certainly won't kill us. It certainly is killing them. The only way home from Baghdad is for enough Americans to decide that this nation will live on what we can make, not what we can take.
Bringing our troops home without making that decision will not solve the deeper problem, the root cause of these resource wars.
Aye. There's the rub. There's gold and grub enough for foreign wars. There's nary enough for us all to live like kings and queens, away out in the suburbs, driving to work and back, flying around the world when we feel the fancy, burning up twenty times the oil of the average citizen of Earth as if God said we were better than them.
That lifestyle was built on cheap oil, cheap food, cheap travel, and it's only going to be maintained in the future at the barrel of a gun, in the hands of your son. It's going to cost you that.
Is that comfortable?
Look at us all. Look at how we live. We can't call ourselves farmers and merchants and frontier cowboys anymore. John Wayne, Kit Carson and the Marlboro Man are all dead, and so are many of our opportunities to choose our future. Right now, as we live and breathe, we really need that oil. We really need that gas. We really, really need what we can't buy, and so in the year 2005 we find ourselves following in the footsteps of Edward Teach, who also had the habit of telling the world at large, "give over or die."
Are we stuck on war without end, killing to keep it comin'? Is loot n' scoot really us? Are we the Vandals and Visigoths this time around? Are we the Huns who torture and rape and burn whole villages? Our troops have been doing things that we excoriated the Wehrmacht for doing when my Dad was a dogface back in `45. Inhuman things, unspeakable things, done in our names.
Is that acceptable? Is that us? Are we pirates?
Not facing this choice is choosing. Not choosing is choosing. Until we reduce our worldwide first-strike military machine to a national defense army we won't even have the means, motivation or mentality to stop stealing for a living. Our problem is oil, not terror. Our problem in Iraq is that we took our problem over there. We're fighting in someone else's house, over their possessions. We're a pirate nation while we do this, and the world at large will not put up with that for very long.
Will we choose to live more simply, here at home, or keep marching our men down to the sea with bloody theft in mind?
Well add it all up, me buckos. It will be one way or the other. Meanwhile, raise a black flag and sharpen your swords! Set every sail on a course for the Strait of Hormuz -- this time Bush is after the treasures of Tehran! Send him your sons and daughters; it's the yardarm for anyone who holds back now! The red white n' blue is the scourge of the sea, and there's no turnin' back for you or for me!
`Tis a pirate's life from here, `til we all meet Davy Jones or they hang us on high. It's glory and gold -- or smoke o'er the water an' a chilly grave.
There's the truth of it, and here's a guinea coin to the son of a whore who sings it out plain and simple:
America will not stop these wars.
America will be stopped.