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quote:It also irreversibly changed the perception of the USA for most people here. From a great country full of open-minded people which protected western Europe against the very real threat of the soviet union to a country full of warmongering, gun crazy, uneducated religious fanatics. When Bush was re-elected in 2004 it was almost unbelievable. How could you willingly want 4 more years of that president? Obviously a lot of that is hyperbole/stereotypes but it is a little said to see that it wasn't really all that surprising to see the rise of Trump during the primaries until he finally got declared presidential candidate. "US-Americans are crazy, of course they would vote for that caricature of a man" was the sentiment and that viewpoint pretty much began in the early 2000s. What's hard to remember now is that the initial reaction to 911 was such a strong outpouring of goodwill. By any leader with even the smallest amount of statecraft that goodwill could have been put to good use for both the U.S. and the globe as a whole. Bush flushed it down the toilet without even realizing he had done it.
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Aug 6, 2016 16:41
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asdf32 posted:Also sound economic policy for a struggling country. This is sarcastic, yes? Or some troll? Sound economic policy is to steal their most valuable resource?
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Aug 6, 2016 17:44
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Mofabio posted:This is sarcastic, yes? Or some troll? Sound economic policy is to steal their most valuable resource? It is important to realize that to asdf the idea of third-world natural resources being owned by third-worlders and not Sensible Western Oligarchs is a moral wrong that must be corrected, by military force if necessary. Call it Neera Tanden Liberalism. "The problem with Iraq wasn't the idea of toppling a government and taking their oil, the problem was the Bush administration hosed up the smash-and-grab."
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Aug 6, 2016 17:57
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Mofabio posted:This is sarcastic, yes? Or some troll? Sound economic policy is to steal their most valuable resource? The headline was theft but the evidence was growing oil production. They said they wanted to grow production to 4 and they did. So what? The reasons to do that are obvious. Whether profits are being less generously shared is an issue you'd need to address directly but didn't and you certainly can't pretend it was automatically better when it was "nationalized" under Saddam. And don't just switch to climate change if you don't have any real evidence.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:15
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asdf32 posted:The headline was theft but the evidence was growing oil production. They said they wanted to grow production to 4 and they did. So what? The reasons to do that are obvious. Whether profits are being less generously shared is an issue you'd need to address directly but didn't and you certainly can't pretend it was automatically better when it was "nationalized" under Saddam. And don't just switch to climate change if you don't have any real evidence. Did you miss the part where profits no longer go to the nation of Iraq but instead go to random multinational oil companies who were lucky enough to have the right kind of ties to the Bush administration? What is the technical term for the process of hitting someone until they give you their money, asdf.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:24
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Ze Pollack posted:Did you miss the part where profits no longer go to the nation of Iraq but instead go to random multinational oil companies who were lucky enough to have the right kind of ties to the Bush administration? Some profits leave and some don't. Production is up and none is going to Saddam. Whether the average Iraqi is getting more or less from oil revenue isn't clear from the information in this thread.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:38
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asdf32 posted:Some profits leave and some don't. Production is up and none is going to Saddam. Whether the average Iraqi is getting more or less from oil revenue isn't clear from the information in this thread. Nice to see you found the evidence that Iraqi oil was stolen from them once it was pointed out, for the second time, it was literally taken from the nation of Iraq and handed over to Halliburton and company. Remind me. What's the technical term for beating someone up until they give you their stuff?
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Aug 6, 2016 18:50
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Ze Pollack posted:Did you miss the part where profits no longer go to the nation of Iraq but instead go to random multinational oil companies who were lucky enough to have the right kind of ties to the Bush administration? Wrong. Western companies haven't been eager to navigate the instability and maze of corruption in Iraq, although of course there have been some suitors. But Iraq has its own government now, that is more aligned with Iran than it is with the US, and that's who you have to deal with. China has been the primary country who've invested in Iraq's oil infrastructure and gotten the most involved. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/middleeast/china-reaps-biggest-benefits-of-iraq-oil-boom.html
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Aug 6, 2016 18:54
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Volkerball posted:Wrong. Western companies haven't been eager to navigate the instability and maze of corruption in Iraq, although of course there have been some suitors. But Iraq has its own government now, that is more aligned with Iran than it is with the US, and that's who you have to deal with. China has been the primary country who've invested in Iraq's oil infrastructure and gotten the most involved. No dispute. Most of ours have pulled out since the original big push, and Iran and China have been the big winners at Iraq's expense. (ISIS started off a big winner, but recent developments for them have been, ah, less than favorable.) At the moment I'm still trying to wrap asdf's head around the idea 'taking the profits from oil sales away from a country, and giving them to multinational corporations you personally like, is not a revenue-add for the country in question.'
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Aug 6, 2016 18:59
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I'm Swiss. On 9/11 I was in the Red Sea diving from a live-aboard. At 3 in the afternoon one of us got a weird SMS "there's something weird going on in NYC". We tried to get the TV working but it was one of the finest examples of analog TV (ant racing as we used to call it): we were on a shaky, unstable, wobbly boat and tried to access satellite tv. All you could see were two pixel heaps standing up, then an approaching pixel heap from the left which hit one of the standing ones which bloomed out. Sounds was a no-go. We had no idea what actually happened there. So we went diving. A bit later we got more information which disturbed us. Some days later we were flying back. The mood at the airport was totally different than from when we came in: there were metal detectors outside the airport, they looked into all the baggage and the military presence was massive. This was at a time when there was still some suspicion of some of the terrorists being Egyptian. Since I'm Swiss (and we're neutral) there was never any question about going into Iraq ourselves. I think some of the nuclear inspectors were Swiss and in general the approach to the war was followed thoroughly. But it was very clear that (nearly) all the things Saddam was accused of weren't true.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:59
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Ze Pollack posted:No dispute. Most of ours have pulled out since the original big push, and Iran and China have been the big winners at Iraq's expense. (ISIS started off a big winner, but recent developments for them have been, ah, less than favorable.) At the moment I'm still trying to wrap asdf's head around the idea 'taking the profits from oil sales away from a country, and giving them to multinational corporations you personally like, is not a revenue-add for the country in question.' Ok I'll dumb this down further. The binary you think is important isn't, specifically that multinationals are involved doesn't tell us whether the results are positive or negative with respect to the actual humans involved. It's 2016, producing a rubber duck is a global endeavor and realistically the Iraqi oil industry needed huge investment which had to come externally. That's what happened and if this surprises you or you think its necessarily bad you need to connect a bunch more dots. I have a feeling your argument ends at "Haliburton".
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Aug 6, 2016 21:06
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The binary in question being "where do the oil profits go, The Government Of Iraq or Not The Government Of Iraq." When you forcibly shift that binary from the first to the second, what is that called?
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Aug 6, 2016 21:14
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asdf32 posted:Ok I'll dumb this down further. The binary you think is important isn't, specifically that multinationals are involved doesn't tell us whether the results are positive or negative with respect to the actual humans involved. It's 2016, producing a rubber duck is a global endeavor and realistically the Iraqi oil industry needed huge investment which had to come externally. That's what happened and if this surprises you or you think its necessarily bad you need to connect a bunch more dots. I have a feeling your argument ends at "Haliburton". I get what you're saying ("Even if multinational corporations now receive the profits, they increase production enough that the country still ends up better off"), but you're also blindly making the assumption that the pros must outweigh the cons for Iraq itself. You're not really any different than the people assuming that increased corporate involvement is definitely a bad thing; you just direct your faith towards the idea that it must be a good thing instead. Another element to your argument that I see pretty frequently is the idea that, because most people protesting things like this do not have a thorough understanding of the complexities of the oil industry (or finance, etc), they must be wrong and the corporations involved are actually causing a net benefit (or at least not causing any harm). The problem is that this defense can always, under any circumstances, be used to defend a complex industry. You can always say "well, it's complex and you don't understand all the intricacies of the business." The problem is that having a knee-jerk response to support the thing others are protesting is every bit as dumb as anything the protesters might believe. Just because some dumb/ignorant people believe something does not mean that thing is automatically false. Just to be clear, I'm not even arguing that you're right or wrong, just that your rationale is bad (though I have a strong hunch that if Iraq itself did benefit from this that it certainly was not the primary intent and was just a good "side effect" of increasing corporate profits).
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Aug 6, 2016 21:59
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asdf32 posted:Ok I'll dumb this down further. The binary you think is important isn't, specifically that multinationals are involved doesn't tell us whether the results are positive or negative with respect to the actual humans involved. It's 2016, producing a rubber duck is a global endeavor and realistically the Iraqi oil industry needed huge investment which had to come externally. That's what happened and if this surprises you or you think its necessarily bad you need to connect a bunch more dots. I have a feeling your argument ends at "Haliburton". It's a natural resource, not a tech firm designing new phones. Increasing production means it'll be depleted faster. If production is high during an era where Iraqis receive only $0.042 per gallon of crude extracted, then over the life of the field, the resource is worth less to the Iraqi people. Again, the 2007 Hydrocarbon Law, which legalized this theft, was passed with the US Army in the nation's capital. US troops had to kill around 1700 people the month it was passed (not coincidentally, the highest death toll since 2003), in order to pacify the resulting civil unrest. We've gotten other fantastic deals with this tactic. An abbreviated list would include the Mexican Cession, which got us the US Southwest and California for a cool $15 million, and the State of Hawaii, where a select group (1/4 of island population) voted on statehood with the US Navy in its harbor. It's a pretty common weapon we've used in the past to force favorable votes, and shouldn't be controversial unless one's history education stopped after high school. They weren't even subtle about it. After the 2007 Hydrocarbon Law was passed, the army was so impressed with the surge's pacification of civil unrest that there was active lobbying from Washington for reforms to the law. The reforms were less about increasing the degree of theft, and more about preserving the new, fragile order by equitably splitting the meager returns among ethnic groups (with the lion's share still going to multinationals). You can see some of that here, which is purposefully a little vague, but they're referring to reforms to the oil law, which was also a troop withdrawal condition. Notably not a troop withdrawal condition: finding WMDs.
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Aug 7, 2016 00:14
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Ze Pollack posted:The binary in question being "where do the oil profits go, The Government Of Iraq or Not The Government Of Iraq." In the context of discussing the invasion of Iraq, the binary in question is whether the money goes to foreign oil companies or stays in Saddam' Hussein's oppression fund.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:03
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Hobologist posted:In the context of discussing the invasion of Iraq, the binary in question is whether the money goes to foreign oil companies or stays in Saddam' Hussein's oppression fund. drat that crafty Saddam, still rerouting money into his oppression fund a full year after his execution. No choice but to hook that money up to whichever multinational asked for it the nicest!
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Aug 7, 2016 01:19
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I beat the drum on this previously, but the 50% increase in Iraqi carbon extraction makes Barack Obama, bar none, the worst carbon president in history. That's on top of record (and accelerating) domestic emissions.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:21
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Ze Pollack posted:drat that crafty Saddam, still rerouting money into his oppression fund a full year after his execution. No choice but to hook that money up to whichever multinational asked for it the nicest! The post that started this derail made the point that before the Iraq war, Iraq's oil industry was nationalized. Which is technically true, but it was nationalized in the same sense that King Leopold nationalized the Congolese rubber industry.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:22
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Hobologist posted:The post that started this derail made the point that before the Iraq war, Iraq's oil industry was nationalized. Which is technically true, but it was nationalized in the same sense that King Leopold nationalized the Congolese rubber industry. Do you actually know what percent of oil revenues went to Saddam, while the industry was nationalized? Or are you just speculating that it was "a lot"? For reference, crude in May 2007, when the Hydrocarbon Law was passed, was trading at around $60/barrel. Per the law, Iraqis receive $1.75/barrel remuneration fee. Did Saddam keep more, or less, than 97% of oil revenue?
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Aug 7, 2016 01:29
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Hobologist posted:The post that started this derail made the point that before the Iraq war, Iraq's oil industry was nationalized. Which is technically true, but it was nationalized in the same sense that King Leopold nationalized the Congolese rubber industry. Saddam, for all his many, many, many, many flaws, did in fact use oil revenues to try to improve his country's infrastructure when no easier way of keeping his people oppressed presented themselves. Then we killed his rear end! And presented with the choice between "use oil revenues to improve Iraqi infrastructure, much faster now that the Dictatorial Whims segment of the budget is no more" and "just sell that poo poo off lol," the US in its infinite benevolence selected number two for the Iraqi people. For some reason they were not pumped about this.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:31
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Mofabio posted:Do you actually know what percent of oil revenues went to Saddam, while the industry was nationalized? Or are you just speculating that it was "a lot"? If the oil industry was nationalized, as you say, then apart from the odd smuggling incident Saddam would have kept all of it, no?
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Aug 7, 2016 01:41
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Ze Pollack posted:And presented with the choice between "use oil revenues to improve Iraqi infrastructure, much faster now that the Dictatorial Whims segment of the budget is no more" and "just sell that poo poo off lol," the US in its infinite benevolence selected number two for the Iraqi people. Yep. Just to add: I think Americans take, as an article of faith, that there's some vast gap in government behavior between dictatorships and democracies. They literally refuse to believe that a democracy could have the world's largest prison population, would legalize torture, would have the wealth gap that it does. Honestly, this democracy-myth was bought by a lot of people to sell the war in the first place. Then the new Iraqi democracy passed the 2007 Hydrocarbon Law, which >60% of Iraqis were against. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 01:49
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Hobologist posted:If the oil industry was nationalized, as you say, then apart from the odd smuggling incident Saddam would have kept all of it, no? That's not what nationalization means, no. For instance, the Norwegian oil industry is nationalized. The Norwegian king and PM don't keep all the oil money, it goes into Social Security.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:51
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Mofabio posted:That's not what nationalization means, no. And in Iraq, Saddam was the king and the parliament. The binary we were discussing was going letting him continue to do what he wanted with that money, or going into Iraq to stop him. Expecting him to implement some variation of the Alaska Permanent Fund wasn't on the table and certainly never would have occurred to anyone on this forum until, apparently, after the invasion was in its fourth year. But if we are neglecting the concept of linear time, the same wiki article about the Iraq hydrocarbon law notes that production share agreements of the type contemplated in 2007 were also used under Saddam with Russian and Chinese companies anyway, so really it's a quibble about percentages anyway.
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Aug 7, 2016 02:05
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Hobologist posted:And in Iraq, Saddam was the king and the parliament. I'm discussing the fact that currently, 97-99% of the price of an Iraqi barrel of oil goes to multinational oil companies - their employees, their profits. Before, they were operated by the Iraqi Ministry of Oil - Iraqi employees, and excess going to the state. And also the fact that the multinational oil companies are depleting the country's primary natural resource 50% faster than before, which is horrible for future generations of Iraqi workers, who are going to rapidly find themselves without an industry to work in.
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Aug 7, 2016 02:20
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Hobologist posted:And in Iraq, Saddam was the king and the parliament. The binary we were discussing was going letting him continue to do what he wanted with that money, or going into Iraq to stop him. Expecting him to implement some variation of the Alaska Permanent Fund wasn't on the table and certainly never would have occurred to anyone on this forum until, apparently, after the invasion was in its fourth year. Give other human beings some credit for being grasping, self-centered scum, please. Saddam, for all his hype, was not Iraq. His government was not made out of autonomous extensions of his will. They were assholes with agendas of their own. Saddam was the king, sure. But he had factions to keep happy. There were plenty of generals who needed to be kept loyal, plenty of governors and mayors begging for support, and oil money provided the simplest and most effective way to keep all of them an approximation content. The petrostate formula's pretty tried-and-true at this point! Was he a good guy? No. Did he use oil money to build up his country's infrastructure when no better ways of keeping his people from rebelling presented themselves? Yes. Did we sell off the source of that revenue stream to whoever greased the most palms in DC instead of using it to do any good for the country, finding through dint of great effort a way to waste it even more egregiously than Saddam? Zero dispute. Thank god for ISIS, honestly, without them there'd be no argument we were the worst thing that ever happened to Iraq. We stole the foundation of their petrostate economy and we expected them to be loving grateful for it.
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Aug 7, 2016 02:26
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Mofabio posted:I'm discussing the fact that currently, 97-99% of the price of an Iraqi barrel of oil goes to multinational oil companies - their employees, their profits. If, as it seems, Iraq under Saddam was using production sharing agreements, then operating oil fields was done by the contracting partners, Russia and China, not the Iraqis themselves. They may have hired local Iraqis; they may have not. Ze Pollack posted:Did we sell off the source of that revenue stream to whoever greased the most palms in DC instead of using it to do any good for the country, finding through dint of great effort a way to waste it even more egregiously than Saddam? Zero dispute. And what does this have to do with the decision to invade Iraq in the first place? I'm not saying that if Saddam did it, it must be right (I'm not the one drawing an equivalency between Iraq's petroleum industry and Norway's); I'm saying that if Saddam did it, it must be viewed as the most likely alternative to invading Iraq.
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Aug 7, 2016 02:41
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Hobologist posted:If, as it seems, Iraq under Saddam was using production sharing agreements, then operating oil fields was done by the contracting partners, Russia and China, not the Iraqis themselves. They may have hired local Iraqis; they may have not. I think we've got a fundamental miscommunication here. Hobologist opened his post by saying the US outright stealing Iraq's oil fields from it was a Bad loving Idea. Then asdf32 chimed in with the assertion that selling off your national resources to foreign companies for pennies on the dollar is Good, Actually, which is the point where I stepped in to disagree. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that anyone involved is arguing that invading Iraq was good and/or necessary.
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Aug 7, 2016 02:54
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Ze Pollack posted:I think we've got a fundamental miscommunication here. Hobologist opened his post by saying the US outright stealing Iraq's oil fields from it was a Bad loving Idea. I think it was Mofabio being delighted that Iraq's oil industry was nationalized under Saddam, because Nationalization = Good, when in this case Iraq's oil industry was providing Saddam with the resources he needed to oppress his people.
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Aug 7, 2016 03:27
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Hobologist posted:I think it was Mofabio being delighted that Iraq's oil industry was nationalized under Saddam, because Nationalization = Good, when in this case Iraq's oil industry was providing Saddam with the resources he needed to oppress his people. What? You said "then apart from the odd smuggling incident Saddam would have kept all of it, no?", which isn't what nationalization is. What are you talking about?
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Aug 7, 2016 03:44
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Ze Pollack posted:Saddam was the king, sure. But he had factions to keep happy. There were plenty of generals who needed to be kept loyal, plenty of governors and mayors begging for support, and oil money provided the simplest and most effective way to keep all of them an approximation content. The petrostate formula's pretty tried-and-true at this point! Factions to keep...happy? No, no. He had factions to keep afraid. As sanctions put the pressure on, Saddam became more paranoid and more deranged, and felt everyone around him couldn't be trusted. He murdered his own brother in law, who was the Deputy Supreme Commander of the armed forces at the time. The second most powerful figure in the military next to Saddam himself. As far as using oil money to invest in Iraq, he exploited the oil for food program that 60% of Iraq's depended upon for their primary source of food, negotiating the deals so that the regime would get kickbacks, which could be used to invest in the military and a very lavish life for Saddam. 500,000 children died during that period.
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Aug 7, 2016 04:07
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Volkerball posted:500,000 children died during that period. You realize oil-for-food was put in place as a UN humanitarian response to post-Gulf War sanctions...right?
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Aug 7, 2016 05:00
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Mofabio posted:You realize oil-for-food was put in place as a UN humanitarian response to post-Gulf War sanctions...right? Yeah, but it ended up being a corrupt failure that the regime exploited. Obviously the sanctions are what drove the humanitarian crisis, although it should be pointed out that from 1980 until the beginning of sanctions, Saddam was never not fighting a war of aggression with someone. The point is that that the idea Saddam was using oil profits to help people, or that he ever gave the least bit of a poo poo about maintaining public approval through good deeds, is laughable. He ruled with the boot, and not much else.
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Aug 7, 2016 05:11
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Volkerball posted:Yeah, but it ended up being a corrupt failure that the regime exploited. Obviously the sanctions are what drove the humanitarian crisis, although it should be pointed out that from 1980 until the beginning of sanctions, Saddam was never not fighting a war of aggression with someone. The point is that that the idea Saddam was using oil profits to help people, or that he ever gave the least bit of a poo poo about maintaining public approval through good deeds, is laughable. He ruled with the boot, and not much else. Ok, and now, we're writing laws for the Iraq Congress to pass, which we forced them to pass, with our military in their capital city. The laws, specifically the 2007 Hydrocarbon Law, detail exactly how we were going to deprive the country of its primary natural resource, and simultaneously accelerate climate change. Additionally, the country used to be ruled by a dictator. Both things are true.
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Aug 7, 2016 05:23
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Volkerball posted:Yeah, but it ended up being a corrupt failure that the regime exploited. Obviously the sanctions are what drove the humanitarian crisis, although it should be pointed out that from 1980 until the beginning of sanctions, Saddam was never not fighting a war of aggression with someone. The point is that that the idea Saddam was using oil profits to help people, or that he ever gave the least bit of a poo poo about maintaining public approval through good deeds, is laughable. He ruled with the boot, and not much else. Again. No dispute. He only ever used his oil revenue to help his people when no easier method to shut them up presented itself. On rare and isolated occasions, he found using oil money to toss food/water/buildings at people slightly more useful than putting the boot in. That this made him a better steward of Iraq's oil money than the US was would be the worst condemnation of the US regime in Iraq possible, if it wasn't for that whole pesky ISIS business. Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 05:38
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Ze Pollack posted:Again. No dispute. He only ever used his oil revenue to help his people when no easier method to shut them up presented itself. On rare and isolated occasions, he found using oil money to toss food/water/buildings at people slightly more useful than putting the boot in. No. When people needed shutting up, the only tactic Saddam knew was the al-Anfal campaign. You're claiming the man who labeled half of his Parliament traitors and had the other half murder them put weight in the value of benevolence. He did not. He didn't just use brutality when it was the best option. It was all he knew. And even after he'd won, and the brutality was no longer necessary, he still pushed the limits further and further just for the sake of it. Just to send that message to his people. Show me an example of one of these rare and isolated occasions.
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Aug 7, 2016 05:53
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Volkerball posted:No. When people needed shutting up, the only tactic Saddam knew was the al-Anfal campaign. You're claiming the man who labeled half of his Parliament traitors and had the other half murder them put weight in the value of benevolence. He did not. He didn't just use brutality when it was the best option. It was all he knew. And even after he'd won, and the brutality was no longer necessary, he still pushed the limits further and further just for the sake of it. Just to send that message to his people. Show me an example of one of these rare and isolated occasions. Oil for food.
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Aug 7, 2016 06:06
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Ze Pollack posted:Oil for food. That was a UN program and Saddam exploited the gently caress out of it. The dude in charge of it almost went to prison it was so bad. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 06:09
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Volkerball posted:That was a UN program and Saddam exploited the gently caress out of it. The dude in charge of it almost went to prison it was so bad. I dispute none of those things. Under the auspices of that program, did Saddam use oil revenues to help feed his people. Yes or no.
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Aug 7, 2016 06:14
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Ze Pollack posted:I dispute none of those things. Under the auspices of that program, did Saddam use oil revenues to help feed his people. That's not what you argued. You claimed Saddam made calculations like agreeing to the oil for food program in order to ease the burden on the Iraqi people to maintain stability. That is false. The oil for food program was an opportunity for the regime to benefit itself, and Saddam took it. If he could've taken 100% of the proceeds, he would've done it.
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Aug 7, 2016 06:20
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