Peter Sinclair in Midland Daily News:
Twenty-two years ago the United States initiated what almost every observer now agrees was a disastrous multi-trillion dollar war — a war for oil.
Then President George W. Bush, was an oil man. Vice President, Dick Cheney, was an oil man. Condoleeza Rice, years before she was named National Security Advisor, already had an oil tanker named after her.
I worry that memories are short.
Today, as military forces gather in the Caribbean, it’s helpful to understand that the impending conflict in Venezuela is yet another war for oil.
The Bush Administration warned Iraq would arm terror groups with “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs). The current messaging on “narco terrorists” follows a familiar script, justifying an enormous military buildup in the Caribbean, even trotting out the specter of a “mushroom cloud” if US forces do not go in.
“Narco Terrorists” are the new “WMDs.”
Venezuela is not a significant source of fentanyl, and several other South American countries are more active in the cocaine trade, but Venezuela has something other countries don’t — the world’s largest proven oil reserves, even larger than Saudi Arabia.
Republican Florida Representative Maria Elvira Salazar gave up the game when she babbled to Fox News that “for American Oil Companies, a Venezuelan invasion would be a field day.”
We know that the saber rattling against Venezuela is not about drugs.
President Trump just pardoned the Ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted by the US Department of Justice, which said he “was at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
Evidence introduced in court showed that Hernandez spoke of wanting to ‘shove drugs up the nose of gringos’ and flooded the United States more than 400 tons of cocaine, each pound potentially responsible for thousands of deaths.
What may be less obvious is that on the other side of the world, an evolving “peace” process in Ukraine is shaped by the same fossil fueled addiction and greed.
The Wall Street Journal recently published a brutal expose of the “Peace Agreement” the Trump administration, cooperating with Vladimir Putin’s petro-state, seeks to impose on Ukraine.
Among the revelations:
– “U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic” (read: oil)
- Putin sent cronies to “quietly meet American companies to explore rare-earth mining and energy deals,” including reviving the giant Nord Stream pipeline, destroyed after the 2022 invasion.
- Exxon Mobil met with Russia’s biggest state energy company, Rosneft, to discuss returning to the massive Sakhalin gas project.
- Gentry Beach, a college friend of Donald Trump Jr, and a campaign donor to Trump senior, “has been in talks to acquire a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project if it is released from sanctions.”
- Exxon, billionaire investor Todd Boehly and others have explored buying assets owned by Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer.
It’s a long piece, full of shocking details, that deserves a reading.
One of the biggest, bloodiest subsidies to the fossil fuel industry has been the trillion dollar wars our nation has been dragged into when leadership is captured by Big Oil.
Maybe this time, we’ll wake up before it’s too late, before another generation pays a steep price.
In 2019, I sat in at a Planning Commission meeting in Isabella County, listening to John Fabian, a farmer with weary eyes, from Rosebush, Michigan, speaking in favor of a proposed wind farm.
“My family is in support of this,” he said.
“In 2004, our son Eric Fabian, a 19 year old United States marine, was sent to the country of Iraq, combat duty, in the region called the Triangle of Death.”
“After 7 months of combat, he returned.”
“But he still has physical and emotional scars of that duty.
And the reason, we all know, these men were sent there, was for energy, in the form of crude oil. And 15 years later, we still send our young people to the Middle East for crude oil.”
“Projects like this, create the energy right here, that’s going to be used here, not put on a tanker and sent around the world – these are the projects we need.”
“So if Apex (the wind developer) is willing to put a wind turbine on our property, we’re willing to do that, so, maybe, it will keep some other family, from seeing their son or daughter sent to these foreign lands, for energy, when we can produce it right here.”
Before we once again betray a generation of Eric Fabians in the name of profit, pollution, and greed, let’s remember that we do have a choice, and we don’t have to follow the path of the past.
I hope we have the wisdom to see that, and the courage to change course in time.
